Despite all the changes, including the new windowing system, iPadOS 26 doesn’t make iPad a better computer than the Mac.
iPadOS 26 Doesn’t Make iPad a Better Computer, but it Does Turn it into a Better Tablet
iPadOS 26 has been out for a while, and I’ve been daily driving it since the moment it was released back in October. At first, the changes looked nice and promising. With time, the veil started to get thin, and it became clear that we haven’t moved an inch.
This year, Apple has shipped features that make iPad function more like a Mac. From the redesigned pointer to the menu bar at the top, and even the traffic light buttons to close or minimize apps, the effort doesn’t make iPad a better computer in any way.
First of all, those traffic light buttons don’t work like the Mac, and if you’ve ever used macOS, it becomes more evident.
In most apps on the Mac, when you click the red button, the app disappears from view, but remains active in the background. A good example of this is Safari. The red button closes all your tabs, but the core app remains active. Same thing happens with the Messages app too.
On iPad, the red button completely shuts down the app, like how you would flick it away from multitasking view. This means you are losing battery life on every single launch since your iPad has to launch the code from scratch and bring it into memory.
As someone who is familiar with the Mac, that red button seems very unfamiliar.
Then there’s the mouse pointer, which remains frustrating like iPadOS 18. Sure, it’s ‘precise,’ as Apple puts it, but it still works like a magnet when you’re working with strings of text. Just take the pointer close to text, and you’ll immediately notice how the pointer starts fighting with you to keep itself centered.
It feels like you’re driving the pointer through a puddle of mud. It keeps on changing its direction and you automatically start to correct it because it needs to feel right to you.
Last but not least, the windowing system doesn’t help much with productivity. The reason for that is simple: the way apps are scaled on the iPad display. Though you can get more desktop space by enabling this feature, it’s just not a great solution.
I’m not even going to talk about Safari this time because I’ve given up on it. It’s never going to be like the one that ships as part of the Mac, and Apple makes sure of that with every iPadOS release.
Computers are supposed to be easy, and I’m sure someone out there finds iPad to be a better alternative to the Mac. But when you spend so much money on something so difficult, you’re better off investing in a real desktop-class operating like macOS.
However, despite what I’ve said above, iPadOS 26 turns the iPad into a far better tablet. There’s simply nothing out there like it, and probably never will be. But as a computer, it remains slow and frustrating.
