Apple says the iPad’s hardware limitations prevented it from implementing proper windowed multitasking earlier

Apple couldn’t bring windowed multitasking to older iPads with the responsiveness you’ve come to expect from the iPad’s multitouch interface.

Ars Technica sat down with Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi, who explained that the engineering team couldn’t bring the new windowed multitasking feature from iPadOS 26 to older iPads due to hardware constraints.

While they could have done so at the expense of responsiveness, doing so would’ve broken the magic of the iPad’s instantaneous multitouch interface, something Apple doesn’t want to compromise. That’s why we’ve waited so long for windowed multitasking on the iPad—Apple was waiting for the technology to catch up.

iPadOS 26: Windowed multitasking requirements

“It is a foundational requirement that if you touch the screen and start to move something that it responds,” Federighi told Ars Technica‘s Andrew Cunningham. “Otherwise, the entire interaction model is broken – it’s a psychic break with your contract with the device.”

He’s right, Apple doesn’t want to see headlines that slam the iPad for a choppy multitasking performance. But it could have added a switch for power users in Settings to turn on windowed multitasking even if the hardware isn’t up to snuff, no?

The same hardware restrictions held back Stage Manager, a multi-window multitasking feature that debuted in 2022, which also requires relatively new iPad models listed on Apple’s support page. But as iPads have become more powerful in the past several years, Apple’s engineers felt confident that they could finally bring a proper Mac-like multitasking experience to its tablet.

“Over time, the iPad’s gotten more powerful, the screens have gotten larger, the user base has shifted into a mode where there is a little bit more trackpad and keyboard use in how many people use the device,” Federighi said. “And so the stars kind of aligned to where many of the things that you traditionally do with a Mac were possible to do on an iPad for the first time and still meet the iPad’s basic contract.”

The new windowing system

The company adopted a different approach with iPadOS 26, deciding to “make everything we can make available, even if it has some nuances on older hardware, because we saw so much demand.” The new windowing system on iPadOS 26 supports more open app windows at once on newer iPads, with older models restricted to up to four windows.

That doesn’t mean that macOS and iPadOS will converge into a unified operating system. “We’ve looked and said, as the iPad and Mac come together, where on the iPad the Mac idiom for doing something, like where we put the window close controls and maximize controls, what color are they – we’ve said why not, where it makes sense, use a converged design for those things so it’s familiar and comfortable,” said Federighi. “But where it doesn’t make sense, iPad’s gonna be iPad.”

Apple will release iPadOS 26 to all owners of compatible iPads in the fall. The operating system is currently available as a developer preview, with a version for public beta testing arriving in July.

iPadOS 26 makes your iPad more Mac-like

iPadOS 26 further blurs the line between a tablet and a computer with changes like Mac-like menus in apps and traffic-light window controls, the ability to place overlapping windows freely instead of snapping to an invisible grid, true background tasks and proper windowed multitasking which has replaced the Split View and Slide Over multitasking features that are no longer available.

The improved windowing system also reopens windows in the same position and size you left them. And with Stage Manager (which isn’t going away anytime soon) on iPadOS 26, you can group windows into specific stages to create separate environments for, say, work and play.

As noted in our WWDC25 roundup, another cool feature in iPadOS 26 is a Preview app, ported from the Mac. With it, iPad owners have a dedicated place to view, edit and mark up their PDFs and images, autofill PDF forms and more.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/06/13/apple-ipad-windowed-multitasking-hardware-constraints-craig-federighi/