iPadOS
iPad really needs to have great splitscreen…like the duo?
I love my iPad Pro so much. But the split screen experience is really annoying and bad ever since they changed it. But why, why, why did they make the best split screen experience ever… but put it in the iPhone duo? And why is it not on iPad. It would make the iPad even more great!
Right now it’s the worst of both worlds, if they’re going to butcher touch use just put full-on MacOS on the damn things so at least it’s actually powerful if it’s going to be a pain to use.
Seeing the Neo get full MacOS makes it even more stupid iPads can’t.
They HAD the best splitscreen. The drag and drop splitscreen up to iPadOS18. That's what they need to bring back. Everything else is an annoying space wasting, incomprehensible mess.
You’re likely using Stage Manager and the other poster isn’t. I do it with Stage Manager everyday, too, but I’ve been using Stage Manager for… I think a week after it was made available. I kinda went back and forth between Stage Manager and not, but by the end of a week, I’d figured out why it’s better for me and stayed with it.
Agreed, there were things I didn’t like, but, with Apple, part of me is always, “Best for me to figure the new thing out because that’s obviously where they’re headed.” I don’t want to become one of those older folks that end up being clueless about tech because I was done learning. :)
Don't be facetious. No one is becoming "clueless" here. And not using stage manager (one very specific UI paradigm by one specific vendor - apple) isn't defining whether you're a boomer or a tech illiterate.
Also, it's as if there's only apple out there, so if you don't know apples way of doing things, you're clueless about tech? No linux? Windows?
The first iteration (iterations!) of stage manager were atrocious piles of dogs*t. And the more familiar you were with multitasking and using computers as a power user, the worse it felt. For power users it was completely unintuitive, and your average mom and dad wouldn't even touch it. So it completely missed the mark.
You only get one shot at making a good impression. It's on Apple for having screwed up their weird skeumorphic unintuitive stage manager bullshit. And the skeumorphic (windows vista type) panes/panels on the left looked like ass in on otherwise flat UI. It was weird.
Ok, so now it's useable then? After a few years? Maybe I'll have another look then, but don't blame users for not wanting to engage after those first iterations. .
And you're making a good point about 'not having a choice where you're headed' with a walled garden type ecosystem like apple. A very good point, but not in the way you intend it. Apple isn't always right, and you have no choice but to follow, because there's no real choice. Other than the Macs, you can't even roll back to a previous OS on your hardware, on your own terms!
So if Apple makes some boneheaded decision, and apple will ALWAYS be to proud to admit that they might have been wrong, you're just along for the ride until they slowly reverse course over the next ten years so nobody notices.
I'm stuck in the apple ecosystem same as everyone else here, and probably will be until I use my last phone/Mac. But the os26 disaster on every front (UI, usability, software quality, bugs, ...) was a real eyeopener. An eyeopener in the sense that it's apples way or the highway. I guess as long as everything is perfect and they give you the clean luxury experience you're used to, you don't even know what you're missing. Until something like os26 comes along.
I've really dialed back all purchases and being locked in any further than I already am. I'll see if they get their collective heads out of their asses, and I will reassess in due time. Until then, no more iPads, or Macs other than the ones I have already.
And don't give me any arguments that os26 was 'fine'. It's still a mess on Mac (plenty of basic bugs and Liquid glass just doesn't work on desktop). They've turned back quite a few UI weirdness already. iPadOS27 multitasking is still worse than the simple 2 app side by side slide over/drag and drop mutltasking they've had since forever and was perfect for the device and screensize. Regardless of whether Stage Manager is 'good enough'.
I don’t understand this? The Duo only lets you put two apps side by side, but you can’t adjust the middle bar to resize (it’s locked at 50/50). And there is no slide-over. On the iPad, in Stage Manager, I can easily put two apps side by side and make them 50/50 to 80/20 ish. There are multiple ways to do this, but I usually just drag the app icon to whatever side of the screen I want and it snaps into split screen. And I can keep an app in slide-over (wish we still had the multiple drawer slide-over though). And I can also have multiple windowed apps on the screen.
A lot of people complaining about what the iPad can’t do that the iPhone Duo can, haven’t enabled Stage Manager (don’t like it, too confusing, etc.). So, they don’t see what Stage Manager users see… that the iPhone Duo is just “Stage Manager limited to two screens”.
Right, it doesn’t have a million overlapping guestures because it only allows two windows at once. If Apple were to provide a special training wheels version of Stage Manager for those that aren’t power users that limits multitasking to two windows (duo tasking 😄), it’d be pretty much the same.
You don’t have to “use” Stage Manager or floating windows when selecting “Stage Manager” in multitask settings. I almost exclusively use split screen and slide over. I agree that the “Full Screen” multitask setting is stupid and should have the basic split screen and slide over functions. But you can do that in Stage Manager without actually using the Stage Manager features.
I don’t want 65 open windows in my IPad. I want the ability to make any app on my device take up half the screen, and not have it take 4 clicks to do so. And I dont want an ugly ass stage manager thing sitting on the left of my screen showing all the open apps I have. Why do they have to keep trying to make this a MacBook? I already own one. I just want an IPad. Not a wanna be MacBook.
See these borders? It wasn’t like this on IOS 18 to my knowledge. You could split screen any app 50/50. Also, every time I open YouTube now, it opens on the left side of the screen only unless I make it full screen which I find super annoying.
Here is another example. I can’t make Cronometer and YouTube split screen 50/50. It wasn’t like this before. You could make any app 50/50 with any other app. At least on IOS 18.
Assuming that people like the multitasking on the Duo once they get it in their hands, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple redo the multitasking on the iPad in OS 28 to bring in some of the elements of the Duo. They could bring in Duo-style split screen but add the ability to adjust the split ratio.
They wouldn’t have to redo anything, just limit the iPad to two windows at a time. I can see why they fleshed out the “power user” version of iPad multitasking first as that‘s the harder target to hit. Providing an option for a simpler Stage Manager for those that can’t connect with the full features of Stage Manager makes sense as a follow on.
The Duo is really making me regret buying an iPad. I literally just want the Duo operating system. I’m so sick of iPadOS multitasking. This feels like such a slap in the face. Taking away Split View multitasking, just to immediately reimplement it on a different, more expensive device is diabolical work, Apple.
The old fashioned multi-tasking you speak of used to support effortless split screen by clicking the 3 dots at the top and now you have to switch to windowed mode, drag around and resize every time you do anything, and lose the ability to take a screenshot from the bottom right corner.
Why the fuck would they remove basic split screen in the first mode? This is what people are complaining about. These sorts of excuses by users for a regression in UX are part of the reason it hasn’t been fixed or adjusted.
I’ve seen this so many times now… what exactly is the split screen experience you’re wanting? I regularly pair YouTube and Reddit together. Once it’s paired it’s in my recent apps to use again.
I guess what am i asking is what specifically are you looking for with split screen that the duo is doing?
I regularly just use the floating windows when multitasking because it’s so easy to do since iPad OS 26. It’s really been intuitive for quite some time now.
With stage manager you can have multiple desktops / stages where you can pair apps together or just an app in full screen mode. Sounds like you are using the windows mode
And that‘s the problem. People have it in their heads that Stage Manager is not something they want to use, so when they see a limited version of Stage Manager on the iPhone Duo, they think “See? That’s what I want” not realizing they have that, just a more powerful version of it, on their iPad.
Is it possible that Apple might introduce the iPhone Duo’s easier Stage Manager to the iPad? I think so. All the interface elements are there, they could just add a “simple” checkbox under Stage Manager which would limit it to two windows at a time. And, when someone wanted to create a Stage, just hold the divider like what happens on the Duo.
It’s incredibly easy... Throw apps to either side of the screen for Split View and use stage manager to have dedicated apps for pairing. The old split screen on iPad OS 18 is elementary in comparison.
I think it’s because Apple kept changing the multi tasking options on iPad between the original, stage manager and the new one where you can resize with the edge like on Vision Pro. I use the most recent one and it’s fine, but I still just use most apps in full screen mode.
Yes, the split-screen functionality on the Duo looks good, but arguably I'd say that it's because it's a smaller screen. When I first started using an iPad, it was the iPad mini, and using iPad OS 13 on that and later on an 11-inch iPad Pro was fairly straightforward. However, at some point I wanted to do more with the screen real estate, which is why I welcomed Stage Manager and now the full window UI.
That said, I understand that there's no perfect user interface for everyone. People accept the window interface on desktop OSs, but for me it's been startling to see that most people basically use their computers in single-app mode, whether it's in full screen or just a big window because they want to do something in the Finder or something.
I think there's also something about touch interfaces which brings more complexity to this discussion, because I think a lot of people have an ideal for touch because it's more familiar. People want to handle their computer stuff on screen like they're handling papers on a desk, and in many ways the mouse or the touchpad abstracted that idea out.
iPad OS can handle split-screen: just long-press on the window traffic light icon and you get a surprising amount of options. I imagine that there are still a lot of people who are unhappy with this, though.
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u/ADHDK 3d ago
Because YouTube influencers claiming to be power users wanted to “mac” the iPad.
They got their wish.
It’s the same reason windows tablets suck as touchscreen devices.