One day, you’ll fold your Mac and pop it in your pocket

iPads are about to become more productive, at least, that’s if the almost seer-like speculation is correct. Apple plans to give its “What’s a PC?” tablets even more Mac-like attributes this year, with details about its plans expected at WWDC 2025 in June.

What can we expect? To be honest, more of the same — so that’s more about making iPads productive, giving them better window management, and improving multitasking capabilities. Bloomberg explains the aim is to make iPads operate “more like a Mac.” These improvements are apparently made possible by the superior performance of the M4 and later series Apple Silicon chips, which are capable of handling tough tasks with low energy consumption.

Apple has been working in this direction for a while, kind of, by adding Stage Manager to enables a more Mac-like workplace. (The Mac also gained Stage Manager). However, it’s arguable whether this feature really ticks the boxes for those who want their tablets to be more like Macs.

The borrowers

That’s not to say the next iteration will be a point improvement on Stage Manager. Apple might well optimize that user interface with ideas borrowed from visionOS. That means possible gesture-based controls, and — assuming the new AI team leaders can make Apple Intelligence run on time — more reliance on contextual-based understanding while working within some applications. (Though I imagine features like those will be rolled out slowly; no one wants their Photoshop transition to be undermined by a hasty head movement from an involuntary cough). 

All the same, if visionOS can be seen as an in-goggles equivalent of the UI we see Tom Cruise using in Minority Report, then taking that same UI and putting it on screen is just a matter of display. The reason I suggest some vision ideas might inform future development of Apple’s other platforms is because of previous hints and the evidently growing power of the visions team, which is now involved in OS development across the company’s ecosystem, including Apple Intelligence.

It’s more logical, in this context, to think that those vision ideas are proliferating than not.

One is like another

Where might such ideas be applied in the iPad user interface? The latest reports are sketchy on any details, and what also isn’t clear is the extent to which Apple might tweak macOS to make it more like the iPad (as it does with Stage Manager, I think).

But if we assume that multitasking and window management are the pain points, then the aim must surely be to make those processes easier and more intuitive. Presumably, that means single interactions to move between windows and/or take content between apps and tasks. If you think about it, while you can do those things on iPads much of the time, getting there sometimes involves three or more steps. On a Mac, it takes perhaps two.

That’s the degree of seamless multitasking support the teams may be looking to achieve. That doesn’t mean they’ll achieve it within the limits of a touch-based system — but what those systems can achieve will become even more impressive as the first M5-powered iPads appear; performance gains enable usability enhancements.

What will this mean to you? 

Productivity professionals should be able to use their iPads to replace even more of the tasks they may use a Windows device for today, turning Apple’s tablet into an even more viable replacement device as Microsoft terminates Windows 10 support later this year. Those abilities should, in theory, extend to any flattish Apple device equipped with enough processor horsepower, and with the company now also expected to introduce folding iPads and iPhones next year, don’t be too surprised if the UI ideas that appear in the iPad this year logically inform the nature of those devices once they ship. It seems that in Apple’s world, not only will you wear your Mac-like sunglasses, but you’ll also fold them up to pop it in your pocket. 

That combination is, of course, only possible because of the computational performance-per-watt of Apple Silicon, which enables thinner, lower-power devices that punch above their weight. It will be interesting to see how closely Apple’s moves match this speculation in the coming months.

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