INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Fixing that was one of the primary goals of the new windowing system."We decided this time: make everything we can make available," said
Federighi, "even if it has some nuances on older hardware, because we saw so much demand [for Stage Manager]."That slight change in
approach, combined with other behind-the-scenes optimizations, makes the new multitasking model more widely compatible than Stage Manager is
And true multi-monitor support would remain the purview of the faster, more-expensive models."We have discovered many, many optimizations,"
"We re-architected our windowing system and we re-architected the way that we manage background tasks, background processing, that enabled
us to squeeze more out of other devices than we were able to do at the time we introduced Stage Manager."Stage Manager still exists in
iPadOS 26, but as an optional extra multitasking mode that you have to choose to enable instead of the new windowed multitasking system
You can also choose to turn both multitasking systems off entirely, preserving the iPad's traditional big-iPhone-for-watching-Netflix
interface for the people who prefer it.
The $349 base-model iPad is one that stands to gain the most from iPadOS 26.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
However, while the new iPadOS 26 UI takes big steps toward the
Mac's interface, the company still tries to treat them as different products with different priorities
To date, that has meant no touch screens on the Mac (despite years of rumors), and it will continue to mean that there are some Mac things
that the iPad will remain unable to do.
