Sneak peek of iOS 4.2 for the iPad

A mere seven days after Apple unleashed iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPod touch, a beta of iOS 4.2 has been made available to developers ahead of the official November release.

The big news here? The iPad finally gets to join the iOS 4 party, complete with multi-tasking, app folders, a unified inbox and Game Center.

iOS 4.2 introduces some new goodies to the iPad that are sure to strengthen its position in the face of the impending Android tablet onslaught. Chief among these are the new AirPrint and AirPlay features.

AirPrint

AirPrint is a new wireless printing feature that automatically finds compatible printers on the local network and lets you send print jobs from the iPad without needing to install any special software or drivers. Printers need to be configured to share over a network or be compatible with AirPlay, and thus far only HP's ePrint range fits the latter description.

A new print option appears in Safari, Mail and Photos, but you're out of luck if you want to print from anywhere else - other iOS apps like Notes, Calendar, Contacts, Google Maps, and iBooks don't have an option for printing. Hopefully, more apps - including third-party apps like Docs To Go - will be updated for compatibility with AirPrint in the coming months.  

AirPlay

AirPlay is the 'new and improved' version of AirTunes, and lets you wirelessly stream photos, music and videos from the iPad to the new Apple TV, as well as stream music (and related information like track information and album art) to AirPlay-compatible speakers, receivers and stereo systems.

The rest

There are other small features and improvements in the iOS 4.2 beta for the iPad: you can finally search for words and phrases on a webpage using the built-in Google search bar; you can change the font used in the Notes app from the whimsical default 'Marker felt' font to a more serious-looking Helvetica  or Chalkboard (although you're still stuck with the cartoonish yellow notepad background); and the larger size of the iPad screen means you can fit more in each category folder - up to 20 apps each.

One change we're not so thrilled about is the hardware orientation lock being remapped to a mute button, as it is on the iPhone 4. Having a mute button on a device that can potentially start ringing at inopportune moments makes sense, but given the iPad doesn't have a phone built-in, we think its original mapping was far more useful. The orientation lock can now be found in the dock, along with a new brightness control.