Template talk:IPad supported OS release

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I've restored the combined iPadOS table. Previously, this table was split up in 4 templates. These 4 templates were only ever used together all at the same time. That makes no sense. Now @Evelyn Harthbrooke is claiming that this was done because it made "maintenance easier" which even at the time was said it didn't. It just resulted in having to edit 4 different templates with the same change, which is just tedious. Yesterday was the first time this kind of maintenance was necessary, and I can confirm that it is just a hassle. She's also claiming that "they were separate for 8 months, becoming the consensus", which mind you, by that logic, they shouldn't have been split up in the first place because there was absolutely no consensus to do so back then and we should have retained the status quo from back then too, which is this now restored table (it also directly flies in the face of many of her previous arguments made 8 months ago). I'm restoring these tables now because a bunch of information and further improvements were also wiped out, other articles got broken due to the revert, and again; 4 templates for this just does not make any sense. Any other argument provided ("one gigantic megatable is unnecessary and ugly") is either exasgperation or just completely subjective and not worth discussing. YannickFran (talk) 07:33, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Respectfully, you didn't seek consensus to merge the tables. A single table is a nightmare for people to contribute to. Especially with a complex and convoluted layout like this. They were split because while it takes more time to edit the individual tables, they aren't unnecessarily complicated. This is part of why I took issue with these tables existing in the first place, for the reasons I have mentioned in the past and that you were seemingly the only person to disagree with me on. You are the only one disagreeing with basically anything that happens to these templates, and IMO you seem to be participating in bad faith.

I'm not one to have a WP:CRYSTALBALL but these tables will eventually need to go. In five to ten years from now these tables will be so bloated and large that they will hinder the ability to expand iOS version history, because of the tables' inherent inclusion size. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 17:15, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I restored the individual tables again, but I am not going to restore them again if you revert, because I am not going to edit war with you. However, you object to literally every single change in existence that relates to these tables, for a reason I am unaware of. They're tables. They aren't going to start another world war if they are separate instead of together. They take more time to individually change, yes, but they're smaller and easier to maintain, they aren't "much worse" to maintain like you described. I added back the iPadOS 26 column to each of the tables in under 5 minutes total. It wasn't hard, esp. with copy and paste. And I just, very simply, vehemently disagree with large tables. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 17:32, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Evelyn, I'm happy that this is the end of this discussion. It's been tedious, yet fun, really, I've had a few laughs.

Let's address the pretense for the initial revert first. Because you claim it makes maintenance easier. We've been over this already, it doesn't. You added the iPadOS 26 column back in under 5 minutes? Okay, but not only did it take you multiple edits for some, but you forgot the Air table, which was fixed 10 minutes after your last edit to the other tables. You overlooked a quarter of the work, clearly maintaining these separated templates is harder. As if to proof that point even further, you then proceeded to mark version 26 as preview in only the Mini and Pro tables, neglecting the base and Air tables, introducing further inconsistencies. Going even further, you merged - what now appears as randomly - a few cells, a concept that has been shot down by more people than just me ([1]) as well as just Wikipedia's accessibility guidelines. Once iPadOS 27 is released, these cells would inevitably have to be pulled apart again because of the accessibility issues this causes, further increasing the needed maintenance work. Idem dito for any additional iPad that gets released. Alas, here at least you admit that the maintenance argument wasn't true to start with. But that also means that your initial revert comment doesn't actually contain any actionable reason for that revert. Either way, let's say that it actually did improve maintainability, that's just severely missing the point of Wikipedia: you're optimizing for the wrong audience.

As for the "8 months means consensus" argument... First of all, that isn't consensus, that's the "status quo" and applies during discussions to keep an article stable, it isn't for stonewalling. Regardless, I'm glad you finally came around to understanding this rule, but it is quiet hypocritical, won't you say? Every discussion before, I've told you how that worked. And every discussion before, you've blindly reverted any edits made - read: removed everything - to push through your opinion, despite that not being the status quo. Other people joined in to tell you that that wasn't how it works.

And yes, maybe eventually there will be an actual need to split things up, be it by version, be it by generation, be it however. As a matter of fact, this has already been discussed, you'd know that, you started that discussion. You just abandoned it when my proposal to it got additional support, which was clearly not the outcome you were hoping for, because instead of getting these tables removed, it meant moving the version details to their dedicated page and changing the iOS version history article to be in line with the macOS and Windows equivalents instead. Which clearly was not what you wanted. We can discuss how we'd eventually tackle such issues, but actually implementing such issues is pointless if we don't know if we'll ever even reach that point. The iOS version history page is currently 32% of the max size. It isn't even *close* to being a problem right now, we'll deal with it when we get there.

Furthermore, the "seemingly the only person to disagree with me"... I guess that "seemingly" is doing quiet a bit of heavy lifting there. Of course there's the edit request (I believe there's even 2?) asking for the tables back soon after you removed them the first time around. Then there's the few people who joined in on these discussion, however briefly, who were either neutral on it or did support my position. A few other people have also reverted your edits... I know that you previously dismissed anyone who disagreed with you if they didn't keep telling you they disagree, but that's simply not how it works. These opinions don't go away.

As for me being the only one disagreeing with "basically anything that happens to these templates"... This very template's history proofs the opposite. Long before you came around, I inverted the tables' axis, another user disagreed with me. Then, that user started a discussion with me, gave actual arguments that weren't (easily) provable false or non-actionable (like "ugly") and instead led to me reversing the axis' back, including other updates. A compromise, and frankly, one I agree was better than my initial change. And that's just the thing, you haven't been willing to compromise on anything here. Every change to these tables made since the start of these discussions where things I proposed, even if I disagreed with them. But you consistently got a hand and demanded the arm. One of the more recent changes by user @Ahmadr I undid indeed, you wanna know why? Because you have repeatedly complained about how "complicated" these tables were and arguably that edit was a bit out of scope - although I personally would support the addition to some extend. Mind you, this is still a basic yes/no matrix in the end, it isn't complicated or even a large table. Oh, and remember when you undid these updates to the iPhone OS 1 article because you believed that the used templates should only be used on the iOS version history article? That's just another example of you undoing changes with any rational reason. There was absolutely no reason for that. This feels like some heavy projecting. Ooh, there is of course one change that I didn't propose:

Finally, as for "you didn't seek consensus to merge the tables". Uhm... Hey... Evelyn? First of all, we don't need to get permission to make changes to articles. That's not what consensus is about, that's not how Wikipedia works. Second, you didn't seek consensus to remove them all the times you tried (you didn't seek consensus to that mess you made on the Android version article either, by the way). Further more, there was an active discussion about these tables, during that discussion, not once did you propose to split this one template up in 4, it wasn't brought up by anyone else either. Where was the consensus for that? Again, this just shows your hypocrisy. You pick and choose what rules apply to you and when someone points that out, you just ignore it and move on to the next argument, no matter if that argument is in direct conflict with your earlier arguments. This is yet another example of that.

I too am not willing to go yet again into a discussion with you where you keep rotating though 10 different reasons without acknowledging any counter argument. So please, let's not do that again.

Anyways, you've created an inconsistent mess, one that is going to be even harder to maintain than this already was if it remains as it is now. Not only that, but your revert removed a number of accessibility improvements, as well as the note indicating why iPadOS 26 was marked in yellow. And of course the point still stands; 4 templates that are only ever used all together simply and plainly shows that they shouldn't be 4 templates to begin with. As such, I'm restoring the table back, including with further enhancements for accessibility and some other minor changes. Frankly, it feels like your basically begging for someone to revert the changes you made, given all these odd changes. Have a nice day. YannickFran (talk) 08:05, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And I am restoring the tables back to how they were again, because you have no authority to do what you just did. You do not have the right to restore the tables if someone objects. That is how consensus works. You do not have consensus to merge the tables again after I split them. Additionally, there are no such accessibility guidelines in place that forbid the merging of a couple rows. It does not impact accessibility whatsoever and I am tired of you making up fake excuses to revert my changes. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 20:12, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Come on Evelyn. First of all, if we're really going by this logic; what gave you the right to break these templates up in the first place? What gave you the right to remove these tables in the first place? There were objections. Again, this is just your hypocrisy at full display (and again you ignoring people that agreed with me during these discussions). Second, I have linked you to these accessibility guidelines in the past, other people have pointed this out to you and another user who tried to do this in the past. This is exactly what I mean: you just ignore everything and everyone if it doesn't benefit your opinion, yet also cherry-pick from these things you previously repeatedly ignored when it does benefit you. YannickFran (talk) 21:03, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Then why does Wikipedia have the colspan and rowspan parameters in the first place? They are there to reduce duplicative content in tables. The way I did the rowspan/colspans in the past were a bit much, yes, but is there really anything wrong with merging the checkmarks and X's for the same column? I agree that merging them across rows and columns doesn't make much sense, but why have an individual checkmark or x for every single device in each OS column? That just introduces duplicative content in the table. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 21:31, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I again restored the dedicated tables. The 10 different reasons I gave were valid, they were appropriate, and they were fine but you just decided to object to them at every possible turn just because you could. You can just re-add the accessibility changes to the other templates without having one big megatable that is torture to maintain because of the complexity of it. You are the one who has decided to continue this unnecessary back and forth by unnecessarily merging the tables to begin with without getting a consensus on it. Me saying "I wasn't going to revert" doesn't mean I gave you a free pass to restore the merged tables, because I still objected to it. I split the tables in the first place because because of maintenance concerns and the fact that I originally split them for easier ToC navigation, and for easier understanding, because Apple treats the different iPads as separate product lines with different feature sets. They are their own individual products, and they shouldn't all be shoved into one single table. Yes it takes more time to maintain them separately but that doesn't really matter. Plus there are some severe inconsistency issues with the merged table, in that the checks and x's are all over the place. There was zero consistency to the table, and its hell to maintain esp. when Apple launches new models. That is why I split them in the first place. Then again I still hold the opinion that the hardware support tables shouldn't even exist on a version history article because it should not be an article that covers device support in intricate detail in the first place, but because of more than just you objecting to their removal, I live with the tables. That doesn't mean there aren't ways to improve them. But making one big megatable doesn't make sense. The iPhone and iPod touch tables being single tables makes sense because they are the same product line, with minor feature differences. But the iPad lineup has had multiple different variants added to it throughout the years, with different screen sizes, features, chips, and even different screen technology altogether, and additionally had different generation naming as they were introduced later on. But the iPhone lineup has always shared (save for the SE models) the same core numbering system. (e.g. iPhone 16, Pro, Pro Max, 16e) The iPad variants were introduced over time, with different naming. Therefore I vehemently believe that they should be their own separate tables. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 20:24, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, Evelyn, pick a lane. First you say splitting makes maintenance easier, then you admit it doesn't (and subsequently make a mess out of these tables), then you say making it easier doesn't actually matter in the first place. Which one is it?

And "the checks and x's are all over the place"? What? Can you even pretend that you're arguing here with a sliver of good faith? What are these "inconsistency" issues you're talking about? Because yet again a returning problem with your arguments: you throw vague statements like this and then never even bother to elaborate.

And seriously? The iPad lines are distinct product lines because "different variants added to it throughout the years, with different screen sizes, features, chips, and even different screen technology altogether"? Because... the iPhone doesn't have different variants throughout the year, different screen sizes, features, chips and even different screen technologies altogether through its base, Pro and SE lines over the years? Aside from the fact that this is completely and utterly irrelevant, why would you even tell such a blatant lie? YannickFran (talk) 21:04, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The iPhones all share the same generation naming, again, save for the now discontinued iPhone SEs. The different iPads do not. The iPad Pro for instance isn't called the iPad 11 Pro. Apple treats them as distinct model lines, while Apple treats the iPhone 16, Pro, and Pro Max as all part of the same generation, the eighteenth. They don't treat the different iPad variants in that same way. That's why I am saying they should be separate, because Apple considers them to be separate as well. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 21:15, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I love how you decided to respond to the one thing that isn't even relevant to this conversation and not the thing that is actually about this template. YannickFran (talk) 07:25, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, replying to my comment at 2 AM my time when I am sleeping in order to try and, idk, sneak your changes through, is uncivil and just plain rude. You also made vast misinterpretations of what I was saying with my comment. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 20:54, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are you serious? You can't possibly be serious? Do I have to come and personally ask you whenever I want to make a change to Wikipedia while making sure you're up? Am I just to guess where you live? Mind giving me your address? Unlike what you believe, my world doesn't revolve around you. This is just ridiculous... Feel free to actually elaborate on these "vast misinterpretations" tho. YannickFran (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You replied at 2 AM when I was sleeping which didn't give me a chance to respond, and you also just didn't allow me (or anyone else) to respond in the first place prior to going on your own merry way of yet again restoring the merged table. If someone else were to object to the split tables, I would agree to them being merged. But so far its a one on one deadlock, yet again, which is how most of these conversations end. You object, I object, we both reinstate the changes we think is best, and we end up in constant deadlock. In what way is that how conversations on Wikipedia should be handled? - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 21:17, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're ignoring a very essential question Evelyn; if they must remain apart because there is a "deadlock" then why did you split them up when there was a deadlock in the first place? And when have you ever cared about giving anyone time to respond before you reverted changes? Every comment you've ever made in these discussions has always came pared with a revert. You never bothered to discuss anything before acting, so why do you now demand that I do? YannickFran (talk) 07:23, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I split them up to align with Apple's handling of the iPad product lines, in that they are treated as separate product lines, with different generations & marketing. I explained this already in the above comment in that they treat the iPad product lines differently from the iPhone product line. Also, the irony is strong with your comment, considering you yourself have done the same thing, pairing your recent comments with reverts too. Maybe if you want to provide an actually relevant argument, perhaps not shoot yourself in the foot by doing the same thing you are accusing people of? - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 19:28, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

...but... you are the one accusing me of doing the thing you've consistently and repeatedly done in the past? "No you" isn't a some snappy comeback and it doesn't answer any of the question anyways. Nor does it actually progress this argument at all, you're again just coming back to the same old thing over and over again without acknowledging any part of the conversation. YannickFran (talk) 19:52, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I literally answered your question but apparently according to you I didn't? What kind of reverse psychology attempt are you trying to pull here? I answered your question in the first part of my comment so I'm quite frankly at a loss with regard to this conversation now because now you're saying I'm not answering your questions despite the fact that I literally did. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 20:17, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't answer the question. I asked you why you split up the templates when there was no agreement about such a move or even a discussion about it, yet now demand people personally come and ask you if its okay and to first reach an agreement. Because according to your newly held believes, the split shouldn ever have happened in the first place. You didn't answer that. YannickFran (talk) 06:17, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I literally told you why I split the table, yet you keep blatantly ignoring the reasons I give and you keep constantly moving the goalposts. This is honestly getting tiring. You keep throwing wild accusations my way and you also keep saying I didn't answer your questions despite the fact that I have. And I never said that the split shouldn't have happened, because it should have happened. Additionally, I was not demanding anyone personally come and ask me if something's okay to do, all I was saying is that you didn't give anyone time to respond before restoring the merged table. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 17:54, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Evelyn, I'm asking you why I need your personal permissions and consensus to merge the thing that you split up without any permission or consensus during an ongoing discussion. It's not that hard. YannickFran (talk) 19:50, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because it wasn't an ongoing discussion. It was a discussion with you, and pretty much you alone. And as usual, nobody objected to the split tables aside from you, once again. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 20:47, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you seriously not see how much of a hypocrite you're being then? Nobody is objecting to the tables being merged aside from you either. So why again should they not be merged? That's how they've always been. YannickFran (talk) 06:59, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I literally already explained why, you refused to listen. I am done responding because you’re ignoring literally all of my reasoning now. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 20:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anyways, I think I am done with this conversation. It's not going anywhere, I prefer the split tables because they are better for accessibility, allow quicker scanning (as one only has to go to the dedicated device table for that specific product line to look at the supported OS versions for it instead of having to look through the entire table like you do when it was unified / merged) and a lot better for navigation as a result of the tables being split and having their own dedicated section headers. But it is clear that no matter what reasons I give, you're going to blanket object to them no matter what and stick to your guns regarding it because, after nearly 3 years of us being involved in multiple conversations, that's what I've come to assume at this point. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 18:13, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn... You are projecting. You have objected against every reason I've given, and when asked for clarification, you've ignored such questions and moved on to the next rationalization for it. Not one step of the way have you ever accepted any arguments I've made. Not once. You see, the thing is that I am actually willing to compromise, it's why I've suggested alternatives in the past, it's why the tables weren't what they used to be to begin with. And it may come as a shock to you, but I'm even willing to change my mind. But that does require a good argument or at the very least a discussion with the appearance of willingness to compromise. But instead you've consistently demanded further and further concessions. That's simply not how discussions like this work.

Look, here's an update that adds 2 new iPads to the old table and here's an update that adds a new iPadOS version. If you believe that those are complex updates (you know, adding a row and adding a column, respectively) in regards to maintenance, well, you're free to just... not update them. Go do something else. Clearly people will keep it up-to-date, people have done it before I was here, I'm helping on it now, and people will do it after I'm gone. We don't need to cater to your personal believes of what is "complex". Imagine if we'd have to do that for all articles, personally I think the tree charts (e.g. on Apple silicon) are a ridiculously stupid syntax (frankly, like many of these, also bar charts, etc.), doesn't mean I get to demand them to be gone, either other people will keep it up-to-date or you do as I've done, and learned how that syntax works, in your case, that would be the act of adding a row to a table. We also don't need to be gaslight into thinking that this table is even close to being "big" or "[visually] complex", it isn't a big table, and please just stop pretending that it is? And yet again; a yes/no matrix is as simple as a table gets. I don't see you go around on the Apple silicon article demanding them to split those tables up, now those are some big, complex tables, and an absolute mess to update yet still, people dive in and do it. And we've had the discussion about accessibility, people in the past have confirmed that the old table was perfectly fine, I can confirm it is perfectly fine (and validating such UX is part of my job), and people have called you out on making the accessibility worse to which you only replied by doubling down (and please stop pretending that you care, otherwise you wouldn't even have thought of making an edit like this (specifically referring to the altered iPod Touch table) or this). For vision-impaired people that need screen readers, the merged table would even be less of a hassle to navigate, especially when you want to quickly compare between lines. And no, we really don't need to do it for the ToC, again the table ain't that big, if anything it just clutters it.

And yeah, I object to your vague reasons. Because that's what they are, I've asked you above multiple times now to elaborate on what you mean with "inconsistency" or how "checks and x's are all over the place" among many other repeated questions (including the one over your conflicting view of when status quo applies). You've never bothered to elaborate on any of it, as you do with almost all of your arguments. If I ask a question like that, and you either ignore it or repeat the thing I'm asking about just again, then the discussion will never progress. And there is nothing to be discussed if all you bring to the table is "I think it looks ugly". Okay... so what do you want everyone else to do about it? Why is it ugly? Does it matter that it is? What you or I think is ugly is subjective and just not an actionable argument in a discussion. I can't change your mind on what you think is ugly, that's your opinion and it's always a valid opinion, its just irrelevant too. It's data, it doesn't need to fit our subjective opinion of what does or doesn't look "good". YannickFran (talk) 20:48, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not demanding concessions. I just blatantly disagree with any and all attempts to merge the table on your behalf when its a one-on-one disagreement. That isn't going to change, and you alone don't have the authority to restore the merged table on your own. I even tried to merge it again and it still looked bad. We don't need huge unwieldy tables that are a pain for navigation and disrespects Apple's product line structuring by clumping all iPad models together as if they're all the same, even though they aren't. The only product line Apple uses consistent numbering for is the iPhone, and formerly the iPod touch. Apple markets the iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro as all separate product lines. They treat the iPhone as one large product line, they don't split the iPhone into multiple dedicated items on the menu bar by splitting it into "iPhone" and "iPhone Pro".

From what I saw, people were fine with the split table as nobody started a discussion thread on the version history talk page about it or wanted them to be merged. But you, despite there seemingly being consensus for the tables to remain split into separate tables, merged them anyway... Also, again, as I have said, if a third party chimes in and and prefers the merged table, then I will have no issue with the merged table being brought back. However, because it is you, and you alone, who merged the tables, and I reverted the edit, that shows disagreement; my stance on the tables wasn't going to suddenly change 8 months later and you tried to go back to the old table 8 months after they were split, despite not a single discussion being held on whether or not they should be merged again. You just did what you wanted to, without getting input from any other Wikipedia editor. It has nothing to do with me; it has to do with following Wikipedia policies and guidelines on the matter, and you didn't. If someone reverts your edit, you can't just give a rationale for it and then restore the tables again without consensus after someone reverts your edit. That isn't how the Wikipedia edit-revert-discuss cycle works. It isn't the "edit, revert, give rationale without discssion and then revert the revert" cycle.

And by "checks and x's all over the place" I meant that because of the product line names being left-aligned, there was no proper visual separation of the ya, na, and maybechecks. It just looked visually jarring and unprofessional, and it also just straight up looked confusing. Anyways, I am leaving this discussion here, until if and when someone other than you objects to the split tables, but as nobody objected to it in the eight months they were in place, I don't see that happening. They are perfectly fine as split tables; especially with Apple's inconsistencies in releasing new iPad models.

Good day. - Evelyn Harthbrooke (leave a message · contributions) 21:17, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]