by Jason Snell
Federico, Federighi, and iPadOS 26
Federico Viticci of MacStories got to sit down with Apple’s Craig Federighi to discuss iPadOS last week, which is a tremendous thing to see, and you can read all about it:
After all the talk over the past 15 years about the “post-PC era”, why have we come full circle to reusing features and UI metaphors that the Mac got right decades ago? I ask Federighi about this. “When you’re designing in a new space with a new set of constraints with a different kind of user in mind, you do guard yourself against whether it would be too easy to just pull the old thing off the shelf and put it here because maybe that feels right, because we’ve lived with it since 1984”, he begins, acknowledging the Mac’s key role in democratizing graphical user interfaces and freeform windowing. “And you ask yourself”, Federighi continues “’Well, but what is the essence of iPad? And if that other world had never existed and one had designed from first principles for a touch-first device…what would a cursor be like? What would windowing be like?’”…
“At the same time, you have to not be allergic to learning from the past”, Federighi adds. “I think the balance we’ve landed on now is saying, ‘Listen, in the case that the right answer for iPad is a consistent one with another device, the Mac, then, of course, let’s use it. But let’s not reach for something on the Mac reflexively, just because it’s there’”.
The Federighi quotes are interesting and Viticci adds a lot of useful context, but don’t miss the fact that this article is also Viticci’s in-depth post-WWDC brain dump of his reaction to the massive changes in iPadOS 26. It’s basically two articles in one, either of which would be a must-read.