Apple Finally Destroyed Steve Jobs’ Vision of the iPad. Good

For years, Apple treated the idea of windows on the iPad as sacrilege. But with iPadOS 26 installed, today’s iPads are doing macOS cosplay, becoming touchscreen Macs in all but name. And here’s the thing: It’s actually pretty good. So how did we get here? When did this fundamental shift occur that killed off Steve Jobs’ vision of the iPad?

When Jobs first revealed the iPad in 2010, it was pitched as a “third category” of device—something between a phone and a laptop. For that category to justify its existence, Jobs said it had to be better at certain key tasks. He duly listed browsing the web, dealing with email, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, reading ebooks, and enjoying photos. Coincidentally, those were the exact things the iPad was really good at.

Playing up the distinct nature of a tablet experience, the original demo found Jobs using his iPad not at a desk but while relaxing in a chair. “Using this thing is remarkable,” he said of the iPad. “It’s so much more intimate than a laptop, and so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous large display. Holding the internet in your hands is an incredible experience.” Assuming, of course, you didn’t want to do much more than read.

This, then, was a device that was focused. Elegant. Simple. Better than a phone or a laptop for lean-back media consumption. But even during that demo, there were hints of the tension that was to come.

Brushes creator Steve Sprang appeared on stage and suggested the iPad could move beyond the consumption-first narrative: “Artists have already done amazing things with the iPhone, and I think with this larger screen they’re going to have a true portable paint studio.” And Apple itself introduced touch-optimized—if noticeably simplified—versions of its iWork office suite.

The problems came when you started using these apps. Sprang’s was fun. It looked gorgeous. The bigger canvas offered room to play. But artists were pining for input options beyond their own digits. That didn’t align with Jobs’ scornful comment about other tablet makers: “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”

And iWork? You could quickly sketch out the bones of a document or presentation while sitting on the sofa, then send it to your Mac to finish. But trying to be meaningfully productive solely on the iPad was a chore. In attempting to simplify computing and pare things back, Apple had cut things to the bone. Interaction was opinionated to a fault. And the lack of a system-wide file manager—a Finder for iPad—meant files were siloed in apps, duplicated as you moved between them, and impossible to track.

Perhaps Apple underestimated how quickly users would demand more from the iPad than basic tasks and media consumption, or how frustrating it would be to not have access to computing norms like traditional multitasking or a file system exposed to the user. Apple soon found out. The iPad sold incredibly well—at first. But its position between two existing extremes began to unravel. Not to the point it became a flop. But the initial meteoric sales trajectory plateaued and went into decline. As Apple scrambled, experimenting to boost flagging sales, the focused iPad vision started to fade.

The problem was that the iPad sat between two existing critical device categories but couldn’t replace either of them. Smartphones were becoming indispensable. The iPad? A nice-to-have. And Apple’s laudable build quality meant iPads lasted for years. Most people rarely felt compelled to upgrade, because their first iPad still did everything they needed it to, which often wasn’t much.

But a noisy cohort—people who wanted to work on an iPad and who might favor a tablet over a laptop—grew frustrated. The iPad gained a reputation. It was sometimes great for doing one thing at a time. Useful when you wanted to focus. But when you needed more, it all fell apart.

Apple responded with the iPad Pro, which brought more horsepower than anyone knew what to do with. The original iPad had debuted at $499, which Jobs argued would get it into many hands. The Pro was priced like a Mac but was still paired with an operating system designed for prodding web pages, flicking through photos, and finger-painting. Alongside it came the Apple Pencil—an Apple stylus. Had Apple therefore “blown it”? Well, no, because the iPad didn’t require a stylus, and it provided an answer for users who needed precision input.

But it was a clear departure from the original vision, which Apple continued to chip away at over the years—a seeming admission that maybe users did want more than a supersized iPhone. Yet the company also held back, reluctant to risk cannibalizing Mac sales. So instead of allowing the iPad to become the device it wanted to be, Apple preferred to smooth the transition between devices, leaving casual and power users alike in a strange limbo.

Each year, the iPad strayed further from Jobs’ vision and yet somehow managed to still leave people unsatisfied. Apple added complexity for typical users and kept reinventing the wheel in ways that always left power users wanting more. Focus was replaced by confusion.

Apple insisted the iPad wasn’t a laptop replacement, then shipped a magnetic keyboard that made it look like one. Mouse support was grudgingly added. M1 chips arrived in a blaze of glory to no crushing need, on devices that still couldn’t even optimize second-screen output for external displays.

Then Stage Manager showed up in 2022, a windowing model across iPad and Mac that nobody asked for and almost nobody liked. Clunky. Fiddly. An overdesigned answer to a problem Apple refused to fully grapple with: Why not just make the iPad more like a Mac?

Now, Apple has done the thing it swore it never would. iPadOS 26 turns the iPad into a full-blown multitasking, window-wrangling, traffic-light-button-clicking, external-display-supporting, compromise-abandoning Apple computer. Windows can overlap. The cursor is pointy. There’s even a menu bar. It’s fluid, capable, and familiar. And while it’s not quite a Mac—arguably, it in some ways should be more like one—it’s definitely not a Jobs-era iPad either. It finally abandons the original pitch.

And yet. Buried in iPadOS 26 is a throwback mode: a Full-Screen Apps option that removes modern multitasking to a degree the iPad hasn’t seen in years. No windows. Not even Split View. It’s one app at a time, with all the purity of the original iPad.

Which means the iPad no longer sits between two extremes—instead, you switch between them. The iPad is now two devices in one, the iPad that Steve Jobs imagined and the machine that pros have begged for. A touchscreen consumption slate and a windowed productivity machine. An Apple spork.

So, yes, an iPad running iPadOS 26 may still contain the soul of the original iPad, lurking deep in Settings, waiting to be turned on. But the Jobs dream of a focused, elegant third device category between smartphone and laptop is effectively dead.

Back in 2010, the man himself said: “Do we have what it takes to establish a third category of products, an awesome product in between a laptop and smartphone? The bar is pretty high. It’s gotta be better at doing some key things. We think we’ve done it.” Indeed you did. But it didn’t last. And it’s for the best because, if it had, the iPad itself might not have lasted either.