Hang on, did the iPad just become a computer?

I genuinely never expected to say this: it appears Apple finally figured out multitasking on the iPad. With iPadOS 26, the company hasn’t completely taken off the guardrails for how you can use and place apps on your tablet, but it came awfully close. With a couple of clever iPad-specific tricks, and better support for a mouse or trackpad, the whole system just makes sense in a way it never has before. I’ve been running the very first developer beta for less than a day on an 11-inch iPad Air, and I can already sense a change in how I use my tablet.

The new multitasking system is mostly pretty easy to understand. You unlock the iPad and you’re dropped onto the homescreen full of app icons, same as always. When you open an app, it opens full-screen by default; at WWDC, Apple executives were careful to note that if you don’t want to encounter the new multitasking system, you never have to, and I think that’s true. (You can even turn the whole windowing system off in settings, if you want to.) But as soon as you tap and drag the little icon in the bottom …read more