Just goes to show how different people are. I used Win8 tablet mode all the time, even reading ebooks. Windows 10 & 11? 100% never, could not stand it. Not even on my SG2. But on the same-sized iPad Pro 11” I’m spending almost all my time on it, which is of course “tablet mode”, and I love reading on the Kindle app for hours at a time. 
We might be looking for different things in a “tablet”.
P.S.- it’s not just iPadOS, Android was quite nice too. I had no issues using that OS for tablets.
I should clarify that I use/used Win10&11 as a desktop OS with touch. Exactly to the degree that I used Linux with touch when I put Fedora on my SG2. No more, no less, and mere touch ability didn’t made Linux a good tablet OS either.
Edit: that reminds me that I get a similar experience using Luna Display + Mac mini + iPP. MacOS as a touch OS! It really does work, launching programs by tapping their icon, dropping menus and selecting menu choices, they even added an OSK for entering text… Ditto Sidecar but they only let you use touch for pinch-zooming in a drawing area, must use the Pencil for launching stuff or doing menus, got to use a physical keyboard (e.g. Magic Keyboard) to enter text. I wonder if they’re trying not to let people realize that yes, they could add a touchscreen to MacBooks and adding touch to MacOS (& Pencil!) is entirely doable? I mean, AstroPad did it so surely Apple could. Anyway, MacOS with touch is still not a good Tablet OS. 
I’ve never worked in Swift or looked too deep into their requirements for IOS, but from what I understand there are a lot of restrictions on how things are done that make it much harder for developers to copy desktop features over. If I were a Ulysses developer, I would almost prefer to look into how well a webapp could handle all of the options.
2 years into the IPP and I would still much prefer a Windows tablet like the Go 3 if only for the drawing experience. (plus a better keyboard closer to the magic keyboard instead of the kickstand would be great, but I could live with the kickstand and floppy keyboard if I had to.) It’s not just the buttery smoothness of the pen on the IPP for art, it’s the smoothness of the drawing apps, and how they Never crash on me, or glitch or really run into any hiccups at all. If I want something remotely close to that, I have to go bigger and heavier, running much hotter, and with much less battery life. Is it too much to ask for 10+ hour battery life, fanless, 16+gb ram with a blazing fast processor? For Windows OS, yes, it is.
They have a blog, they should be open and honest about it. I for one would accept it if it was not in the cards due to insurmountable issues. What I’m asking is that they treat the iPad (Pro, anyway) as a real computer, not a big phone that only deserves a ”lite” version of an app. It’s possible now. Go ahead and charge me Mac-type prices for it, too.
My dream: someone in Apple HQ flips a switch in the next few years bringing full fat macOS application support to iPadOS. With Stage Manager here, that’s all that is left to do. Bring on the desktop programs and they have killed Microsoft Windows on the consumer front. Of course, the corollary to that would be to allow sideloading and I do not think that bodes well with Apple’s walled garden approach to the iOS/iPadOS family of operating systems. Then again, mounting regulatory pressure to allow consumer choice could force their hand.
Now with less shhhhh: the public beta is officially available:
Related opinion piece from The Verge:
Choice quote:
The cynical way […] would be to think of the iPad as a device caught between two worlds, unsure of whether it’s a big iPhone or a touchscreen MacBook, and suffering as a result.
The more optimistic view […] is that the iPad could actually be all things to all people, the best of all worlds, a power-user device that’s also incredibly approachable, and it’s just going to be a long journey to get there.
I think, especially with iPadOS 16, we’re well past the point of the cynical view. And that “optimistic” view is out there in the land of rainbows and unicorns, sheesh. Nothing will ever be all things for all people; what are they smoking?
I’m actually smoking the same thing. :vb-inspector: I’m pretty impressed that my dad can still use his 2022 iPad (with touchID, that part is important…) blissfully unaware of all the features that have been added since his first iPad Air 1. So I think for the novice user they’re doing great.
It just feels like for the advanced user they need to tighten some things up. I’m still fighting some of these advanced features, accidentally hitting the three dots in windows, struggling to place windows side by side in spit view or as overlay, or with a PIP window. It feels like they’re getting closer though.
It’ll never get close enough for those like Mary J Foley who have vowed that they won’t ever get an Apple product. Therefore it won’t ever be all things for all people.
I’m the epitome of this statement - far less than 1% (0.01% maybe) want a single tablet device to do everything for them. But then, again, isn’t that the height of the true meaning of “personal computer”? Likewise, if what you want is a desktop beast with a 55” 4k monitor and no touch interface anywhere, shouldn’t that be your choice? Since we can’t build our own tablets, this may be as close I get, so NOW I can take the “shhhhh” out of the title and reload Beta 3 as a real legit public beta user…
Watch out Apple, here3 comes the list of changes you NEED to make that you don’t want to see…
It’s not the “all things” part I doubt, it’s the “for all people” part.
NOTE: current public beta is 20A5312j - don’t know if it’s true but Fernando Silva says the “j” is a countdown letter to “a” for release candidates. If true, we’ve got a lengthy ride ahead to October…
For the adventurous among you, I hope you’ll join me in burying Apple with usability comments (others will catch all the bugs):
That’s my point - it IS for me and I know I’m in a significant, BUT VERY SMALL, minority.
@JoeS - as to that “choice quote” you pulled from The Verge article:
"In its best moments, iPadOS 16 feels like there’s no job it can’t handle. In its worst, it feels like it’s trying way, way too hard.”
I have a slightly different thought - it’s (iPadOS 16) trying way, way too hard to be touch iPad in a quasi-MacOS environment. They are trying TOO HARD to let you use Stage Manager on the iPad alone, and even 12.9” is NOT a big enough canvas for a touch friendly windowed environment - just ask Microsoft how well that has gone.
They need to limit Stage Manager to an external monitor environment only - in other words plugging in that external monitor should invoke Stage Manager on that external monitor, moving, resizing, and selecting windows with a REAL mouse interface, while still using your iPad screen in the touch manor you have always used. IN OTHER WORDS - quit trying to drive the square peg into a rectangular hole with a round hammer…
PS - it’s nice to be street legal now - even if iPadOS 16 is not street ready…
Written on street legal iPadOS 16 beta. Nothing broke… yet.
Here are my first two submissions on the Feedback App - I should be suspended by Apple within the hour:
No. 1
Stage Manager works well on the iPad (Pro 11) because of the limited screen space. As a business user, it does not work well on an external monitor (Samsung 32” 4k MB702) because the windows are not freely resizable and cannot be place on the larger canvas as needed by the user, but seem to be predetermined and insist on keeping focus on a single window and rearranging all the other windows behind it. It is ok to do this on the tablet (because of that smaller canvas) but is disorienting and counter-productive on the larger external screen. At the very least provide a couple of “pre-configured options” like four corner quarter screen placements, or one half-screen and two up quarter screens to the right or left. I am a lawyer, and like a lot of professionals we need to be able to compare multiple drafts, or pull text from several documents into a single new draft. Otherwise, that external monitor support is going to waste.
No. 2
The “On My iPad” Documents folder needs to sync with the iClouds “Documents” folder so you can keep documents, spreadsheet, text, etc. on both your iPad and iCloud for times when you do not have internet connectivity or iCloud is down. As more professionals (I’m a lawyer) use the iPad Pro as their main device, we cannot be sidelined by an internet outage, and at least this one folder should mimic my MacBook Pro 14 so I can continue to use it offline as needed.
I was once firmly in this camp. I have multiple times said I would NEVER buy anything Apple. Now I have a MBP and IPP with Magic Keyboard and Pencil. Technically I didn’t buy the MBP, but that’s still a lot I spent on a device I vowed never to buy. There might be a hidden feature out there somewhere that does it for everyone eventually. For me it was the drawing experience I couldn’t really replicate on anything else. The pen, aspect ratio and at the time I got mine being the only non-desktop OS with Clip Studio Paint just checked all the boxes.
I can get behind the idea, but not the application. For me I would want stage manager anytime I can use a mouse. So when I dock with Magic Keyboard and have the mouse, Stage Manager becomes available. If I take it off the MK, bye bye Stage Manager. I also envision Apple eventually making a magnetic dock that takes advantage of the connectors on the back. (what are those called again?). The dock could support external monitor, keyboard, mouse, leaving the IPP as a second monitor as well. Desktop experience when you want it, at a desk, pop it off and carry an iPad around the rest of the time. But, and this is the important part in my mind, if Stage Manager becomes part of your workflow, connecting to a Magic Keyboard is still an option away from the desktop dock.
I had just assumed that there would be something equivalent to snap for Windows. It looks like some form of side-by-side is possible, see this screencap from a user demo video.
Can you not achieve the same?
Edit: this guy is going all out with an ultrawide. Looks like “largely free” window placement is possible.
I actually agree with you on this, but I put out my alternative in hopes they’d take the bait - what I wrote to them in my beta submission is true - I think Stage Manager works better on the tablet than external screen.
@JoeS - I have it on a 32” 4k, and it still takes forever to try to get what he accomplished - they just keep jumping to sizes and locations not of your choice…
