You don’t drag an app to one side. You have to do a special flicking gesture; a gesture that’s undiscoverable, and very, very difficult to invoke consistently.
Okay dude, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. You may be an iPadOS 26 super user, but I pretty consistently cannot create a Split View without experiencing a 20 second long exercise in pure frustration.
That’s certainly true. But it is also absurd to conclude that there aren’t better and worse things that Apple can do (and does), just because of whatever they do some people won’t like it. So let’s discuss based on the actual merit of the things they do, and on the merit of existing criticism.
I don’t necessarily agree it’s generic. Yeah, you tap on an app and it opens, tap on another… that opens while still being active on the display. But the swipe an app to the left/right has a bit of iPad-feel to it… it’s pretty neat how it automatically aligns itself for SpitView interaction.
Never heard of Niri… looks awesome. But you do know iPadOS 26 have a tiling manager? And who knows… Apple might get to that point in adding something similar to Niri or PaperWM.
But stacked windows is what most users have preferred throughout the years. It was always the sentiment from Mac/Window users didn’t like multitasking on an iPad because it wasn’t “traditional”, pressure from the public kept going on how archaic the multitasking was on iPadOS.
I agree it takes longer to create a SpitView on iPadOS 26 than it did iPadOS 18. It’s the idea that it’s too inconsistent and take 12 steps to do that I disagree with.
I’m not an iPadOS 26 super user, I care about the iPad just as deeply as you do. As I stated before… I hope Apple brings back SplitView/SlideOver for you.
It’s generic in the sense that it allows generic window positioning, resizing, and stacking, with little or no restrictions. Such flexibility brings with it more complexity in operation.
Not sure what you mean here. The point is that iPadOS doesn’t force a tiling arrangement, which is what a tiling window manager does.
Users may have preferred it on the desktop with keyboard and mouse pointer. But iPadOS 26 demonstrates that it’s more tedious with touch input. Apple had pressure to improve multitasking on the iPad, but I don’t think they had pressure to introduce a traditional window manager, other than by those who want macOS on the iPad, which they still are not getting with iPadOS 26.
I don’t know about complexity, looked at the presentation of iPadOS 26 when the lady demoed it… she demonstrated how windowing, resizing and tiling worked, I picked it up within a minute or two and got the hang of it. I recall a situation where I told my family about SplitView/SlideOver… this was after it was initially announced. And they didn’t care for it… it felt unnecessary for them.
Well, yeah.. if I have 3 or 4 apps active on display. I can force a tiling arrangement through the options in the resize button.
But ask your self though… who’s the iPad competing with? Traditional laptops. Even the iPadOS 26 demonstration was being presented with a Magic Keyboard. While she was still illustrating multitasking via touch input… I think Apple is looking at it from the standpoint of how we can grab Mac/Window users.
I have it off on my 11" iPad which is my content consumption device and have it on in my 13" iPad which I use with a MKB.
What is the intended use if you have 3 options for it?
That’s true. Maybe intended use is the wrong phrase. More like default configuration. Although I’m not 100% on this rule because some things are just too annoying to deal with
I think the iPad is meant to have two use cases now: 'just a tablet' which you use with your fingers (aka full screen apps) or the 'laptop' which you use with the keyboard and trackpad. That's how I ended up using iPadOS.
There are lots of things to clean up in the next 6 weeks or so until it is released, but overall I am happy with it.
Probably needs an update on Pages. Check if there is a beta for pages or send Apple feedback on Pages.
Menu bar will only appear in Multitasking mode (Windowed apps or Stage Manager), you can press Globe+M for it to appear OR swipe down at the top of the screen.
