I really didn’t expect to say this: it appears that Apple finally discovered multitasking on the iPad. With iPados 26The company has not fully taken guards for how the company can use and keep apps on its tablet, but it has come very close. With a couple of clever iPad-specific tricks, and better support for a mouse or trackpad, the whole system just understands that it was never before. I have been driving the developer beta long ago for less than a day on an 11 -inch iPad Air, and I can already feel a change on how I use my tablet.

The new multitasking system is mostly very easy to understand. You unlock the iPad and you are dropped on a homescreen filled with app icon as usual. When you open an app, it opens full-screen by default; In wwdcApple officials were careful to take care that if you do not want to face the new multitasking system, you never have to do, and I think it’s true. (You can also close the entire window system in settings, if you want.) But as soon as you tap and pull the small icon in the lower right corner of the window, the app starts shrinking. You can make any of your desired size in any size – any size supports the developer, at least, which varies very widely – and puts it anywhere on the screen. If you hold the top bar of an app and toss it from one side, it will automatically fill the screen half. Tap on the new stoplight menu, and you can either close the app or make it a full screen again.

Once you shape an app, now that app has the size and placement. If you close it and open it again, it will open in the same shape and will place until you move it or give it a shape again. I have come to think about this place on my iPad, such as “app screen”, next to my homescreen, organized and I like. And Unlike stage managerEverything is always how I left it. The more apps you can put on this screen, the more you want – I have done more than a dozen there at a time, which is more than any logical meaning and of course you can see at once.

At least in this early beta, there are some quirks for the system. For one thing, I cannot completely find out what the yellow “button does the” at least “button. You tap it, and the app closes, just as an app closes normally, and opens again as you have closed. I suspect that this is a new app. State developers will have to benefit, especially as a new background processing of iPad, but yet it doesn’t do anything new.

You can have only one app active at a time, but you can scroll up and down in an app in the background – if you are using the mouse or trackpad. If you are touching the screen, you have to tap the app to bring it to the foreground, before you can do anything with it. I use CMD-TAB app switcher is too much to jump quickly between things on the app screen, but it does not always show every app open by me. Only way to go Everything The exposure is through feature, which works well, but is a slightly slow way to move around.

By and big, however, it all works only. You can combine multitasking with the stage manager, to convert your organized app screen into a handful. You can run a bunch of windows on your iPad and a bunch on an external monitor, or at least you can do in principle – the first beta is a bug in beta that every time I open a second app on external performance, the entire system accidents accidentally. (I am not worried about functionality in a long time, but as usual, install beta software on your own crisis.)

There are some other Mac-style talk about iPados 26 that helps in doing multitasking work. The first is the stoplight menu, which appears in the top left corner of each app and makes it easy to close or maximize Windows. There is also a new pointer, which appears when you add a magic keyboard or other mouse or trackpad. I think I felt how much better to be a small, more accurate arrow indicator than the old circle. And the new menu is the bar, which appears on top of the screen and whatever app is currently using, provides all settings and options.

In a few hours with iPados 26, I have seen some major changes to use my tablet. I am spending very little time on the homescreen, which almost no longer needs to exist-I am launching the app with a spotlight, shaping them on my app screen, and getting them back with CMD-Tab or Expos. I am using the dock more, as well, as a quick way to achieve those apps, when they are not already in front and center, I use the most. It all likes it very much the way I use my Mac, and it is astonishing how soon I was kicked in the memory of the muscles.

Whenever I have tried to use many apps on iPad, I always feel that I am fighting the system. This will happen let You see many things at a time, but it Desired You see everything full screen. Now, and especially once developers update to more fluid window sizes, multitasking seems like a first class tablet citizen. It seems like a Mac in this sense that it seems that everything is happening in one place, on the same screen, instead of constantly bouncing between different full-screen experiences. Is it more chaotic than traditionally focused than iPad Vibe? you betcha! But I love it yet.

Finally, the answer to “what your iPad can change your laptop” still depends on the matter of your use, and even on the position of the iPad apps. As long as the iPad can really run the desktop-class browser, I am reluctant to say that it can be your primary tool. But now, perhaps for the first time, the operating system does not feel itself that this is the problem. It is the most flexible version of Apple’s most flexible device. It can be a cool, simple, single-tasking tablet or it can be put together in any way that you want. I have been waiting for Apple for years that I really expose the iPad, and I think it can be done now.