But Apple has been heading in this direction for a while. In 2020, the Magic Keyboard brought an extra port and a full trackpad to the iPad. Then in 2022, the company introduced external display support, and finally, in the 2024 update to iPad Pros, the webcam was moved in portrait mode. But this year’s update really feels like it reached the tipping point. And Apple sold the premise in two really smart ways too.
Firstly, most iPad users may never even realize the windowing feature is there. Like many deeper iPad features, windowing is purely optional and hidden by default. Open an app on your iPad, and it still defaults to full-screen. It seem likely that the average person would never notice the tiny resizing icon in the bottom right corner of apps. That’s an important design decision, as it keeps intact the primary identity of the iPad as a simpler interface.
Second, Apple coyly never referred to these new elements as Mac-like during the keynote, instead merely calling them “familiar.” It even spaced iPadOS and macOS apart from each other within the presentation, careful to not call attention to just how similar these two products have become. Apple would never want to pit two of its products against each other, and has always implied that there’s reason for someone to own both an iPad and a Mac. But with iPadOS 26, let’s be real: That requires some serious cognitive dissonance to believe now.
I’m not suggesting iPads will ever replace the MacBook Pro. The people who really need that extra performance will always flock to those more powerful Macs. But what about Apple’s far more popular laptop, the MacBook Air?
The iPad Pro and MacBook Air have always been confusingly close in price and specs—surely, there’s danger of Apple cannibalizing its own products. I don’t doubt Apple will keep both around as long as possible, but I feel more inclined than ever to compare the two directly. That’s even more true since the iPadOS update will even be available on the base iPad and iPad mini when it officially rolls out later this Fall.
So, does all this mean that a proper union between iPadOS and macOS is in the works? Or how about a touchscreen MacBook? In the past, Apple has stated definitively that it has no plans to merge its operating systems. That was a declaration that earned cheers from the audience back at WWDC in 2018. And yet, despite how far fetched those concepts sounded seven years ago, just about anything seems possible at this point.
