The New York Times unveiled a new version of its iOS app yesterday. Version 6.0 — the first major update since last October — adds a handful of notable new features, including simpler personalization, support for split-screen multitasking on the iPad Pro, and support for 360-degree video.

The most noticeable design changes are on the iPad, where the new homepage has some of the modularity that the Times’ ongoing web redesign has. Here’s what the new (top) and previous (bottom) iPad apps looked like this afternoon:

Also noteworthy is what’s under the hood: This is the first version of the app that’s universal for iOS devices, meaning that the same code is at work across the iPad, iPhone, and even the Apple Watch. The Times released the first version of its iPad app in April 2010, just a few months after Apple announced the iPad and shortly before Apple introduced support for universal iPad-iPhone apps. Other news organizations, slower to develop for the iPad, created universal news apps from the beginning. A few months later, the Times started offering access to its iPhone and iPad apps in different subscription tiers, separating the products further.

Very proud to announce the release of an app I’ve spent the past year working on, a completely rewrite in Swift: https://t.co/OZ28wgmYro

— iYrke (@bpekroy) July 25, 2017

Both of these product choices complicated the Times’ efforts to bring its iPad and iPhone apps together, as Matthew Bischoff‏, a former Times iOS developer, noted in a thread here. Bischoff‏ said that app’s release was delayed in part by the Times’ decision to rebuild the app in Swift, Apple’s latest programming language.

6.0 is a rewrite of the app to be written in Swift. Additionally, it unifies the phone and tablet iOS apps into a universal binary.

— Grant Butler (@grantjbutler) July 25, 2017

Creating a universal app for iPhone and iPad should make life a lot easier for the mobile developers at the Times. When the Times experiments with a new feature, for example, developers will be able to code and test it once, rather than do so for multiple devices. This means both faster development and less testing, which should free up developers to push out features more frequently.

There are few features that aren’t enabled yet but underlying technology is almost done :) looking forward to seeing the app grow ;)

— Krzysztof Zabłocki (@merowing_) July 25, 2017

Today we dropped a brand new (universal) @nytimes for iOS, rewritten in Swift, setting the stage for lots to come: https://t.co/8p49TEhNMM

— Alex Rainert ‍♂️ (@arainert) July 26, 2017

new @nytimes iOS app update (that I had nothing to do with) is legit. damn fine work, team.

— ashley riehlin (@asherly) July 26, 2017

Whoever finally fixed scrolling inertia in the new @nytimes iOS app deserves a raise

— Ryan Murphy (@rdmurphy) July 26, 2017

Postscript: they kept my favorite screen in the app: the emoji credits! pic.twitter.com/ic0MHZFuH0

— Matthew Bischoff (@mb) July 25, 2017