With no exaggeration, iPadOS 26 is the worst piece of software I've had the displeasure of using in a very long time (and I work day-to-day with 'Enterprise' GIS software).

It has me seriously considering selling my 11" M4 iPad Pro and eyeing up a Samsung Tab S11. This is despite the fact that the latter will lack the "magic" interplay with my Mac, which I use frequently. But I'm beginning to think slowly transitioning out of "the ecosystem" might be what's best for me.

When you pay the eye-watering premium for an Apple product you do not expect to be subject to workflow-obliterating bugs and UX degradations. But here we are.

The removal of Spilt View and Slide Over from the non-windowed mode in iPadOS was completely unnecessary and represents a massive middle finger to touch-based users.[1] To achieve the former's functionality now requires a bunch of fiddly and undiscoverable swipes, taps, and flicks to emulate what was previously a simple hold-and-drag procedure. It's also completely unpredictable - every time a guess as to whether a 'flicked' window will fill up the whole left/right side of my iPad's display, or whether it will just fill the space above the dock (why would I want that on an 11" display?), in the latter case requiring further attempts to actually get it to fill up the entire space. I'm aware there is the alternate route of holding the traffic lights and waiting for the pop-up menu, but this touch target is so small that I frequently miss it, and waiting for what was previously instantly accessible functionality to present itself is frustrating. Plus, switching back to full-screen mode by double-tapping the top of a window is completely broken - half of the time this gets interpreted as the old functionality of scrolling to the top of scrollable content within the referent app, meaning you risk completely losing your place in a PDF / on website whenever you attempt this.

Slide Over is completely missing, and was the iPad's killer feature for students and artists (or I considered it to be at least, until a Samsung rep at their store yesterday demonstrated that you can flick an app in pop-up view 'off the side' of their tablets' displays and then bring it back with a tap, in what is a very close analogue of Slide Over). Now if I wish to be working on a full-screen note / PDF annotation and I want to quickly bring up my calculator app, it is a much more fiddly and cumbersome process to do this. And best hope that I remembered every digit of that large number I'm copying down! Because the moment you touch away from a floating window to write something down, the window will vanish to the back of the stacking order, unlike Slide Over's persistent (until dismissed) window. This is infuriating.

And the bugs! Oh my goodness, the bugs. The fact that the dancing keyboard issue[2] wasn't resolved during the beta period is completely unforgivable. The fact that Stage Manager is riddled with bugs (persistent app previews poking out of the side of the display, even when the switcher has been dismissed; the swipe up behaviour taking you to the tail end of your app previews instead of your most recently used apps, etc.). Plus the constant flickering and glitching of the tacky 'Liquid Glass' effects is headache-inducing.

You know what? I've convinced myself to get that S11.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/iPadOS/comments/1mq8sgd/old_split_v... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/iPadOS/comments/1njyg2y/hows_your_i...

iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways