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.
Between a Mac and a Hard Place
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.
Jobs’ Ghost Still Haunts the iPad
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.