The iPad’s “Sweet” Solution

In working with my iPad Pro over the past few months, I’ve realized something that might have seemed absurd just a few years ago: some of the best apps I’m using – the ones with truly desktop-class layouts and experiences – aren’t native iPad apps.

They’re web apps.

Before I continue and share some examples, let me clarify that this is not a story about the superiority of one way of building software over another. I’ll leave that argument to developers and technically inclined folks who know much more about programming and software stacks than I do.

Rather, the point I’m trying to make is that, due to a combination of cost-saving measures by tech companies, Apple’s App Store policies over the years, and the steady rise of a generation of young coders who are increasingly turning to the web to share their projects, some of the best, most efficient workflows I can access on iPadOS are available via web apps in a browser or a PWA.

Why Web Apps?

There are several factors at play here. From the perspective of tech companies, the mix of post-pandemic layoffs and accelerated focus on AI (with most LLMs being accessible via web APIs) has resulted in a mindset that prioritizes “build once, ship everywhere” strategies with a single web app at the center of the user’s experience.

Think about some of the most popular apps people use on a daily basis: from Notion and ChatGPT to Google Calendar, Slack, and Figma, all of them begin as web apps, and they typically offer an iPhone-optimized client that has most (but usually not all) of the features offered on the desktop web version. If they have a desktop app, it tends to be a thin (usually Electron) wrapper around the web interface. And if they have an iPad app, it’s either a similar wrapper or an enlarged iPhone app that doesn’t really take advantage of modern iPadOS layouts and interaction patterns. I’m not saying this is necessarily the “right” thing; I’m just pointing out the current state of affairs.

I’m as fervent an iPad user as one can be, but allow me to play devil’s advocate for a second here. Can you really blame those big tech companies for prioritizing the web over an iPad-specific app experience for their products? From this perspective, I would argue that only Apple is to blame; the evolution of iPadOS has stagnated over the years, resulting in a platform that – despite being more than a decade old – still doesn’t get many of the basics right. If you’re a product manager at any modern software company, you have to ask yourself: is designing a fully native, modern iPad-specific experience worth the cost of spinning up a dedicated iPadOS development team, or is the company’s money better allocated to growing the platform that all users can benefit from (without Apple’s capricious policies) – the web?

The last point is another reason worth mentioning. If only Apple had managed the App Store over the past 17 years with a different approach and attitude toward developers, perhaps their litigious reputation wouldn’t precede them. I don’t think I need to call out specific examples of dubious App Store rejections over the years to make my case. I also don’t think I need to point out the company’s shameful DMA compliance tactics to paint a picture of a corporation that has, time and time again, treated developers as a commodity rather than a precious, finite resource.

When you combine Apple’s notorious App Store policies with the fact that a generation of students has been raised on Chromebooks in school (another miss for Apple and the iPad), now that those students are young developers entering the workforce, what do you think the end result is going to be? That truly native, modern iPad apps by the most popular web services essentially don’t exist anymore – and Apple should have seen it coming.

When is the last time the iPad-only version of anything Apple makes truly surprised you?

And look, it’s not like Apple is leading by example here, either. When is the last time the iPad-only version of anything Apple makes truly surprised you or stood out as an example of a state-of-the-art iPad app? I can only name the Swift Playground app here. All the other iPad apps from Apple we’ve seen over the years – which I have been reviewing for the past decade – were either late, slowly evolving, uninspired adaptations of their iPhone layouts, or (including very recently) nowhere to be seen. If not even Apple is putting in the time, care, and resources to make exceptional iPad apps, why should a third party do it?

Perhaps I’m oversimplifying the argument, but the basic narrative behind it still stands. More so than desktop clients for macOS, it rarely makes sense for most tech companies to ship a dedicated, highly optimized iPad app these days. Even for Apple.

But here’s the silver lining: web apps are awesome today. Although Apple tried (and failed) to remove the ability to save web apps to the Home Screen on iOS and iPadOS, the feature is still there, and it rocks. Even beyond progressive web apps on the Home Screen, though, I’d argue that just working with a modern web app in Safari for iPad is a great experience in 2025, and something I’ve found myself doing more and more lately.

I’ll showcase some examples of the web apps I’m using – and why – in a bit, but regardless of their differences, they all share the same underlying truth: the web version is always better than the iPad version (when it exists).

Web Apps, the Mac, and visionOS

One could argue that the steady rise of web apps in lieu of native apps isn’t an iPad exception; it’s happening on desktop, too. And I would agree with that. On both Mac and PC, it’s very common these days to work with web apps either in a web browser or, usually, in an Electron wrapper around a web-based experience. The same considerations I shared above apply here as well: it appears that most tech companies and startups these days prioritize targeting every user at once with a shared web experience rather than creating standalone native experiences for different desktop platforms. The fact that an entire industry of new browsers has popped up on desktop speaks volumes.

But there’s something different about the Mac specifically that I have to point out. The rise of web apps being equal between macOS and iPadOS, the Mac still has one key advantage over the iPad here: its open nature means that, beyond the popular web services, there are hundreds more indie apps on the Mac compared to the iPad.

John’s Mac desktop.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Watch any YouTube video from a creator who uses a Mac or browse the likes of Setapp and Product Hunt, and you’ll come across dozens upon dozens of interesting Mac-only utilities created by individuals and smaller teams that simply cannot exist on the iPad. So while web apps may have taken off everywhere, at least macOS has stayed true to its roots and continued allowing developers to build and commercialize native experiences that range from menu bar apps to Finder enhancements, launchers, and so much more.

Of course, it also helps that LLMs have spawned a new generation of coders who are making AI-first apps and integrations for desktops. Since Macs are the best computers you can buy for AI these days – well, you can guess what happens next. It’s a new virtuous cycle that is only happening on the Mac right now.

On the iPad, aside from the occasional Apple Pencil-related project, I don’t see any platform-specific innovation happening in third-party apps anymore because of the platform’s longstanding constraints. Let’s face it: if you’re a young or new developer and want to make a native app these days, you’re either making it for the Mac or the iPhone.

Curiously enough, Apple’s latest operating system, visionOS, has inherited the worst aspects of iPadOS through its compatible app platform and sandboxing model, as well as the best features of macOS thanks to the incredible escape hatch that is Mac Virtual Display.

By being largely based on iPadOS’ security model and app layer, the Vision Pro is suffering from the same App Store desertification that has occurred on iPad: new and exclusive native apps are a scarce resource, especially for productivity. There are some glimmers of hope in the art and entertainment fields thanks to the Vision Pro’s immersive experience (I really like Explore POV, for example), but most native apps on the App Store are either iPad apps in compatibility mode or basic adaptations of their iPhone/iPad counterparts.

That’s why, in using the Vision Pro more lately, I’ve resorted to the same tricks I’ve employed on the iPad. For work-related apps, I’m using their web versions instead of their native ones. And here’s the funny thing: the experience with web apps on visionOS is even better than on iPadOS because the headset offers superior free-form multitasking with unlimited windows. I’ve been using an app simply called Web Apps for visionOS that creates a launcher for different web apps, each of which can have its own settings for user agents, window size, and so forth. Even if I connected my iPad Pro to a giant monitor, I’d still be limited to four windows at once because of the mind-boggling restrictions of Stage Manager.

Web Apps for visionOS.

No Spotify app for visionOS? Not a problem with Web Apps, which lets me use the desktop web player while enjoying the Bora Bora scenery.

Lastly, of course, there’s the fact that the Vision Pro can be used as a high-resolution, ultra-wide display for your Mac, allowing you to carry macOS’ more productive environment over to visionOS for a more “hybrid” workflow. Meanwhile, the iPad Pro still can’t dual-boot iPadOS and macOS or even virtualize macOS as an “app”. A 13-inch iPad Pro with 1 TB of storage, nano-texture display, cellular, Apple Pencil Pro, and a Magic Keyboard is €3,227 (roughly $3,517); the Vision Pro is often criticized for being a $3,500 device. What are we even talking about anymore?

As a result, iPadOS continues to be left alone in a desolate middle. Web apps may be common everywhere these days, but the Mac has a vibrant ecosystem of indie apps going for it, and the Vision Pro has better multitasking and proper integration with macOS. The iPad has neither.

iPad Apps vs. Web Apps

But back to web apps – let me share some practical examples of what I mean. Take the iPad and web versions of Todoist, for example. At first glance, they look pretty similar:

Todoist for iPad.

Todoist for the web.

As you start using the app, however, the differences become clear. When I right-click a task in the iPad version, I get a classic, iOS-like context menu:

Whereas in the web app, I get a richer, more colorful, better-organized context menu that gives me more tools to manage my tasks:

The same menu on the web.

Speaking of managing tasks, the web version of Todoist supports a plethora of keyboard shortcuts (which do not require holding down the ⌘ key), plus the excellent ⌘K command palette:

The command bar in Todoist’s web app.

Not only is the command palette not available in Todoist for iPad, but the selection of keyboard shortcuts is limited to…this:

The keyboard shortcuts in Todoist for iPad.

Recently, the Todoist web app was updated with support for push notifications, so that’s also nice. I’ve been using it for nearly three months now, and I have zero regrets. Especially considering how Shortcuts lets me automate other parts of Todoist using their API, I haven’t found myself missing Todoist for iPad at all.

Now, let’s consider something else. This is what the native iPad version of Readwise Reader looks like:

Readwise Reader for iPad.

On the iPad, Readwise Reader is a functional adaptation of its iPhone counterpart, down to the tabs for navigating between sections displayed at the bottom of the UI, which are typical iOS interface elements. Should Readwise’s developers consider a sidebar-based UI that better takes advantage of the iPad’s screen real estate, especially in landscape mode? Surely. But for a variety of reasons that I personally don’t know (but which I can guess), they didn’t. And as you can expect, the experience is wildly different – and vastly superior – when I switch to the web version of Reader, saved as a PWA on the iPad:

A very different Reader experience via its PWA.

Not only does the web version of Reader show two sidebars to navigate between sections of the app and view metadata for the currently selected story, but it also supports extensive keyboard navigation with the ability to use the arrow keys to highlight articles and perform actions on the selected item. Even better, like Todoist, the Reader web app supports pressing ⌘K to open a command palette that further enhances keyboard-driven operations both in the library view and when you’re reading a story.

The comparison between Readwise Reader for iPad and Readwise Reader for the web isn’t even fair at this point.

Shall we look at email next? For the past month or so, I’ve been using Shortwave, an AI-infused email client for Gmail that actually makes good use of AI by allowing you to find messages and details contained inside them using natural language, creating AI-powered filters to categorize your inbox, and lots more. It is, frankly, one of the best implementations of assistive AI I’ve found to date.

Well, the iPad version of Shortwave from the App Store looks like this:

A familiar story, right? There’s an iPhone-like tab bar with no native sidebars, and to make matters worse, the AI assistant pops up as a modal window that obscures everything underneath – because that’s exactly how it works on the iPhone.

The situation is completely different when you access Shortwave either as a PWA (which, like Todoist, supports web push notifications) or inside Safari:

Shortwave on the web.

In this case, Shortwave looks like a totally different product. It has a sidebar to navigate sections and mailboxes, messages open in a side panel (rather than full-screen), there’s a ⌘K command palette, and the AI assistant opens in another sidebar on the right. Compared to the web version, Shortwave’s iPad client looks like a baby app designed for a very large phone. If you’re a Shortwave customer and use an iPad, why would you willingly sign up for an inferior app experience when the web app offers the true desktop-class experience?

The examples I’ve produced so far are a mere drop in the bucket of apps and services that look like one thing on the web and become something objectively inferior when accessed via their native iPad apps. I could go on for hours: both the Claude and ChatGPT apps have richer, full-featured layouts on the web; GitHub Codespaces doesn’t exist as an iPad IDE, but it’s completely functional in Safari for iPad; all of Google’s Workspace products offer iPad versions that are barebones conversions of their iPhone apps adapted to a larger screen.

I think you get the idea.

A Lost Art

Years ago, I would have blamed third-party developers for being lazy and ignoring the iPad as a platform worth designing exquisite, high-performance native apps for. Today, after years spent trying to make the iPad work for me – a goal I was able to achieve in the end – I have a more nuanced view. I still think those companies should treat their iPad users better, but I also can’t fully blame them if they see native iPad app development as a dead end – especially when the company that makes the iPad itself also behaves in a similar way. Apple talks a good game about the iPad, but the reality is that they’ve designed just three great iPadOS-only apps over the past decade: Swift Playground, Logic Pro, and Final Cut Pro. And two of them were a decade late.

There are still exceptional examples of native iPad apps that show how to build terrific iPadOS experiences. Ivory, Working Copy, Fantastical, iA Writer, Things – these are all products that showcase a fundamental understanding of what makes an iPad app sing. But notice a common trend here: these are all indie apps created by a handful of familiar names in the Apple community that have honed their skills for decades and always keep up with the latest Apple technologies as well as the company’s latest App Store shenanigans. I know because we literally award these kinds of apps with physical trophies every year.

But here’s the (ugly, for some) truth: these apps don’t have millions of users. As much as I love them, they aren’t reshaping how students research and organize their lectures like Notion; they don’t have 400 million weekly users like ChatGPT. They are niche apps, built with love and care – and with increasingly diminishing returns.

Or think about it this way: with a few exceptions for Apple Pencil-based artistic tools like the incredible Procreate and note-taking apps like GoodNotes, when is the last time you saw a completely original iPad app for productivity that made you want to buy an iPad? Or that made you want to use the iPad version of an app instead of its macOS or web version?

Should the iPad app ecosystem really need to be reduced to the “Apple Pencil ecosystem” for it to stand out between the iPhone and the Mac?

The reality is that making groundbreaking iPad apps is a lost art and has been for a long time.

The days of the innovative Twitter for iPad, Push Pop Press, and Editorial are long gone, and ultimately, the buck stops with Apple. I strongly believe that there could have been an alternate timeline for the iPad’s app ecosystem, one where the platform didn’t routinely take a backseat to make room for iOS but instead flourished as a credible replacement for macOS built upon more openness, less restrictive App Store policies, fully sanctioned Gatekeeper-based sideloading (which works fine for macOS!), and more flexible business models for small and big companies alike. Instead, what we have today is a languishing platform where very few stars shine in an otherwise dull firmament of sloppy iPhone ports, the occasional AAA game (that usually runs terribly), and a perennial aftertaste of what could have been.

And look, what I’m saying is that this sucks. Modern web apps are awesome, but they simply can’t do all the things I’d like to do with native ones. Web apps on the iPad can’t support share extensions; they can’t offer widgets or Shortcuts actions; PWAs often glitch out, and I have to force quit them to get their UIs “unstuck”; they don’t integrate with Siri and, by the same token, won’t support Apple Intelligence and App Intents (if that feature exists). And yet, I’ve found myself using them because I have to get my work done. When you spend €3,000+ on a computer, I think it’s reasonable to expect that you shouldn’t be penalized for using it. But here we are.

Making groundbreaking iPad apps is a lost art.

In the end, all of this begs a question: as much as I love my iPad, if I’m mostly relying on web apps and cross-platform services when using it, and if Apple is going to offer a phone that unfolds into a small tablet by 2026…why am I not using a Mac at this point? Is the iPad still a good investment for productivity, or has it turned into a liability for the vast majority of non-artistic, professional users?

That’s a story for the rest of 2025. And I already have a bad feeling about iPadOS 19.