Apple’s new iPadOS has given my iPad a new lease of life

Apple iPad Air 2025 (M3).

When I bought an iPad Pro with an M1 processor back in 2021, I did it rather than buy a laptop. It’s not that Apple’s failure to release a touchscreen Mac put me off - I’ve reviewed many touchscreen laptops, and I’m still to be convinced it’s a good idea - but I was looking for an Apple version of the Surface Pro.

Four years later, I finally got it. The release of iPadOS 26 - a developer beta of which is now installed on my iPad Pro before its full release this autumn - fixes a lot of problems with iPad multitasking that have been apparent since the tablet OS was split away from the iPhone version. In other words, some of the best drawing tablets just got way, way better.

(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

The bigger iPad screen can’t be treated like a large phone all the time, with full screen apps only. Being able to tile them side by side was nice, but with 26 we get proper floating windows. Connect it to an external display (one of the best portable monitors, perhaps), and you can run web browsers, chat apps, office documents and more all at the same time, switching between them with the touchscreen or a mouse pointer - which is now an actual pointer rather than a circle as it was before.

Compared to the Surface Pro, which is a laptop trying to be a tablet, the iPad is now a tablet trying to be a laptop, which means you can use it for reading or media consumption in a way a folding laptop can never manage.

Writing this article on iPadOS 26 (Image credit: Future)

I’ve never been a fan of Windows 11 as a touchscreen OS, but this new iPad OS makes a lot of sense. It’s a step closer to macOS on a tablet, and the iPad’s app ecosystem is great for creatives, with versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and Affinity, plus tablet-native apps like Procreate. It helps that it looks great, with Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language giving everything some extra visual finesse.

I’m very happy with the way my iPad now works, even in this early beta of the OS, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the company can pack into the final release. Indeed, it's no wonder iPadOS 26 has proven to be the most exciting WWDC release for many this year.