The iPad is a Nearly-Perfect Laptop Now. There’s Just One (Small) Problem ⭐

Apple released iPadOS 26 today, transforming hundreds of millions of iPads into full-featured laptop replacements. This is a rare win-win with no meaningful compromises: If you prefer the iPad as it’s always been, the user experience remains the same. But if you’re looking for a simpler, safer, and saner way to get work done, iPadOS 26 delivers on that as well.

No software is perfect. But iPadOS 26 is nearly perfect, and it finally unlocks all the power lurking in modern iPads, making this platform a superior alternative to Windows PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks for most people. This success cannot be overstated or denied.

But with this success comes the nitpicking. And it says a lot about how good iPadOS 26 is that we’re even having this conversation. But we no longer need to harp on the big picture issues that dogged previous versions, like the lack of background processing or full-featured multitasking functionality. And so the more we use the iPad to do more, if you will, the more we notice smaller user experience issues. These issues are not in iPadOS itself. They’re in the apps we use every day, from Apple and from third parties. And they can be summarized with a single word.

Inconsistency.

The problem is somewhat ironic: With iPadOS 26, Apple brought true Windows/Mac-style productivity capabilities to the iPad while retaining its touch-first simplicity. But it is that emphasis, that focus, that makes the iPad a little bit frustrating when used like a laptop.

All iPad apps were written specifically with this touch-first emphasis in mind, of course, and that will continue. And to date, some apps have been updated to explicitly accommodate the mouse and keyboard capabilities one expects from traditional desktop productivity apps, and more will be updated in time. But this is happening inconsistently. That is, each app has its own user experience, with frustrating differences in things like in-app navigation. And these differences are amplified when you use the iPad with a keyboard/touchpad as on a Magic Keyboard.

I switched to iPadOS 26 immediately, on the day that Apple released the first developer preview. I’ve been using my 11-inch iPad Air M3 with iPadOS 26 and a Magic Keyboard ever since, and though I was worried about not using reading apps in portrait mode with this setup, I adapted pretty quickly. And so I use the iPad the way I use a Mac and, in those rare cases where the touchpad works well enough, a Windows PC. Meaning, I use touchpad gestures. A lot.

At the system level, iPad touchpad gestures work as they do on other platforms. It supports two finger scrolling, which may be the most common multi-finger gesture. It supports two finger pinch gestures for zooming, as with a touch screen, which is useful when reading articles with fixed column widths. And it supports three-finger gestures for switching between apps (left/right) and navigating back to the Home screen (up). There are more, but you get the...