Tablet Vision Transformation: Apple Introduces iPadOS, Glimpsing Its Forward-Facing Strategy for iPads
Apple's latest operating system for iPad, iPadOS 26, is set to revolutionise the tablet experience, aiming to bridge the gap between the iPad and Mac. This major overhaul introduces a multitude of enhancements to multitasking, window management, and productivity features, making the iPad a more powerful and versatile device for professional and creative workflows.
The new windowing system replaces traditional multitasking features like Slide Over and Split View with a more flexible, Mac-like windowing engine. Users can now open more than four windows simultaneously in the same workspace, resize, place, minimise, and tile windows with Mac-style controls and menu bars.
An Exposé feature has been introduced, allowing users to quickly see all open apps and windows at a glance, improving navigation and workflow. For users who prefer grouping windows, Stage Manager remains available as an option.
The iPad can now connect to external displays and use them to run even more apps at once, taking productivity to a new level. The cursor now operates like the Mac cursor, and with the Magic Keyboard, the trackpad offers a Mac-like experience, making interaction smoother and more precise.
Expanded Apple Intelligence features include Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime, and the new Phone app on iPad, supporting automatic translations during conversations. Creative tools like Image Playground bring ChatGPT-powered image generation to the iPad, and Genmoji allows combining and customising emoji characters with descriptions.
These system-level advancements, combined with Apple's latest hardware, such as the M5 iPad Pro equipped with a high-performance chip, make the iPad a more powerful and versatile device for professional and creative workflows. The M5 chip enhances multitasking and performance, supporting the capabilities introduced in iPadOS 26 for demanding applications like intensive gaming, professional apps, or multitasking scenarios.
This move allows Apple to test out more demanding applications and workflows on an ARM-processor like the one found in each iPad. Split View in iPadOS now allows splitting the view with the same app, enabling two instances of an app like Notes on the same screen. Users can now import images directly into apps like Lightroom, bypassing the Photos app.
The latency of the Apple Pencil in iPadOS has been improved from 20ms to just 9ms. iPadOS tightens up the app grid and allows pinning of widgets on the home screen. In iPadOS, downloading content from Safari will provide an actual download manager instead of downloading into the ethers of iOS.
The File app in iPadOS is getting updates, including folder sharing, column view, metadata, server access, and the ability to plug in a thumb drive and access files like on a Mac or Windows device. Slide Over, the multitasking function, now lets users switch between apps just as in the normal app switch mode.
iPadOS will be available later this year and will include all the features of iOS 13 as well. Notably, Mark Gurman confirmed that the name of the operating system for the iPad has been changed to iPadOS. The iPadOS is being split off from the core iOS to support the iPad's slow push into becoming a laptop.
In summary, iPadOS 26 aims to bridge the gap between the iPad and Mac by introducing full multitasking and window management, improving hardware support for external displays, refining input devices, and integrating AI-powered features—significantly boosting the iPad's potential as a high-performance productive device.
- The new windowing system in iPadOS 26, similar to Mac's, allows users to open more than four windows simultaneously, resize, place, minimise, and tile windows with Mac-style controls and menu bars.
- Creative tools like Image Playground, powered by ChatGPT, bring AI-powered image generation to the iPad, adding to its versatility as a device for professional and creative workflows.
- For better navigation and workflow, an Exposé feature has been introduced in iPadOS 26, allowing users to quickly see all open apps and windows at a glance.
- The iPad's potential as a high-performance productive device is further boosted with Slide Over, which now lets users switch between apps just like in the normal app switch mode, and a download manager in Safari, replacing the previous download-into-the-ethers method of iOS.
