Apple software chief Craig Federighi: iPad shouldn’t run macOS, but it can be inspired by Mac

iPadOS 26 takes a huge leap forward and pushes the unique capabilities and versatility of iPad even further.
In a newly published interview, Apple software chief Craig Federighi says, correctly, that iPad shouldn’t run macOS, but it can be inspired by the Mac.
Federico Viticci for MacStories:
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I came into this WWDC thinking – or, at the very least, hoping – that Apple would show a newfound commitment to the iPad and iPadOS, addressing the longstanding concerns of those who have been pushing iPadOS to its limits while keeping true to the essence of the device. It’s a careful balancing act, but having tried iPadOS 26 on my 13” iPad Pro for the past week, it seems clear to me that Apple delivered this year…
Apple didn’t go into detail about this at WWDC, but with the latest version of iPadOS, the company has scrapped the windowing engine that powered iPadOS 16’s Stage Manager (and subsequent iterations) and replaced it with a new one built around a window prioritization system. This new engine taps into several low-level frameworks of iPadOS and coordinates across the CPU, NAND, GPU, and battery to optimize window rendering and understand which windows should be prioritized based on user activity. The result is a more powerful and efficient system that, in my experience with the iPadOS 26 developer beta, allows for up to 12 windows to be active on-screen on my M4 iPad Pro. I’ve been able to play around with iPadOS 26 on both the 11” and 13” iPad Pro; while I still think that the smaller Pro model strikes a better balance between laptop-like features and tablet portability, multitasking power users will probably want to gravitate toward the larger model for more comfortable windowing…
Federighi says that Apple eventually realized there were two types of iPad users. “What we’ve seen is that there are users who are always going to want the simplest iPad it can be, and we want to preserve that for them: fully immersive, single window”, he begins. That’s the aforementioned crowd that is never going to be interested in any form of multitasking whatsoever.
But Federighi notes that they also saw another part of the iPad audience – those that wanted explicit control over everything, with as many options as they could have. “So we came to the point of saying, “Let’s recognize that audience.”
Under the new windowing engine, iPadOS 26 will default to full-screen apps until you enable the new ‘Windowed Apps’ mode in Settings or Control Center…
Federighi strongly believes in the Mac and iPad each having their own reasons to exist. “The Mac lets the iPad be iPad”, Federighi notes, adding that Apple’s objective “has not been to have iPad completely displace those places where the Mac is the right tool for the job” … “I don’t think the iPad should run macOS, but I think the iPad can be inspired by elements of the Mac”, Federighi tells me. “I think the Mac can be inspired by elements of iPad, and I think that that’s happened a great deal”.

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MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last May, “Here’s hoping iPadOS… brings some useful improvements to the iPad experience which, btw, is not to replicate the Mac. If you want a portable Mac, get a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. iPadOS just needs to grow up and let iPad users work more efficiently and powerfully, in iPad ways.”
With iPadOS 26, iPad is now (or will soon be) in a great place, one of which we dreamed a decade ago:
Imagine an “iOS Pro” mode.
Turn on iOS Pro on your iPad Pro
1. Tap Settings > General, and make sure iOS Pro is turned on.
2. There is no step two.
Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
— MacDailyNews, December 29, 2015

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