Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence

iPadOS 26. Source: Apple.

It’s a cool, sunny morning at Apple Park as I’m walking my way along the iconic glass ring to meet with Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, for a conversation about the iPad.

It’s the Wednesday after WWDC, and although there are still some developers and members of the press around Apple’s campus, it seems like employees have returned to their regular routines. Peek through the glass, and you’ll see engineers working at their stations, half-erased whiteboards, and an infinite supply of Studio Displays on wooden desks with rounded corners. Some guests are still taking pictures by the WWDC sign. There are fewer security dogs, but they’re obviously all good.

Despite the list of elaborate questions on my mind about iPadOS 26 and its new multitasking, the long history of iPad criticisms (including mine) over the years, and what makes an iPad different from a Mac, I can’t stop thinking about the simplest, most obvious question I could ask – one that harkens back to an old commercial about the company’s modular tablet:

In 2025, what even is an iPad according to Federighi?

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MindNode

MindNode: From brainstorm to breakthrough: MindNode helps you organize your thoughts with the elegance of a native iPad, iPhone, Mac and Apple Vision Pro app.

If you’re new to MacStories, you should probably know that I’ve been through a lot with the iPad in my quest to use it as my primary computer, which began all the way back in 2012. What started as a necessity due to some health issues, however, later turned into a deliberate choice: even after I was past those problems, I decided to keep using the iPad because I’d fallen in love with its flexibility and modular nature. Over the past decade, I’ve written extensively about the device, its operating system, and its ecosystem of apps. I started reviewing iPadOS alongside iOS in my annual reviews with version 13; I shared my frustrations with Stage Manager in iPadOS 16; and last year, I felt it was time to document all the limitations that power users like myself were facing when trying to get work done on iPadOS.

And if you’re new to MacStories, there’s something else you should know about me. At a fundamental level, I strongly believe in constructive criticism. Over the years, I’ve both shared love for the iPad and criticized it for the same reason: it’s my favorite computer Apple’s ever made. Which is why, in spite of everything, I persisted and found a way to use my iPad Pro for everything…with several workarounds.

iPadOS’ New Windowing System

Windowed apps in iPadOS 26. Source: Apple.

I came into this WWDC thinking – or, at the very least, hoping – that Apple would show a newfound commitment to the iPad and iPadOS, addressing the longstanding concerns of those who have been pushing iPadOS to its limits while keeping true to the essence of the device. It’s a careful balancing act, but having tried iPadOS 26 on my 13” iPad Pro for the past week, it seems clear to me that Apple delivered this year.

At WWDC, at the end of a keynote focused on a multi-platform design language called Liquid Glass, some Apple Intelligence updates, and a variety of app-related improvements, Federighi took the (virtual) stage to unveil iPadOS 26, which, later this year, will bring what I believe is the biggest improvement to iPad multitasking since the original Split View and Slide Over from a decade ago. Those features are, in fact, gone, replaced by a brand new windowing system that draws from some familiar elements of macOS multitasking, such as fluid window resizing and traffic light controls, while also putting a unique iPad spin on things. There is now a menu bar at the top of the screen that collects all the commands and keyboard shortcuts supported by any app – another macOS-inspired feature that, however, also works with touch. The system pointer is now, well, pointier, allowing for more precise targeting of UI elements. Apple even brought advanced tiling options – again, previously exclusive to macOS – to split the screen into halves and quarters with support for – you guessed it – either indirect manipulation or touch controls.

My 13” iPad Pro running the developer beta of iPadOS 26.

It’s a lot to cover, and iPadOS 26 is shaping up to be the kind of massive OS update that will keep me busy this summer as I work on my annual review to publish later this year. And in preparing for this interview, I realize that the number of questions I have for Federighi reflects the sheer amount of new functionalities in iPadOS 26. But then again, I want to start simple. And I choose to follow my assumption that there’s no easier way to start a geeky iPad conversation with the head of software at Apple than asking him how he feels.

“Oh, I feel great”, Federighi begins. “There are many announcements, but iPad has been one that, since we embarked on this project, we’ve been waiting for this day.”

You may think that there isn’t much in that answer – and that would be incorrect. When Federighi mentions embarking on the iPadOS 26 project, he’s referring to a multi-year, company-wide effort to completely rebuild the iPad’s windowing system around a new engine.

Apple didn’t go into detail about this at WWDC, but with the latest version of iPadOS, the company has scrapped the windowing engine that powered iPadOS 16’s Stage Manager (and subsequent iterations) and replaced it with a new one built around a window prioritization system. This new engine taps into several low-level frameworks of iPadOS and coordinates across the CPU, NAND, GPU, and battery to optimize window rendering and understand which windows should be prioritized based on user activity. The result is a more powerful and efficient system that, in my experience with the iPadOS 26 developer beta, allows for up to 12 windows to be active on-screen on my M4 iPad Pro. I’ve been able to play around with iPadOS 26 on both the 11” and 13” iPad Pro; while I still think that the smaller Pro model strikes a better balance between laptop-like features and tablet portability, multitasking power users will probably want to gravitate toward the larger model for more comfortable windowing.

You can’t see them all, but there are 12 active windows in this iPadOS 26 workspace.

And here’s confirmation from Exposé.

The new windowing system is also the reason Apple has been able to bring more advanced capabilities to older iPad models, including the iPad mini, supposedly without sacrificing battery life. I haven’t been able to install iPadOS 26 on older or non-Pro iPads yet, but it’s something I plan on investigating this summer to see if Apple’s promises hold true.

The iPad’s Multitasking History

Which brings me to my tumultuous relationship with Stage Manager, released by Apple in iPadOS 16 in a state I didn’t consider good enough. The company later improved upon some of the glaring issues of the original Stage Manager: while the feature still took care of placing and moving windows around for users, iPadOS 17 gave users a little more control over window placement and improved stability. Still, it seemed like there was a profound disconnect between what advanced iPad users wanted from the platform and what Apple was offering them with Stage Manager and its limitations in terms of number of windows and user control.

In iPadOS 26, Stage Manager is, essentially, a cosmetic feature. It’s still available for users who want to group their windows by workspace, but those workspaces are no longer limited to four windows, and windows fluidly resize in real time thanks to Apple’s new windowing engine. Stage Manager is now an optional toggle in Control Center, and it’s the third option in the iPad’s multitasking settings, described as a “focused multitasking experience”.

The new iPadOS 26 multitasking settings.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Stage Manager now works on iPadOS like it does on macOS. It’s an optional, visual mode, and it’ll no longer dictate how many windows you can put in a workspace, how they resize, or where you place them. It just organizes them by workspace. And I have to say: I actually like the combination of improved windowing and Stage Manager’s project-based app organization now.

Stage Manager with iPadOS 26’s unlimited windowing is actually a very nice combo now.

I’d been thinking about the entire evolution of the iPad’s app experience during the week of WWDC – and not just because I was going to interview Federighi, but because I’ve been around for the whole thing. I’ve reviewed all the major iterations of iPad multitasking to date, and I’ve witnessed firsthand how the company has swung in different directions while trying to preserve the iPad’s original ethos along the way. I want to ask Federighi about his thoughts on arriving at iPadOS 26’s take on multitasking; much to my surprise, he responds with an in-depth analysis of 15 years of iPad usage and multitasking progress.

“Figuring out what the right multitasking experience is for this device, and in all the ways that make it unique, has been something that I think deserved careful exploration”, Federighi begins, after telling me that he’s “on an iPad every day, all the time”.

The iPad began as a full-screen, one-app-at-a-time affair in 2010 with iPhone OS 3.2. This design decision gave iPad critics at the time plenty of ammunition to call the tablet just a big iPhone, a comment that would be recycled for several years. Federighi notes that one of the aspects that made the original iPad experience so special – and something that is still true today – is that you don’t need to worry about closing or managing apps if you don’t want to. Arguably, a good portion of iPad users – whether that’s kids, parents, grandparents, or people who just want a tablet for books and videos – never worry about anything else. As Federighi describes it, that part of the experience “was so simple and so automatic that it allowed us to be in our flow, and the device – the computing part of it – could kind of disappear”.

An iPad screenshot from a long, long time ago.

But here’s another way to look at the iPad’s multitasking evolution: at this point in 2025, the iPad has had some version of multitasking for over two thirds of its life.

At WWDC 2015 – exactly a decade ago – Apple introduced iOS 9, which brought Split View and Slide Over to the iPad, allowing users to display up to three apps on-screen at once. “With the first version with Slide Over and Split View, we certainly wanted to minimize the degree to which you felt like you were managing apps”, Federighi notes, and that was certainly the case. Unlike subsequent iterations, the original Split View and Slide Over didn’t support drag and drop (more on this later); there was a dedicated app picker for Split View, and Slide Over did not support multiple apps. “What made the iPhone and the iPad so magical was the illusion of you directly interacting with the content under glass. And that meant perfect interactivity”, Federighi adds, noting that maintaining the iPad’s simplicity and interactive nature is always going to be “job one” for Apple.

The original Split View app picker from iOS 9 in 2015.

The conversation then moves on to Stage Manager, which Apple released with iPadOS 16 in 2022. As you know, I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of the feature when it launched, but hearing some of Stage Manager’s backstory is fascinating. “First of all, I’m a heavy Stage Manager user on the Mac. Stage Manager is something that we started thinking about and working on in 2009”, Federighi explains1, adding that it was originally conceived of as a way to add more focus and flow to Mac multitasking. Fast forward to more than a decade later, and “after many years where the ethos of the iPad is well established”, Federighi says, “we felt a little more flexibility to start adding in more options for those who need them while being secure in the idea that the app ecosystem in our developer base understands what an iPad app is and how different that is from what inertially would have been taking the classic Mac world and just dumping it on an iPad”.

The developer argument is an interesting one; it’s undeniable that, at least in the beginning, the iPad App Store stood out because of the incredible work third-party developers – and especially indie developers – did in terms of crafting novel, bespoke interfaces and interactions for iPad. Indeed, when I ask Federighi why Apple is bringing Mac-inspired multitasking features such as unlimited windowing and a menu bar to iPad now, rather than several years ago, he goes back to two core ideas: the developer ecosystem and performance.

“If iPad had had a menu bar from the beginning, like Mac did, app developers would naturally say, “Well, I think a lot of my functionality probably is only accessible via menu bar, right?””, Federighi says. “Those affordances provide the set of constraints under which developers operate and dictate, to some degree, the nature of what gets created. And with iPad, by creating an environment that had simplicity at its core, it meant the entire app ecosystem had all kinds of incredible design work done by so many developers to preserve the simplicity of that experience”, he continues.

The menu bar in the developer beta of iPadOS 26. All of these commands are accessible elsewhere too, but now, they’re also grouped in a traditional menu bar.

I understand the perspective, and having been around for the golden era of the iPad App Store (remember the original Paper, Flipboard, Twitter, and so many others?), I can’t disagree. At the same time, however, it’s also true that innovation on the iPad App Store has languished in recent years, with iPad-exclusive experiences now being too few and far between and usually involving the Apple Pencil. It’s kind of ironic that, right now, some of the most powerful iPad apps are web apps rather than native ones. Would this have been different had iPad supported Mac-like multitasking and windowing years ago?

“If you look at the early iPads, they weren’t running on M4s and didn’t have the kind of capacity that we have today”, Federighi adds, noting that performance was also a constraint in the first iPad generations and that Apple is always going to prioritize the direct manipulation and interactivity of iPad above anything else. “That is the non-negotiable in the whole thing”, he says.

Which brings us to the latest multitasking features of iPadOS 26, which are a major step up from Stage Manager and see traditional Split View functionalities being integrated as “tiling” options, just like on macOS. But how did we get to this point? Federighi says that Apple eventually realized there were two types of iPad users. “What we’ve seen is that there are users who are always going to want the simplest iPad it can be, and we want to preserve that for them: fully immersive, single window”, he begins. That’s the aforementioned crowd that is never going to be interested in any form of multitasking whatsoever.

But Federighi notes that they also saw another part of the iPad audience – those that wanted explicit control over everything, with as many options as they could have. “So we came to the point of saying, “Let’s recognize that audience”. They’ve self-identified, in essence, right?”, Federighi explains. “And they have a set of expectations, and let’s give them the tools to manage that world for themselves explicitly. They’ll appreciate it, and we won’t get in there if they don’t want it”.

“I think we’ve been on a journey of finding the right interface for iPad, along with our users.”

In listening to Federighi’s analysis of iPad multitasking over the years, I get the sense that Apple has been trying to understand the iPad’s audience for over a decade. At some point, they realized that the device has two types of users: those who just want a tablet, and those who want a tablet plus more traditional computing features. The company tried to reinvent those classic functionalities but ultimately understood that some users would rather have classic windowing, a file manager, and a menu bar that “simply” worked with either touch or indirect manipulation, rather than entirely new UI metaphors.

“I think we’ve been on a journey of finding the right interface for iPad, along with our users. And I think it actually has been important that it’s been a considered journey”, Federighi says.

On macOS Familiarity, Design, and Creating “Sporks”

Beyond Liquid Glass (which I’ll cover more in depth later this summer), iPadOS 26 feels like the logical conclusion for a platform that needs to accommodate deeply different use cases. By default on a fresh installation, iPadOS 26 will load in full-screen app mode – the classic, original iPad experience where you use one app at a time and go back to the Home Screen to close it, just like on an iPhone. You can, of course, still invoke the Dock, Spotlight, or the Command-Tab switcher to move between apps in ways that aren’t supported on iOS, but by and large, this is the closest the iPad’s stock software experience has been to Steve Jobs’ original demo in 2010.

That is not an exaggeration: with iPadOS 26, Apple simplified the full-screen app experience even further by getting rid of the Split View and Slide Over modes altogether. I’ve used Split View and Slide Over for years and liked them a lot; in fact, I started using both modes even more after Stage Manager’s initial debacle. But those systems weren’t perfect, either, particularly for users who just wanted to use an iPad in full-screen mode with one app at a time. The gesture required to create splits – a long press and drag on an app icon in the Dock – often resulted in accidental activations of Split View for less tech-savvy users, who suddenly found themselves using two apps instead of one. Plus, between full-screen mode, Split View, Slide Over, and Stage Manager, the iPad had ended up with too many multitasking systems to choose from.

So with iPadOS 26, the company went back to the drawing board. Under the new windowing engine, iPadOS 26 will default to full-screen apps until you enable the new ‘Windowed Apps’ mode in Settings or Control Center. (I’d love to see a Shortcuts action for this in the future, too.) When you do so, the full-screen default still sticks: apps you open for the first time will continue to launch in full-screen mode, taking up the entire display.

Resizing a full-screen app in iPadOS 26 from the resize indicator. Source: Apple.

You’ll notice a couple of differences, though. A full-screen app in windowed mode features the familiar “grab indicator” in the bottom-right corner that allows you to grab a window with your finger or pointer and resize it to any dimensions you want – this time with fluid, Mac-like resizing that adjusts the window’s size frame by frame. And if you head with your cursor to the top edge of a window (or swipe down with your finger in the center of it), you’ll see a menu bar and the familiar red, yellow, and green controls from macOS to close, minimize, or maximize a window.

Resizing and moving windows in iPadOS 26. Source: Apple.

But that’s not all: in rethinking multitasking and windowing for iPadOS, Apple merged iOS 9’s original split-screen functionality with windowed mode. Grab a window by the title bar – again, unlike macOS, this works with both touch and the pointer – and flick it with the right velocity to either side of the screen, and the window will be tiled to that side. Grab another, flick it in the opposite direction, and the second window will tile next to it. And when you do that, the old split-screen resize indicator will appear in between the split windows, allowing you – for the first time on the iPad – to make a split layout any size you want without having to choose from fixed presets.

Using split layouts in iPadOS 26. Source: Apple.

And there’s even more. In the menu bar, you now have access to a full-featured ‘Move & Resize’ menu that lets you split the screen in halves, three columns (something I always wanted from the old Split View), top and bottom tiles, or even quarters:

A “traditional” split layout with two apps is still possible in iPadOS 26. Source: Apple.

Finally, a split layout with three columns. Source: Apple.

You can also split the screen into quarters now. Source: Apple.

The menu is also accessible, just like on macOS, by long-pressing the window control buttons with either touch or the pointer:

You can double-tap or double-click the title bar of any window to go back to a previous layout. There are keyboard shortcuts to tile and arrange windows without ever lifting your fingers off the keyboard. You can create multiple, overlapping tile configurations and cycle between windows with Command-Tab or – another first on the iPad – proper Exposé. And at any point, you can forego any of the built-in tiling layouts to just…resize a window however you want and move it wherever you want – including slightly off-screen, which Stage Manager never allowed users to do before.

Those are a lot of options for power users who have long demanded this kind of fine-grained control over app windows and layouts. At the same time, based on my demos and first impressions of iPadOS 26 on my iPad Pro, this is not the kind of system that forces – whether accidentally or not – people who don’t want this iPad experience to use it. And even if you’re an advanced user who wants to quickly get rid of all your windows and return to a more focused environment, that’s easy to do as well. With a swipe up on the Home indicator, your workspace will temporarily slide out of view, allowing you to add an app from the Home Screen by tapping its icon; swipe a second time, and you’ll instantly clear the entire multi-window workspace, jettisoning all windows back into the main app switcher, each once again a standalone entity.

Using Exposé and managing windowed apps in iPadOS 26. Source: Apple.

Seeing Apple straddle this line of “familiar, but unique to iPad”, or perhaps “simple by default, but truly advanced when you need it” got me thinking. I’ve long believed that the iPad is simultaneously the most versatile, exciting computer form factor Apple has to design for and the most challenging. An iPad can be so many different things to so many different types of users. How do Apple designers resolve this tension between defaults and options? How do they break from previous UI conventions while also acknowledging the past?

This is where my conversation with Federighi goes next, and where Apple’s head of software shares some familiar – and slightly modernized – metaphors.

“We don’t want to create a boat car or, you know, a spork”, Federighi begins. Seeing the confused look on my face, he continues: “I don’t know if you have those in Italy. Someone said, “If a spoon’s great, a fork’s great, then let’s combine them into a single utensil, right?” It turns out it’s not a good spoon and it’s not a good fork. It’s a bad idea. And so we don’t want to build sporks”.

This is the utensil he’s referring to, which I’ve seen on the Internet before. It’s not the first time an Apple executive has used a kitchen appliance to describe the company’s approach to portable computers. In 2012, Tim Cook criticized Windows 8 convertible tablet/laptop hybrids by saying that you could also try to merge toasters and refrigerators, but the result probably wouldn’t be any good.

By and large, one could argue that Apple has created one such convertible product with the iPad Pro, but Federighi strongly believes in the Mac and iPad each having their own reasons to exist. “The Mac lets the iPad be iPad”, Federighi notes, adding that Apple’s objective “has not been to have iPad completely displace those places where the Mac is the right tool for the job”. As someone who recently got his hands on a high-end Mac Studio that has 512 GB of RAM and is able to run state-of-the-art local LLMs, I can’t say I disagree with that idea. Plus, there are still plenty of differences between macOS and iPadOS despite their new similarities, from sideloading and shell access to Xcode, menu bar apps, system-wide keyboard shortcuts, the new Spotlight, and more. I’d personally like those differences to disappear, too, but for now, the two OSes achieve different goals.

Federighi also wants to expand upon the boat car metaphor, though. “Long ago, a wise man who had a lot to do with the fact we’re all here today talked about cars and trucks”, he begins, referencing Steve Jobs’ famous analogy from the D8 conference in 2010. “It is awesome that the iPad can be the daily driver for so many people, but that doesn’t need a winch tied to the front of it, a trailer hitched to tow a boat in the back, and a flatbed with, you know, ties on the back”, he continues. “Now, someone’s going to say, ‘But I got this thing and I love driving it, and can’t I just haul my boat and lumber?’ And at some point, what you’d have to do to that thing to make it do that, you’ve lost its essence”.

I can say that I’ve been guilty of this myself. Over the years, I have done things to my iPads that no sane person should probably ever attempt, from mounting speakers to its sides to literally ripping a MacBook Air in half and attaching it to the bottom of an iPad Pro to create my own “MacPad” hybrid. Those experiments were born out of necessity. I just wanted to have a more powerful iPad that would allow me to perform the same tasks I could on my Mac. Now with iPadOS 26, I get to have my cake and eat it too: I can still use a product that is both a tablet and a laptop, but thanks to Apple’s “careful exploration”, I can also have access to full-blown windowing, local audio and video capture, folder access from the Dock, a menu bar, and lots more.

Using an iPad with windowed apps, an external display, and a menu bar in iPadOS 26. I love all of this. Source: Apple.

Still, how did Apple land there? After all the talk over the past 15 years about the “post-PC era”, why have we come full circle to reusing features and UI metaphors that the Mac got right decades ago? I ask Federighi about this. “When you’re designing in a new space with a new set of constraints with a different kind of user in mind, you do guard yourself against whether it would be too easy to just pull the old thing off the shelf and put it here because maybe that feels right, because we’ve lived with it since 1984”, he begins, acknowledging the Mac’s key role in democratizing graphical user interfaces and freeform windowing. “And you ask yourself”, Federighi continues “’Well, but what is the essence of iPad? And if that other world had never existed and one had designed from first principles for a touch-first device…what would a cursor be like? What would windowing be like?’”.

It’s the first time I hear Apple’s head of software talk about the iPad’s software design process so deliberately, and it’s utterly fascinating. As we’ve seen in my annual iOS and iPadOS reviews, Apple did try to “design from first principles” on the iPad: they did so in iOS 9, iOS 11, iPadOS 13, and iPadOS 16. So what happened in iPadOS 26?

“At the same time, you have to not be allergic to learning from the past”, Federighi adds. “I think the balance we’ve landed on now is saying, ‘Listen, in the case that the right answer for iPad is a consistent one with another device, the Mac, then, of course, let’s use it. But let’s not reach for something on the Mac reflexively, just because it’s there’”.

“I don’t think the iPad should run macOS, but I think the iPad can be inspired by elements of the Mac.”

The word we keep going back to in this interview is “balance”. The iPad has, historically, always been a balancing act for Apple, from the very first keynote when Steve Jobs had to explain the “third category” it represented to now, when Federighi is talking about balancing the needs of different users, balancing familiarity and consistency in the user interface design, and balancing features between macOS and iPadOS. Speaking of consistency – another central theme of this year’s WWDC – Federighi tells me that “absolute consistency would be to optimize for nothing” when I ask him about how Apple weighs the idea of consistent design across platforms against the fact that, according to them, each device in their lineup has its own reason to be. “We want consistency where it makes sense, but we tailor these experiences to each device”, he adds.

I don’t need to ask Federighi the perennial question about running macOS on the iPad, since he goes there on his own. “I don’t think the iPad should run macOS, but I think the iPad can be inspired by elements of the Mac”, Federighi tells me. “I think the Mac can be inspired by elements of iPad, and I think that that’s happened a great deal”.

On iPad Criticism Over the Years

I’m not new to iPad criticism. In the years I’ve covered this platform, I’ve seen the iPad narrative ebb and flow in different directions. There were the Mac users who were adamant that you weren’t “supposed to” perform certain tasks on an iPad. There were iPad users who, like me, were steadfast in their conviction that there was potential for rethinking classic computing features by putting a unique spin on them. And there was Apple, navigating these waters with an ever-growing collection of desktop-class functionalities that, despite their best efforts, sometimes felt like half-baked attempts at reinventing a wheel that perhaps didn’t need much reinventing in the first place. A “journey”, indeed.

Last year, I decided to publish a comprehensive story about all the shortcomings of iPadOS I encountered when trying to manage files, record podcasts, or, in general, get all my work done on an iPad. I was very critical of the state of iPadOS at the time because I felt that Apple had dropped the ball on key features that I considered essential for a computer called the “iPad Pro”.

The reaction to that story was, to say the least, polarizing. Some Mac users saw it as a vindication of their longstanding beliefs, and I read comments from people who cited the story as “proof” that Apple didn’t care about the iPad at all and was just coasting to sell more expensive devices. Some iPad users saw the article as a “betrayal” from someone who had dedicated a large part of his career to covering the platform. And another group – people who, like me, loved the iPad but were disappointed by its lack of progress – well, they didn’t know what to think, but remained hopeful for its future.

iPadOS 26 still doesn’t support clamshell mode when an iPad is connected to an external display, but other improvements like folders in the dock and background tasks (pictured) are welcome. Source: Apple.

And this is my chance to ask Federighi about his relationship with different users and harsh iPad criticism over the years. When I ask him how he reacts to comments from people who suggest that Apple folks don’t use the iPad internally or don’t care about the product at all, he says with ‘bafflement’. “Disappointment, in the sense that we’re trying to build great products that delight our users, and our iPads do delight our users”, he adds, citing the proverbial “outstanding” customer satisfaction that has long characterized the iPad’s lineup according to Apple.

Federighi, however, is aware of the fact that different iPad users want to see different things from the platform – again, we’re going back to that idea of two macro categories in the iPad’s audience. “People are passionate about these devices, and you’ll have someone who says, ‘Well, they didn’t address the thing I care about most this year. So clearly they don’t use this product’”, Federighi notes.

I understand why he rejects this notion, but speaking from personal experience, I know that it was hard to see the forest for the trees when iPadOS was going multiple years (iPadOS 14, 15, 17, and 18) without noticeable updates – very much unlike iPadOS 26 this year. “I get it at some level”, Federighi adds, “and we do take that on board, but we do also take responsibility for stewarding a platform that means so much, not just to that person, but to so many others”.

“iPad didn’t become what it is today in one year or even five, and we’re in it for the long haul here.”

Having spent the past week with the iPadOS 26 developer beta on my 13” iPad Pro, I think Apple – for the first time in several years – has found that balance between simplicity and power that the iPad platform so badly needed. I criticized the slow progress of iPadOS a lot over the years, but after last week and talking to Federighi, it’s clear to me that folks at Apple have been thinking about these challenges for a long time. Landing on a great solution for everyone often takes time, with some missteps along the way.

“You make tough choices every year about where you prioritize and how you evolve and what’s the right moment to take on what challenge, and you take the long view”, Federighi tells me. “iPad didn’t become what it is today in one year or even five, and we’re in it for the long haul here”.

The iPad’s Essence

We’re almost at the end of the interview, and I notice a couple of things. Just like he was the first time I interviewed him in San Jose for our podcast AppStories, Federighi is – and I mean this in the best possible way – a great nerd to talk to. I’ve picked up on this over the years. He has a quality that is rare in tech executives: he can go very in depth about technical topics, but he doesn’t mind the philosophical, abstract topics either. I could go on and on, but my time is limited, and this is how these interviews work.

The second thing I notice is that I still haven’t asked my simple – perhaps trite, but important to me, regardless – question: what is an iPad in 2025 according to Craig Federighi? I remind Federighi of my story with the iPad. I started using it as my main computer in 2012, when I was undergoing cancer treatments and realized I couldn’t comfortably use a MacBook Air from a hospital bed. Then, even after I was past those health issues, I chose to keep using the iPad because I’d fallen in love with what it represented: truly portable, modular computing that could help me stay productive, connected, and entertained anywhere. The iPad has, in many ways, defined my career, and it still represents all those things for me – despite its ups and downs over the years – in 2025.

But, once again, what is an iPad now for Craig Federighi?

“I think Apple would describe it as a magical piece of glass, where you can hold your content in your hand, and our most versatile device, where you can interact with that content in the greatest variety of ways”, he begins after a brief pause. I can sense that he’s not done. What follows is – from my perspective – the best description of the iPad I’ve heard in 15 years.

“For me, I have, like you, an emotional attachment to my iPad and I’m not sure I can intellectualize it. I don’t know if it’s because it is something that, by the nature of the fact that it’s in your hand, it is the source of connection. It is the source of learning. It is this source of capability; it becomes an extension of your own ability to think and solve problems”, Federighi says. I look down at my watch, and I know that we’re essentially out of time.

“It is the device that can manage to go with us into almost every nook and cranny of our existence, from kicking back and enjoying ourselves to getting something done, creatively or productively. That range makes it an extension of self for some of us in a way that I think fosters an emotional connection. I think that is why, for those of us that end up with that deep connection, it’s natural we keep wanting to push it further, right?”, he concludes.

I step outside the glass ring, the cool morning gusts of Apple Park now a pleasant, almost Mediterranean breeze. I think about where I started with the iPad in 2012, when that computer allowed me to get work done despite the chemo. I look at this interview’s transcript on my M4 iPad Pro and realize: the iPad’s essence is alive at Apple, and this platform’s in good hands.

This seemingly contradicts a previous report that suggested Apple started working on Stage Manager in 2006. ↩︎