I have an M1 iPad Pro. It’s the larger model of this generation. I also have an Apple Pencil and the folio keyboard that makes the iPad Pro look like it’s floating a bit over the keyboard.
It was always my intention to make this iPad Pro my go to device. With a Mac mini (and a few Linux machines) at home, I figured it would be easy to make this setup a great traveling companion. Except Apple seemed to purposely restrict the iPad Pro experience so it wouldn’t interfere with MacBook sales. A year later I ended up buying an M2 MacBook Air when they became available.
When I say “restrict”, it’s because up until now, Apple has basically treated the iPad family as big iPhones. Multitasking, “window” management, app management, etc., was pretty much identical to the iPhone experience. There’s a couple of things they half heartedly tried to do with the iPad, like the questionable “Stage Manager”, which allowed for some multitasking, but it’s never really been an intuitive nor productive experience.
There was a paradigm shift announced during the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) keynote on Monday. Apple is finally bringing the toys folks have wanted for years to the iPad.
I am impressed.
One of the things I like about the iPad is that even though it’s solidly locked to Apple’s line of thinking, I can still get to all of my Linux machines and my “personal computing ecosystem” for file management and everything. It’s been rather clunky, but the improvements to the iPad with the release of iPadOS 26 shows a lot of promise.
One of the few things I really rely on with my iPad Pro is that I have some work software installed on it in case my work provided Windows laptop loses its mind (which happens with unsurprising regularity), and I heavily rely on my iPad Pro during storm chases. Like many storm chasers, RadarScope is one of the top tools in the information grab bag when it comes to tracking a storm.
I haven’t installed the beta of iPadOS 26 yet, after all, it’s beta, full of bugs, and only version one of a beta that isn’t even available to the public yet. (It’s for developers only at this point). Plus, installing beta software on a production computer is a fool’s endeavor anyway. However, many of folks have forged on with the beta and have explained all the new bells and whistles in their YouTube videos.
I recently discovered the YouTube Channel “Tech Dad”. He covers all the new features quite nicely.
Now someone just needs to convince my husband that it’s time for me to consider upgrading to the latest iPad Pro.
