There are two kinds of iPad fans in this world: those who love the tablet just the way it is, and those who desperately wish Apple would make a touchscreen Mac, already. While Apple may never bring macOS to the iPad (at least, not in my lifetime), there’s reason to believe Apple’s tablet might soon be closing the computing gap between it and the Mac.
Could iPadOS 19 finally solve the iPad’s multitasking problem?
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is planning a sizable overhaul to its tablets with iPadOS 19. Gurman’s sources say the changes this year focus on “productivity, multitasking and app window management.” It seems the team wants the iPad to function more like a Mac than it currently does.
If true, this is fantastic news—at least, for those of us who find iPadOS a bit lacking. I really do enjoy my iPad for certain tasks, and, in theory, it should be my go-to computing device. (My Mac doesn’t have a touchscreen or a stylus, after all.) But more often than not, I find myself returning to my MacBook for most applications that aren’t simple web browsing, messaging, or content consumption. Despite 15 years of the iPad, our modern digital world is still optimized for a desktop computing experience.
That said, Apple has made meaningful changes to the iPad over the years to mimic that desktop computing experience. Multitasking, for example, has gone through multiple iterations over the years. In fact, right now, you have two choices when it comes to multitasking: You can stick with the basic experience, which lets you lock two apps side-by-side in “Split View,” and show or hide another iOS-like window as a “Slide Over.”
Or, you can use Stage Manager, which Apple introduced with iPadOS 16.1. Stage Manager lets you add up to four floating, resizable windows to the main display at once, or connect an external display to add even more. It definitely acts more like macOS than the traditional multitasking function in iPadOS, but it’s far from a comparable replacement—the overall experience is a bit buggy, and the resized app windows aren’t nearly as optimized as they would be on macOS. I thought I’d love it when Apple first launched the feature, but the more I used it, the more I just wanted my Mac back. The best way to use an iPad at the moment, in my opinion, is one app at a time.
macOS is not coming to the iPad
Gurman doesn’t share many details about Apple’s plans to make iPadOS more like macOS, but he does add an important point here: If you’re hoping the company will simply bring the Mac’s operating system to the iPad, keep dreaming. Your iPad will still be running iPadOS, and your Mac will still be running macOS. While it would be great if Apple configured a version of macOS optimized for its large touchscreen devices, the company won’t do it—likely because it would cannibalize Mac sales.
In Apple’s view, the best-case scenario is to make the iPad good enough for people to buy, while also buying a Mac for the things the iPad can’t do. It’s kind of like Trader Joe’s: You love it for what it’s best at, but once you leave, you have to stop at a normal grocery store for the things Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry.
I’m not sure what Apple plans to do here to make the iPad more productive, with improved multitasking and app window management. If macOS itself isn’t the goal here, perhaps we can expect more macOS-like windows and behaviors: Maybe it’ll still be iPadOS, but resized windows won’t feel like glorified iOS apps. Perhaps you could run more windows at once, or have easy app-switching without the windows moving around at random.
Any of these idea would be an improvement over what we currently have. While I would love a true Mac tablet, if iPadOS 19 makes my iPad more usable as a computer, that might be good enough for me.
