Apple's iPadOS 26 update was undoubtedly a significant upgrade for iPad power users. I've heard from a few people surprised that this update wasn't enough to get me to fully embrace the iPad again. Similarly, Federico Viticci’s interview with Craig Federighi have led some to believe the touch-capable Mac of my dreams is never going to happen.

I also wanted to clarify that I'm not opposed to the idea of iPadOS becoming my home again (reminder to readers I was an iPad-only guy from 2017-2021), I just feel burned out waiting for the things I need to be possible on the platform, and it seems like the line to getting the computer of my dreams is shorter by adding touch to macOS than by adding a million things to iPadOS. If iPadOS solves all the use cases I have, then bring it on, though.

As such, I figured it was as good a time as any to list off some of the things that I find critical to the way I use a computer that iPadOS still falls short for me, and I would need Apple to address for me to consider it as my one-and-only computer for getting my work done.

Mouse and scrolling acceleration

I use my computer at a desk most of the time, and truthfully, using a mouse is positively painful with iPadOS. It's actually so bad that even if all the other gaps below were filled, I'd still use a Mac or Windows computer because using iPadOS with any mouse not called "Magic Mouse" is disastrously bad. The cursor moves too slow and there's no way for me to change this in the system settings. Worse, the scroll wheel functionality is crazy bad, with my scrolls either going millimeters at a time or 5 miles in one click of the wheel, with seemingly no in between.

I'm using a Logitech MX Master 3s and I'm sure Apple's Magic Mouse works better, but I don't like that mouse and don't think I should be forced to buy Apple's accessories to get a good input experience. It's not a requirement on any other platform in the world, so I don't understand why it's this bad on the iPad.

Control center and notifications don't show on external displays

This is a simple one, but inexplicably, neither control center nor notifications can show on external displays. You can pull them up from the main monitor, but they only show up on the iPad screen. WHY??? This one thing makes it feel like external monitor support is an afterthought for the OS, not something they actually expect people to use daily. Imagine if macOS required your dock to be on your laptop display.

iPad screen must be on when using an external monitor

This gets us to another annoyance that has existed the entire time iPadOS has been around, and that's that you can't turn off your iPad screen when using an external display. I don't use the iPad screen when docked, I don't want it on, and I'm annoyed that sometimes I think something has not worked since I don't see any feedback on the screen I'm using, only to find out the app or UI opened on the iPad display that's out of sight in my setup (see the control center and notifications note above). Again, this makes me view external monitor support as an afterthought more than something they actually expect people to use. So many people use their Mac in clamshell mode with external displays, yet this remains but a dream for iPad users.

No controls over external display

I have a 4K 240Hz HDR monitor, but as far as iPadOS is concerned, it's a 4K 60Hz SDR screen with no options to change those options or scale the UI differently to fit my preferences. Like the mouse thing, I'm sure this is nicer on Apple's own Studio Display, but I don't use that screen because it's not as good for the things I value in a display (and cost twice as much!). Again, iPadOS is the only OS that has this issue.

I know I've hit on the external display support a lot, but it's the way I'm using a computer 90% of the time, and these paper cuts add up to an experience that simply doesn't click with me.

Audio inputs and outputs

At my desk setup I have a RODECaster Duo plugged into my Thunderbolt dock that I have my audio output to. I also sometimes use AirPods, and depending on the situation, I sometimes need my audio input to the RODECaster and the output to be the AirPods. Other times I want it all running through the RODECaster…still other times the AirPods only. I recognize this is a more complex audio setup than most people have, and to its credit, iPadOS sometimes gets this right, but often it doesn't and I can't figure out how to set these settings properly in settings. I just rely on whatever magic happens when I plug in my dock will pick the right things I want at that point in time. If it doesn't I don't have recourse.

Sites can’t go full screen in Safari

This is a crazy one for me, but I got fed up with the YouTube app acting very weird on an external monitor and used YouTube in Safari for a bit. I'm on a 32" monitor so I don't need my browser to take up the whole screen, so I'm using it at a reasonable size, I hit the "full screen" button on a YouTube video, and the video fills just the Safari window. It's actually a second tap on the Safari "maximize" traffic light button and then again on the green full screen button to actually go full screen. Once I'm done, I un-full screen the YouTube video and un-maximize the Safari window.

In my eyes, this is a classic iPad thing where technically it can do what I want, it's just more taps and more complicated than doing it on a Mac. And isn't the point of the iPad to be more intuitive and logical for a wider group of people? I've never heard someone have a problem watching YouTube in full screen on their Mac, but it's a 3-tap process on the iPad.

Video call sites/apps don’t let you share one window or one tab

This is a huge one for me and everyone I work with: video call apps and services like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams are massively hamstrung in how they handle sharing your screen in a call. On my Mac, I can share my whole screen (which basically no one ever does due to privacy and distraction reasons), I can share a specific window on my screen, or I can share the contents of one tab in my browser (unless I'm using Safari which can't do this on macOS either).

I don't want to share my full screen when on a work call because I don't want you to see my notifications or my open tabs or whatever else random stuff is on my computer, I want to share something specific, and on the iPad the only option available is the full screen share. Again, that's the one no one chooses to use when given the options, but it's the only option on the iPad.

Web browsers feel slower

This one's tough to objectify, but going from using the web on my Mac to the M4 iPad Pro just feels slow to me. Part of this is what I mentioned above where I'm locked to 60Hz output compared to my Mac using the same display to render the web at 240Hz, but it's also raw performance – websites just feel like they load slower than on my Mac. This is true on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro as well as my M1 work Mac.

The closest I can get to some sort of number to back up my subjective impression is running the Speedometer browser benchmark, which returns the below results for me (higher is better):

  • 30 on my M4 iPad Pro (Safari)
  • 43 on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro (Safari)
  • 47 on my M4 MacBook Pro (Arc)

I'll add that for my day job, I live in web apps for almost all of my work, and those web apps work great in the browser (even Safari, for the most part). Yet, every time I try to use my iPad for work, everything feels less reliable and slower than it does on my Mac. Yes, web apps seem to perform slower and more buggy on my M4 iPad Pro than my M1 MacBook Pro. Safari went "desktop-class" a few years ago and it's certainly better than it was before, but I still think it's a browser best for browsing the web rather than working on the web.

I don't want to veer into a "alternate browser engines should work on iPadOS" conversation, but Chromium is a markedly better (and faster) browser engine than WebKit in my opinion, and forcing me to use Safari is frustrating.

Development is a non-starter

I'm sure there are people who do some development work on the iPad, but in all honesty, this is such a small niche of developers. The big one that obviously always comes up is Xcode, which is not available on iPad OS at all, meaning I'm not able to develop my apps on an iPad full stop.

There's also far, far better code editors available on the Mac than there are on iPadOS. Visual Studio Code is an insanely good application, and I can't use it on the iPad. Even Nova and BBEdit, which I know some old-school Mac-heads love, are Mac-exclusive, and while there are some options on the iPad, they feel like toys in comparison to the UX and scope of what's possible with VS Code, BBEdit, and the like.

Let's not even get into the AI-powered coding ecosystem that's risen up in the past couple years, none of which is happening on the iPad. I've been a big fan of Cursor for helping me write everything from my iOS app to future iOS and Mac apps to web apps to scripts I run on my own computer. I've recently moved my workflow to Claude Code (and have tried Gemini's CLI tool, although it's not as good as Claude), and it's spectacular and is allowing me to make the software I've always dreamed of existing. None of this is possible on the iPad. Maybe it will be one day, but all the innovation is happening on desktop computers right now, not iPadOS.

Nerfed versions of Mac apps

This one will vary from person to person, and the situation has gotten better than it was 10 years ago, but I think there's still some gaps to be filled. Final Cut Pro came to the iPad, but it's a cut down version of the Mac version, lacking many key features that even relatively simple users like myself rely on. DaVinci Resolve is on the iPad, and is closer to its desktop counterpart, but it also lacks tons of features. On the photo editing front, Adobe Lightroom is 95% there, but there are a couple things like its enhanced denoise feature that only exist on the Mac and Windows version of the app, frustrating me to no end when using the iPad version.

Plenty of apps have reached feature parity across macOS and iPadOS, and that's awesome, but all too often, I find the iPad version of apps I rely on to be slightly to significantly nerfed compared to what I get on the Mac. Sometimes it's features missing for no apparent reason, other times it's gaps based on OS limitations on what apps are allowed to do, but the ultimate point is that there is never a time when I feel like I need to put my Mac down and pick up my iPad to use a feature that's missing from the Mac version, it's always the other way around.

On a similar topic, there are apps I love on my Mac that personalize the device to my needs like Raycast, Supercharge, Pastebot, and CleanShot. None of these apps exist on the iPad because they literally can not exist in a useful way on the platform. It would be one thing if these apps were not needed on iPadOS, but I think each one would make the platform better and it's a shame they can not be built even if the developers wanted to.

Current feelings

iPadOS is getting more capable every year, and I'm really happy that people who are well-served by that OS feel like they're able to do more and more with the platform they love. I like my iPad too, for what it's worth!

Apple clearly has the ability to add many of the features and fix many of the UX annoyances I talked about above, but I just don't know if they will or how long I'd have to wait for them to get to each one. This idea of having to wait untold years for the things I find frustrating to be addressed is what led me to break down and recognize that what I really want is a touch-based Mac 3 years ago, and it's still where I'm at today. If Apple ticks off all my boxes and gets the iPad into a state that works great for me, then I'll change my tune, but I think it's an uphill battle I don't know we're ever going to win.