M5 iPad Pro Review: An AI and Gaming Upgrade for AI and Games That Aren’t There Yet

By Federico Viticci

The M5 iPad Pro.

How do you review an iPad Pro that’s visually identical to its predecessor and marginally improves upon its performance with a spec bump and some new wireless radios?

Let me try:

I’ve been testing the new M5 iPad Pro since last Thursday. If you’re a happy owner of an M4 iPad Pro that you purchased last year, stay like that; there is virtually no reason for you to sell your old model and get an M5-upgraded edition. That’s especially true if you purchased a high-end configuration of the M4 iPad Pro last year with 16 GB of RAM, since upgrading to another high-end M5 iPad Pro model will get you…16 GB of RAM again.

The story is slightly different for users coming from older iPad Pro models and those on lower-end configurations, but barely. Starting this year, the two base-storage models of the iPad Pro are jumping from 8 GB of RAM to 12 GB, which helps make iPadOS 26 multitasking smoother, but it’s not a dramatic improvement, either.

Apple pitches the M5 chip as a “leap” for local AI tasks and gaming, and to an extent, that is true. However, it is mostly true on the Mac, where – for a variety of reasons I’ll cover below – there are more ways to take advantage of what the M5 can offer.

In many ways, the M5 iPad Pro is reminiscent of the M2 iPad Pro, which I reviewed in October 2022: it’s a minor revision to an excellent iPad Pro redesign that launched the previous year, which set a new bar for what we should expect from a modern tablet and hybrid computer – the kind that only Apple makes these days.

For all these reasons, the M5 iPad Pro is not a very exciting iPad Pro to review, and I would only recommend this upgrade to heavy iPad Pro users who don’t already have the (still remarkable) M4 iPad Pro. But there are a couple of narratives worth exploring about the M5 chip on the iPad Pro, which is what I’m going to focus on for this review.

Anthropic Releases Haiku 4.5: Sonnet 4 Performance, Twice as Fast

By Federico Viticci

Earlier today, Anthropic released Haiku 4.5, a new version of their “small and fast” model that matches Sonnet 4 performance from five months ago at a fraction of the cost and twice the speed. From their announcement:

What was recently at the frontier is now cheaper and faster. Five months ago, Claude Sonnet 4 was a state-of-the-art model. Today, Claude Haiku 4.5 gives you similar levels of coding performance but at one-third the cost and more than twice the speed.

And:

Claude Sonnet 4.5, released two weeks ago, remains our frontier model and the best coding model in the world. Claude Haiku 4.5 gives users a new option for when they want near-frontier performance with much greater cost-efficiency. It also opens up new ways of using our models together. For example, Sonnet 4.5 can break down a complex problem into multi-step plans, then orchestrate a team of multiple Haiku 4.5s to complete subtasks in parallel.

I’m not a programmer, so I’m not particularly interested in benchmarks for coding tasks and Claude Code integrations. However, as I explained in this Plus segment of AppStories for members, I’m very keen to play around with fast models that considerably reduce inference times to allow for quicker back and forth in conversations. As I detailed on AppStories, I’ve had a solid experience with Cerebras and Bolt for Mac to generate responses at over 1,000 tokens per second.

I have a personal test that I like to try with all modern LLMs that support MCP: how quickly they can append the word “Test” to my daily note in Notion. Based on a few experiments I ran earlier today, Haiku 4.5 seems to be the new state of the art for both following instructions and speed in this simple test.

I ran my tests with LLMs that support MCP-based connectors: Claude and Mistral. Both were given system-level instructions on how to access my daily notes: Claude had the details in its profile personalization screen; in Mistral, I created a dedicated agent with Notion instructions. So, all things being equal, here’s how long it took three different, non-thinking models to run my command:

Mistral: 37 seconds
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47 seconds
Claude Haiku 4.5: 18 seconds

That is a drastic latency reduction compared to Sonnet 4.5, and it’s especially impressive when we consider how Mistral is using Flash Answers, which is fast inference powered by Cerebras. As I shared on AppStories, it seems to confirm that it’s possible to have speed and reliability for agentic tool-calling without having to use a large model.

I ran other tests with Haiku 4.5 and the Todoist MCP and, similarly, I was able to mark tasks as completed and reschedule them in seconds, with none of the latency I previously observed in Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.1. As it stands now, if you’re interested in using LLMs with apps and connectors without having to wait around too long for responses and actions, Haiku 4.5 is the model to try.

LLMs As Conduits for Data Portability Between Apps

By Federico Viticci

One of the unsung benefits of modern LLMs – especially those with MCP support or proprietary app integrations – is their inherent ability to facilitate data transfer between apps and services that use different data formats.

This is something I’ve been pondering for the past few months, and the latest episode of Cortex – where Myke wished it was possible to move between task managers like you can with email clients – was the push I needed to write something up. I’ve personally taken on multiple versions of this concept with different LLMs, and the end result was always the same: I didn’t have to write a single line of code to create import/export functionalities that two services I wanted to use didn’t support out of the box.

Reports of Slide Over’s Death Were Greatly Exaggerated →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Well, that didn’t take long.

In yesterday’s second developer beta of iPadOS 26.1, Apple restored the Slide Over functionality that was removed with the debut of the new windowing system in iPadOS 26.0 last month. Well…they sort of restored Slide Over, at least.

In my review of iPadOS 26, I wrote:

So in iPadOS 26, Apple decided to scrap Split View and Slide Over altogether, leaving users the choice between full-screen apps, a revamped Stage Manager, and the brand new windowed mode. At some level, I get it. Apple probably thinks that the functionality of Split View can be replicated with new windowing controls (as we’ll see, there are actual tiling options to split the screen into halves) and that most people who were using these two modes would be better served by the new multitasking system the company designed for iPadOS 26.

At the same time, though, I can’t help but feel that the removal of Slide Over is a misstep on Apple’s part. There’s really no great way to replicate the versatility of Slide Over with the iPad’s new windowing. Making a bunch of windows extra small and stacked on the side of the screen would require a lot of manual resizing and repositioning; at that point, you’re just using a worse version of classic windowing. I don’t know what Apple’s solution could have been here – particularly because, like I said above, the iPad did end up with too many multitasking systems to pick from. But the Mac also has several multitasking features, and people love the Mac, so maybe that’s fine, too?

Slide Over will be missed, but perhaps there’ll be a way for Apple to make it come back.

The unceremonious removal of Slide Over from iPadOS 26 was the most common comment I received from MacStories readers over the past month. I also saw a lot of posts on different subreddits from people who claimed they weren’t updating to iPadOS 26 so they wouldn’t lose Slide Over functionality. Perhaps Apple underestimated how much people loved and used Slide Over, or maybe – like I argued – they thought that multitasking and window resizing could replace it. In any case, Slide Over is back, but it’s slightly different from what it used to be.

The bad news first: the new Slide Over doesn’t support multiple apps in the Slide Over stack with their own dedicated app switcher. (This option was introduced in iPadOS 13.) So far, the new Slide Over is single-window only, and it works alongside iPadOS windowing to put one specific window in Slide Over mode. Any window can be moved into Slide Over, but only one Slide Over entity can exist at a time. From this perspective, Slide Over is different from full-screen: that mode also works alongside windowing, but multiple windows can be in their full-screen “spaces” at the same time.

On one hand, I hope that Apple can find a way to restore Slide Over’s former support for multiple apps. On the other, I feel like the “good news” part is the reason that will prevent the company from doing so. What I like about the new Slide Over implementation is that the window can be resized: you’re no longer constrained to using Slide Over in a “tall iPhone” layout, which is great. I like having the option to stretch out Music (which I’ve always used in Slide Over on iPad), and I also appreciate the glassy border that is displayed around the Slide Over window to easily differentiate it from regular windows. I feel, however, that since you can now resize the Slide Over window, also enabling support for multiple apps in Slide Over may get too confusing or complex to manage. Personally, now that I’ve tested it, I’d take a resizable single Slide Over window over multiple non-resizable apps in Slide Over.

Between improvements to local capture and even more keyboard shortcuts, it’s great (and reassuring) to see Apple iterate on iPadOS so quickly after last month’s major update. Remember when we used to wait two years for minor changes?

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Apps in ChatGPT →

Linked By Federico Viticci

OpenAI announced a lot of developer-related features at yesterday’s DevDay event, and as you can imagine, the most interesting one for me is the introduction of apps in ChatGPT. From the OpenAI blog:

Today we’re introducing a new generation of apps you can chat with, right inside ChatGPT. Developers can start building them today with the new Apps SDK, available in preview.

Apps in ChatGPT fit naturally into conversation. You can discover them when ChatGPT suggests one at the right time, or by calling them by name. Apps respond to natural language and include interactive interfaces you can use right in the chat.

And:

Developers can start building and testing apps today with the new Apps SDK preview, which we’re releasing as an open standard built on the Model Context Protocol⁠ (MCP). To start building, visit our documentation for guidelines and example apps, and then test your apps using Developer Mode in ChatGPT.

Also:

Later this year, we’ll launch apps to ChatGPT Business, Enterprise and Edu. We’ll also open submissions so developers can publish their apps in ChatGPT, and launch a dedicated directory where users can browse and search for them. Apps that meet the standards provided in our developer guidelines will be eligible to be listed, and those that meet higher design and functionality standards may be featured more prominently—both in the directory and in conversations.

Looks like we got the timing right with this week’s episode of AppStories about demystifying MCP and what it means to connect apps to LLMs. In the episode, I expressed my optimism for the potential of MCP and the idea of augmenting your favorite apps with the capabilities of LLMs. However, I also lamented how fragmented the MCP ecosystem is and how confusing it can be for users to wrap their heads around MCP “servers” and other obscure, developer-adjacent terminology.

In classic OpenAI fashion, their announcement of apps in ChatGPT aims to (almost) completely abstract the complexity of MCP from users. In one announcement, OpenAI addressed my two top complaints about MCP that I shared on AppStories: they revealed their own upcoming ecosystem of apps, and they’re going to make it simple to use.

Does that ring a bell? It’s impossible to tell right now if OpenAI’s bet to become a platform will be successful, but early signs are encouraging, and the company has the leverage of 800 million active users to convince third-party developers to jump on board. Just this morning, I asked ChatGPT to put together a custom Spotify playlist with bands that had a similar vibe to Moving Mountains in their Pneuma era, and after thinking for a few minutes, it worked. I did it from the ChatGPT web app and didn’t have to involve the App Store at all.

If I were Apple, I’d start growing increasingly concerned at the prospect of another company controlling the interactions between users and their favorite apps. As I argued on AppStories, my hope is that the rumored MCP framework allegedly being worked on by Apple is exactly that – a bridge (powered by App Intents) between App Store apps and LLMs that can serve as a stopgap until Apple gets their LLM act together. But that’s a story for another time.

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iOS and iPadOS 26: The MacStories Review

By Federico Viticci

Old and new through the liquid glass.

My first job, I was in-house at a fur company with this old pro copywriter, Greek, named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new”. Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent.

– Don Draper (Mad Men Season 1, Episode 13 – “The Wheel”)

I was reminded of this Don Draper quote from one of my all-time favorite TV scenes – the Kodak Carousel pitch – when reflecting upon my contrasting feelings about iOS and iPadOS 26 a few weeks ago. Some of you may be wondering what I’m doing here, starting my annual review of an operating system with a Mad Men reference. But here we are today, with an eye-catching iOS update that, given the circumstances, is betting it all on the glittering allure of a new visual design, and a tablet operating system that comes full circle with old, almost nostalgic functionalities repurposed for the modern age.

I’ve spent the past three months using and working with iOS and iPadOS 26, and there’s this idea I keep coming back to: the old and new coexist in Apple’s software strategy this year, and they paint a hyperrealistic picture of a company that’s stuck in a transition phase of its own making.

Testing Claude’s Native Integration with Reminders and Calendar on iOS and iPadOS

By Federico Viticci

Reminders created by Claude for iOS after a series of web searches.

A few months ago, when Perplexity unveiled their voice assistant integrated with native iOS frameworks, I wrote that I was surprised no other major AI lab had shipped a similar feature in its iOS apps:

The most important point about this feature is the fact that, in hindsight, this is so obvious and I’m surprised that OpenAI still hasn’t shipped the same feature for their incredibly popular ChatGPT voice mode. Perplexity’s iOS voice assistant isn’t using any “secret” tricks or hidden APIs: they’re simply integrating with existing frameworks and APIs that any third-party iOS developer can already work with. They’re leveraging EventKit for reminder/calendar event retrieval and creation; they’re using MapKit to load inline snippets of Apple Maps locations; they’re using Mail’s native compose sheet and Safari View Controller to let users send pre-filled emails or browse webpages manually; they’re integrating with MusicKit to play songs from Apple Music, provided that you have the Music app installed and an active subscription. Theoretically, there is nothing stopping Perplexity from rolling additional frameworks such as ShazamKit, Image Playground, WeatherKit, the clipboard, or even photo library access into their voice assistant. Perplexity hasn’t found a “loophole” to replicate Siri functionalities; they were just the first major AI company to do so.

It’s been a few months since Perplexity rolled out their iOS assistant, and, so far, the company has chosen to keep the iOS integrations exclusive to voice mode; you can’t have text conversations with Perplexity on iPhone and iPad and ask it to look at your reminders or calendar events.

Anthropic, however, has done it and has become – to the best of my knowledge – the second major AI lab to plug directly into Apple’s native iOS and iPadOS frameworks, with an important twist: in the latest version of Claude, you can have text conversations and tell the model to look into your Reminders database or Calendar app without having to use voice mode.

Oasis Just Glitched the Algorithm →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Beautiful, poignant story by Steven Zeitchik, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, on the magic of going to an Oasis concert in 2025.

It would have been weird back in Oasis’ heyday to talk about a big stadium-rock show being uniquely “human” — what the hell else could it be? But after decades of music chosen by algorithm, of the spirit of listen-together radio fracturing into a million personalized streams, of social media and the politics that fuel it ordering acts into groups of the allowed and prohibited, of autotuning and overdubbing washing out raw instruments, of our current cultural era’s spell of phone-zombification, of the communal spaces of record stores disbanded as a mainstream notion of gathering, well, it’s not such a given anymore. Thousands of people convening under the sky to hear a few talented fellow humans break their backs with a bunch of instruments, that oldest of entertainment constructs, now also feels like a radical one.

And:

The Gallaghers seemed to be coming just in time, to remind us of what it was like before — to issue a gentle caveat, by the power of positive suggestion, that we should think twice before plunging further into the abyss. To warn that human-made art is fragile and too easily undone — in fact in their case for 16 years it was undone — by its embodiments acting too much like petty, well, humans. And the true feat, the band was saying triumphantly Sunday, is that there is a way to hold it together.

I make no secret of the fact that Oasis are my favorite band of all time which, very simply, defined my teenage years. They’re responsible for some of my most cherished memories with my friends, enjoying music together.

I was lucky enough to be able to see Oasis in London this summer. To be honest with you, we didn’t have great seats. But what I’ll remember from that night won’t necessarily be the view (eh) or the audio quality at Wembley (surprisingly great). I’ll remember the sheer joy of shouting Live Forever with Silvia next to me. I’ll remember doing the Poznan with Jeremy and two guys next to us who just went for it because Liam asked to hug the stranger next to you. I’ll remember the thrill of witnessing Oasis walk back on stage after 16 years with 80,000 other people feeling the same thing as me, right there and then.

This story by Zeitchik hit me not only because it’s Oasis, but because I’ve always believed in the power of music recommendations that come from other humans – not algorithms – who would like you to also enjoy something. And to do so together.

If only for two hours one summer night in a stadium, there’s beauty to losing your voice to music not delivered by an algorithm.

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Claude’s Chat History and App Integrations as a Form of Lock-In →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Earlier today, Anthropic announced that, similar to ChatGPT, Claude will be able to search and reference your previous chats with it. From their support document:

You can now prompt Claude to search through your previous conversations to find and reference relevant information in new chats. This feature helps you continue discussions seamlessly and retrieve context from past interactions without re-explaining everything.

If you’re wondering what Claude can actually search:

You can prompt Claude to search conversations within these boundaries:

All chats outside of projects.

Individual project conversations (searches are limited to within each specific project).

Conversation history is a powerful feature of modern LLMs, and although Anthropic hasn’t announced personalized context based on memory yet (a feature that not everybody likes), it seems like that’s the next shoe to drop. Chat search, memory with personalized context, larger context windows, and performance are the four key aspects I preferred in ChatGPT; Anthropic just addressed one of them, and a second may be launching soon.

As I’ve shared on Mastodon, despite the power and speed of GPT-5, I find myself gravitating more and more toward Claude (and specifically Opus 4.1) because of MCP and connectors. Claude works with the apps I already use and allows me to easily turn conversations into actions performed in Notion, Todoist, Spotify, or other apps that have an API that can talk to Claude. This is changing my workflow in two notable ways: I’m only using ChatGPT for “regular” web search queries (mostly via the Safari extension) and less for work because it doesn’t match Claude’s extensive MCP support with tools; and I’m prioritizing web apps that have well-supported web APIs that work with LLMs over local apps that don’t (Spotify vs. Apple Music, Todoist vs. Reminders, Notion vs. Notes, etc.). Chat search (and, again, I hope personalized context based on memory soon) further adds to this change in the apps I use.

Let me offer an example. I like combining Claude’s web search abilities with Zapier tools that integrate with Spotify to make Claude create playlists for me based on album reviews or music roundups. A few weeks ago, I started the process of converting this Chorus article into a playlist, but I never finished the task since I was running into Zapier rate limits. This evening, I asked Claude if we ever worked on any playlists, it found the old chats and pointed out that one of them still needed to be completed. From there, it got to work again, picked up where it left off in Chorus’ article, and finished filling the playlist with the most popular songs that best represent the albums picked by Jason Tate and team. So not only could Claude find the chat, but it got back to work with tools based on the state of the old conversation.

Resuming a chat that was about creating a Spotify playlist (right). Sadly, Apple Music doesn’t integrate with LLMs like this.

Even more impressively, after Claude was done finishing the playlist from an old chat, I asked it to take all the playlists created so far and append their links to my daily note in Notion; that also worked. From my phone, in a conversation that started as a search test for old chats and later grew into an agentic workflow that called tools for web search, Spotify, and Notion.

I find these use cases very interesting, and they’re the reason I struggle to incorporate ChatGPT into my everyday workflow beyond web searches. They’re also why I hesitate to use Apple apps right now, and I’m not sure Liquid Glass will be enough to win me back over.

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