GoKawiilZac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
It’s a tale as old as time. iPads are better productivity machines than Android tablets. At least, that’s what people want you to think. As an iPad owner (2020 iPad Pro 11) and a Galaxy Tab S10 Plus user, I think the opposite is true. Aside from one or two specific uses, I can get more done on my Tab S10 than I can on the iPad for one reason: iPadOS 26 sucks. It’s bad enough that, after five years of enjoyment, I hate using my iPad now.
Which tablet OS do you prefer? 96 votes Android 50 % iPadOS 35 % I don't use tablets 15 %
iPadOS 26 is a mess
Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
As I said in the introduction, I’m using a six-year-old iPad and a Samsung tablet that’s about a year and a half old. The differences in performance and power don’t factor into what I’m writing about today, though. All of my issues with iPadOS 26 are based on the software design, not the performance of the device.
Before iPadOS 26 came along, the iPad’s multitasking features were limited but easy to use. You could only have two apps split side-by-side at once until you launched Stage Manager, which provided more freedom and a more desktop-like experience. There were frustrations with it; there was no way to snap windows into common layouts, for example, but it was enough for most users.
iPadOS 26 fixes those limitations. That sounds like a good thing, and it would be if the way it addressed those annoyances didn’t ruin everything that used to be good about it. You can’t drag and drop apps into split-screen from the app switcher anymore. Now you have to drag one app and flick it to the side of the screen and repeat the process with the other app, or long-press on the MacOS-inspired traffic lights and choose whichever window-snap layout you want.
So, what’s the problem with this new UX? For starters, the UI is tiny. Trying to tap the traffic light buttons or anything in the menu bar is difficult to do quickly without tapping the wrong thing. Having to slow down and make a conscious effort to select the right thing is annoying, and it only gets worse if you’re using an iPad Mini.
Slideover apps have been heavily nerfed in iPadOS 26 as well and were actually missing entirely until iPadOS 26.1 came out. In older iPadOS versions, you could have as many slideover apps open as you wanted, and you could easily switch between them. In iPadOS 26, you can only have one slideover app at a time. Adding another one sends whatever app you already had there back to the app switcher. The only upgrade slideover apps got was the ability to resize them, but that doesn’t make up for the limitation of one app at a time.
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