This is the Mac’s “cycle through windows” keyboard shortcut that became a part of my muscle memory in the early days of Mac OS X, and I still use it all the time. (A Microsoft Word file in full screen and a different Word file in a different Split View, for example.) Two years ago, Apple introduced the concept of multiple app windows-but they were really just multiple instances of an app, running in existing app frames. Picture in Picture floats above apps but must be placed in a corner. For example, Slide Over is a floating window attached to one side of the screen. A window into the futureĪpple has been flirting with the idea of putting floating windows on the iPad for a few years now. Is Apple waiting for the right moment to unveil proper external-display support on the iPad, perhaps alongside the release of a new Apple display? I’m not saying it will definitely happen, but I want to believe. Instead, I think Apple is finally assembling all the pieces of the puzzle that will allow the iPad to become more Mac-like than ever before-all the while retaining its unique position in Apple’s ecosystem.
It would be easy to consider this yet another spin on the merry-go-round as Apple struggles to figure out how to break the iPad out of the iPhone’s fundamental one-app-at-a-time interface.īut I don’t. In iPadOS 15, Apple is making another round of changes to iPad multitasking.
