It’s been nine years since Apple released an ad for the 2016 iPad Pro, which asked, “What is a computer?” That ad has been mocked ever since, as the iPad has always been seen as too compromised compared to a MacBook, Chromebook, or Windows laptop to serve as a full computer replacement for most people. However, iPadOS 26 brings some significant changes to the iPad, and I think it might be enough for the iPad to replace my aged Google Pixelbook.
So, I installed the iPadOS 26 developer build on my 2020 iPad Pro 11-inch. I know — it’s the last iPad Pro to use an A-series Apple chip rather than an M-series, so it won’t be lightning fast, especially on a developer build. However, I won’t hold any lag against it here, as this iPad has always experienced issues in the first few betas but has always been perfectly smooth by the time the stable update is released. No, today we’ll be evaluating the changes to iPadOS 26 to see if they’re conducive to getting work done.