iPadOS 26 turns your iPad into a Mac (almost)



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- Stage manager replaced with MacOS window management

- "Traffic light" window management icons

- MacOS menu bar

- Pointer is now an arrow

- 12 Windows can be open at a time

- Files app now more complex

- File folders available in doc

- Background music and processing works like a Mac

- Still no multiple user support 😔





Starts at 1 hour 20 minutes

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On IOS26 they are moving the browser address bar to the bottom. That sucks. Dumb design. Why mess with what works.
 
iPadOS 26 compatible devices
  • M4 iPad Pro
  • 11-inch iPad Pro (1st gen or newer)
  • 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd gen or newer)
  • M2 iPad Air
  • iPad Air (3rd gen or newer)
  • A17 Pro iPad mini
  • iPad mini (5th gen or newer
  • A16 iPad
  • iPad (8th gen or later)
 
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MacOS has also had some visual tweaks as to be more consistent with iPadOS and iOS

Menu bar now has no background and icons fully match iPadOS and iOS
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Colour theme can be applied to all icons and widgets as per iPad and iPhone
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The visual overhaul feels a little underwhelming. Something we should've had maybe like 5-10 years ago.
 
My iPad has been my laptop since Gen 5. I bought a 10 late last year and I'll be good for another 5 years. I have been waiting for this update for a long time.
 
I will take what I can get. Stage manager was...awful. Looking forward to giving this a try, if it makes my workflow even a bit more "pc friendly" on my iPad I will upgrade to a new ipad pro.
 
I'm looking for it. I think that's what I wanted them to deliver for the iPad. But they really took their time.
 
Hoping keyboards are less buggy on it. My logitech combo touch has been a pain in the ass since iPadOS 18.4 (I'm not the only one, even people with apples Magic Keyboard having issues).
 
The system seems pretty flexible so they can adjust the default frostiness. It's insane how much effort they have put into this system, even the popups are now curvature continuous.


I wonder how this works for devs, will an app that calls a button just get a liquid glass default button.

This is the dude who seems to have been designing all the flashy iOS visual gimmicks:

 
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Apple is determined to keep fixing it until it's broken

Going from the handful of Beta tests I've seen everyone seems really happy with the window management, it's ticked everyone's boxes.

I think this was a case of actually listening to the community.

As kids seem to ubiquitously use iPads these days, this sets them up well for when they come to use MacOS and Windows later in life.
 
In case anyone was wondering, the menu bar can be accessed it two ways.

- Touch swiping down from the top of the screen

- Pointing the cursor towards the top edge of the screen

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Pics like these make me feel incredibly old. I'm tired just looking at the first two.
And ffs, what the hell is that shit in the third pic. Now I suddenly feel like I could survive an atomic apocalypse while the target audience of this stuff dies from acute deprivation of panna cotta.
 
I used to mentally check out when one of the "accessibility" retards in our UX team lectured me about typographic contrast and legibility but damn, this thing has awful typographic contrast.
I used to teach UX in university and this is bonkers.
 
Pics like these make me feel incredibly old. I'm tired just looking at the first two.
And ffs, what the hell is that shit in the third pic. Now I suddenly feel like I could survive an atomic apocalypse while the target audience of this stuff dies from acute deprivation of panna cotta.

Other than having a bunch of overlapping windows I don't see any issue.

You may need to spell it out for me.
 
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I wish iPadOS 26 would look more like Snow Leopard than whatever this Liquid Glass thing is. I don't need a Vista-Wannabe.
 
Other than having a bunch of overlapping windows I don't see any issue.

You may need to spell it out for me.
Nobody needs to be that busy. Having 4-5 different things under your gaze at once and not finding it at least a bit unsettling makes me doubt about the ability of whoever finds that appealing, or useful, to concentrate on anything.

And those notes about panna cotta month and gelato hangout. Who would make this after second grade? Those notes look like they were made by the Nintendo 64 kid.
 
I'm really wonder what will be done with screen sharing. I mean I don't want to close all my porn windows while I work.
 
Don't use apple so I don't really have a stake in it but it's very aesthetic. The readability hysterics is engagement/rage bait, they'll tune it as they get more feedback.

 
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