Game Changer? (Premium)

Heading into today’s WWDC 2025 keynote, world renowned Apple leaker Mark Gurman had escalated his bizarre tirade against Apple Intelligence amidst leaks about a cross-platform design shift called Liquid Glass that he claimed was a calculated distraction from the company’s AI problems. But that’s not what I saw today. Yes, Apple announced Liquid Glass. And yes, this design will be applied to every Apple platform with a display, from the Mac to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. But Apple didn’t shy away from Apple Intelligence, or from conversational Siri, the one and only feature it promised last year but didn’t yet deliver. Instead, it opened the keynote discussing its Apple Intelligence successes. And then it spent the rest of the keynote piling on additional Apple Intelligence features across its platforms.

As I read Gurman’s increasingly unhinged criticisms of Apple Intelligence this Spring, I kept thinking that if I were somehow in charge of Apple in whatever Bizarro World timeline such a thing could happen, I would do exactly what Apple did do and just embrace its successes while expanding those capabilities. So that was gratifying, on some level. I have my criticisms of Apple, but I also felt a year ago, and still feel today, that our industry–and its customers–deserve and maybe even expect a more measured approach to AI that stands in sharp contrast to the chaos we see at Microsoft, Google, and Open AI.

I am mixed on Liquid Glass, for whatever that’s worth: Objectively, it’s not a major departure from the current user interface designs we see on Apple’s platforms, and subjectively, I don’t find it very attractive. That could change with time, but it also doesn’t matter. Because for all the announcements that came out of the WWDC keynote today, there was one that stood out dramatically in its importance. It may literally be, as Apple’s Craig Federighi said during the event, a “game changer.”

I am referring, of course, to the collective set of updates that Apple is bringing to the iPad via the next major software update that it will ship this Fall.

If you spend any time at all on this site, you know that I have been sharply critical of Apple for purposefully holding back the iPad so that it wouldn’t undercut Mac sales. As the company advanced the hardware side of the platform through ever-more advanced chips, the premium iPad Pro and Air model lines, the addition of keyboard, mouse, and touchpad support, and a family of smart covers, I kept thinking that this would be it. Maybe, Apple would finally let the iPad be as sophisticated as the Mac when it came to crucial app features related to multitasking and background processes. But it never happened. The beating heart of the iPad has long been capable and willing, even more powerful than what we see in many Macs. And the app platform has long supported professional user interfaces and capabilities. But it was the software, iPadOS, that always let it down.

Heading into WWDC 2024 last year, I discussed how Apple CEO Tim Cook undermined his predecessor’s vision for the iPad: Steve Jobs wanted this simple but powerful device family to replace computers. And when misguided zealots called on Apple to simply let the iPad run macOS in order to deliver the professional features they needed, I explained why that was silly: Apple could remain true to the iPad user experience, I noted, all it really needs to do was make a few small but important tweaks to the platform so that it could run background processes while you switched between apps, and improve multitasking, windowing, and the Files app.

“Despite the underlying power of the hardware, the iPad’s multitasking is so limited that you can’t kick off certain activities that would otherwise run in the background and then go do something else,” I wrote. “That Final Cut Pro app that some are so proud of will stop exporting video if you switch to another app. And that means you have to sit there, staring at the screen, while it does so. Real Pro app, there.”

With the vague hope that Apple might make some forward progress with iPadOS, I bought a 13-inch iPad Air M2 that was a compromise between the even higher priced iPad Pro line and the need for a big screen so I could experience the latest changes in the platform. That ended up being a mistake for all kinds of reasons, but the central, Apple-created issue remained: The company refused to set the iPad free. The iPadOS update it released last year did not address any of my concerns.

Flash forward one year and it’s happening again. In the build-up to this year’s WWDC, Gurman and others reported that Apple was preparing “an iPadOS overhaul to make the tablet more like a Mac.” Could it be? Was this really–finally–happening? The reports were painfully vague. And Gurman, as noted, seemed more intent on crapping on Apple Intelligence than anything as prosaic as multitasking and productivity.

I can’t believe I’m finally writing these words. And I should be clear: While I will install the first developer beta on my current iPad, an 11-inch MacBook Air M3, the second it becomes available, I have not seen or experienced this update in person yet. But based solely on the WWDC 2025, which I watched live, and Apple’s press release and iPadOS 26 product page, it appears that the company has addressed every single one of my iPad concerns.

Literally.

I know. It sounds hyperbolic. I am trying desperately not to get ahead of myself. Disappointment is so easy, and it comes so quickly. But here’s what that means.

Multitasking. Today, the iPad supports multiple applications running simultaneously, limited ways to view two or more apps on-screen side-by-side, and app switching capabilities via swipes and keyboard shortcuts. But these features are either inconsistent with the Mac (or Windows, for that matter), or just limited. For example, Stage Manager is limited to just four apps on the iPad, while there are no such limits on the Mac. In iPadOS 26, multitasking is getting important multitasking updates with window tiling, any number of floating, resizable windows, and Expose support so you can easily access any open window.

Windowing. Tied to the above, the iPadOS 26 windowing functionality works with windows inside of a single app, and it’s compatible with that Expose feature, and with Stage Manager (which also supports more apps/windows now). That means that in addition to switching between apps, as you could before, you can now also easily switch between individual app windows. The user interface and presentation for this is decidedly Apple–unique in some ways and visually attractive–but I’m excited about the raw capability here. You can’t do any of this today on any iPad.

Background processes. This is inarguably the most significant change, and it solves what is today the iPad’s Achilles’ heel if you care about productivity or are a creator. As noted in my quote above, the iPad doesn’t support background processes today, but with iPadOS 26, it will. You can “export or download large files and run other computationally heavy processes in the background while you do other things,” the Apple website explains. Apple specifically showed the example I used last year, too: Above, you can see Final Cut Pro rendering video in the background while the user works in another app. That’s a live activity notification, by the way, another great feature.

Files app improvements. One of the weird limitations with the iPad today is tied to its roots as a simpler kind of device: Where PCs and other computers are file-based, the iPad is not, and that limits sophisticated apps like video editors that creators and professionals need. In iPadOS 26, however, the Files app is “supercharged” with new ways to organize files and customize folders (including a new List view). You can even put folders in the Dock by dragging them out of the Files app. Plus…

Default apps. Last year, I counted the iPad’s lack of default apps as another barrier to efficiency and productivity, but it’s coming in iPadOS 26. You can “you can set the default app for opening specific file types.” You do so in the updated Files app, but I called it out separately here, as I listed this a discrete missing feature in the past.

There are many other solid changes coming to iPadOS 26 both functional and visual, and I don’t mean to ignore that. But I’ve been hammering on this point for so long that I never thought Apple would address these issues, let alone do so all at once. And yet, it appears to be happening. Pinch me, I’m dreaming.

More soon: As I wrote, I will install the first developer beta as soon as I can. It’s supposed to happen today.