For years now – it feels more like decades, honestly – Apple has been trying a variety of approaches to make the iPad more friendly to power users, most notably by introducing, and subsequently abandoning, various multitasking models. After its most recent attempts – Stage Manager – fell on deaf ears, the company has thrown its hands up in the air and just implemented what we all wanted on the iPad anyway: a normal windowing environment.
Apple today revealed an overhaul of iPad multitasking, introducing a completely new windowing system, a macOS-style Menu Bar, a pointer, and more.
The centerpiece of the multitasking improvements is a new macOS-style windowing system. Apps still launch in full-screen by default, preserving the familiar iPad experience, but users can now resize apps into windows using a new grab handle. If an app was previously used in a windowed state, it will remember that layout and reopen the same way next time.
↫ Hartley Charlton at MacRumors
The new window manager includes tiling features, Exposé, support for multiple displays, and swiping twice on the home button will minimise all open windows. It’s literally the macOS way of managing windows transplanted onto the iPad, with some small affordances for touch input. This is excellent news, and should make the multitasking features of the iPad, which, at this point, is as powerful as a MacBook, much more accessible and effortless than all those hidden gesture-based features from before.
The amount of RAM in your iPad seems to determine how many active windows you can have open before the older ones get put to sleep, from four on the oldest iPad Pro models, to many more on the most recent models. Any windows above that limit will still be visible, but will just be a screenshot of their most recent state until you interact with them again. Any windows above a limit of twelve will be pushed to the recents screen instead.
In addition, and almost just as important, iPadOS 26 also introduces proper background processes, allowing applications to actually keep running in the background instead of being put to sleep. Anyone who has ever done any serious work on an iPad that involves long processes like exporting a video will consider this a godsend.
Now all we need is a proper terminal and Xcode and the iPad can be a real computer.
But we already have a computer. Instead of replacing the ill-fated Stage Manager with the new system, they took out the fast and efficient gesture-based model (split and slide over) that was actually touch-first and replaced it with a weird mouse-based-but-touch UI that looks and feels like a touch computer from 2002.
Hopefully they’ll bring background processes to iOS one day.
It have begun with macOS.
Then there comes as addition iOS.
And now we have also watchOS, tvOS, visionOS and iPadOS.
Why need Apple so much Operating Systems?
For example: Windows have a tablet mode and a desktop mode. So one operating system, where Apple have macOS and iPadOS.
Are really six different operating systems needed?
If Apple would be for gamers, there would also be existing gamingOS and handheldOS.
They make for convenient development profiles. They’re not necessarily different operating systems, but they do have different UIs.
It will never be a real computer if it doesn’t have sideloading. Which it will never have.
And that’s the long con here: Make iPadOS more MacOS-like so MacOS (with its pro-user features such as sideloading) becomes obsolete. Whether Apple succeeds I can’t predict, but that’s their long-term goal.
That’s Apple’s intent… we’ll see if the EU DMA turns out to be the camel’s nose for getting a fix for that plan into the tent.
The EU’s DMA applies only to EU users. And the DMA doesn’t mandate sideloading, just alternative app stores (and Apple can charge a “core platform fee”).
kurkosdr,
Is there any recent news about this? Because last I heard apple were found to be in non-compliance.
https://www.phonearena.com/news/apple-could-face-a-huge-fine-for-failing-to-comply-with-dma_id159434
Apple has been dealing with the law and the EU in bad faith…
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/9/24216181/apple-eu-app-store-services-fee-external-links
It’s like they’re playing chicken. If EU lets apple get away with it, then the DMA will have failed to accomplish it’s objective of breaking up market abusers, but I don’t know that the case is over though is it? I didn’t find more information, a link would be good if you have some news.
Hence why I said we’ll see if it turns out to be the camel’s nose. (i.e. the tip of the wedge)
There are Terminals for iPadOS which work well, and there are code editors as well. iPads are fairly capable devices as it stands. The problem is Git repos and VMs/containers.
Each application has to bundle their own Git client, but that’s not how people work. They clone the repo from their forge and use multiple tools to work with the repo. I want to use an official GitLab app to work with GitLab tickets and features rather waiting for a code editor to build the features into the app. i want to use my favorite database app to edit SQL statements.
Containers/VMs are needed run code in isolated environments, so pretty simple. I don’t want to install Python on the iPad; I want to setup a Python container to develop in.
Besides, I’m waiting for Spacemacs and JetBrains to get ported.
Pwanned obsowescence hard at work at wapple.