Will the iPad Ever Be a Worthy Mac Replacement?
Welcome to a new series called Apple a Day, where sites in the CNET family are sharing pieces of Apple content from our archives-an article, review and/or video-daily from now through late September. In addition to Lifehacker, this series will include pieces from our sibling sites PCMag, Mashable, CNET and Popular Science.
For the first five years of its life, the iPad could only run one app at a time. Then, iOS 9 changed everything. That update, released 10 years ago this month, introduced multitasking to the Apple tablet for the first time. "Split View" let you run two apps side-by-side at once; "Slide Over" gave you quick access to a third app in an iPhone-style window; and Picture in Picture made it possible to watch a video while working on something else. In an article published at the time, these changes prompted Lifehacker to proclaim that "iOS 9 actually makes the iPad usable for work."
In total, you could have up to four different windows on screen through this concoction of features, a huge improvement over the previous limit of "one." Coupled with the new keyboard shortcuts, iOS 9 transformed the iPad, and brought it closer to the laptop replacement so many users wanted it to be. "Closer" being the key word there.
Credit: Lifehacker Multitasking on iPad is still a work in progressWhile iOS 9 made it possible to focus on more than one app at a time, it didn't address other iPad limitations that made it difficult for computer users to fully make the switch. In the 11 years since that update, Apple has chipped away at those issues slowly but surely, while upgrading the iPad's hardware exponentially. In iOS 11, Apple made it easier to launch an app into Split View from the Dock, and introduced cross-app drag and drop. With iPadOS 13, Apple introduced a desktop-class version of Safari, and rolled out the Files app, which even supported hard drives and SD cards. iPadOS 15 improved Split View and Slide Over accessibility, and made it possible to multitask with multiple windows from one app.
By iPadOS 16, it seemed like Apple had had enough of people complaining that the iPad wasn't enough like a Mac. This update introduced Stage Manager, which let users display and resize multiple floating app windows on screen. You could even connect your compatible iPad to an external monitor to run Stage Manager on both displays, just as you might connect a MacBook to a monitor. iPadOS 17 improved the experience again, adding support for FaceTime calls from external webcams, while last year's iPadOS 26 provided another overhaul, introducing the closest thing to a macOS-like window system yet, right down to the traffic-light window buttons.
We're at the point where, on the surface, the iPad can be considered Apple's answer to the touchscreen computer, especially when paired with a keyboard and trackpad. But in practical use, it's evident the iPad still isn't a Mac, even in cases where the iPad supports the apps and utilities you use on Mac. iPadOS doesn't feel designed for computer tasks; it feels like computer tasks were retrofitted to iPadOS. That doesn't mean things like multitasking and file support aren't welcome features, but the experience isn't as refined as it is on macOS. What's more, there is evidence Apple agrees the two devices are just too different, as rumors suggest the company might release a touchscreen MacBook as soon as next year.
For me, iPadOS still feels at its best when I use one app at a time. All the above efforts to change its nature aside, that's probably because the iPad was originally designed that way.