Apple’s 26.2 betas boost iPad multitasking, AI processing
Apple’s been making interesting tweaks to its operating systems after the release of the 26.0 versions in September. Back in October, the 26.1 beta cycle brought Slide Over back to iPadOS, a feature that’s now released for everyone. We’re now three betas into the 26.2 beta cycle, and this week brought interesting new features for both Mac and iPad users.
On the iPad side, Apple continues to tweak the edges of its new multitasking model, most notably the reborn Slide Over feature. This week’s feature updates all seem to be focused on kicking off multitasking functionality by dragging apps out of the Dock while in multi-window mode.
While the new Slide Over still doesn’t offer a built-in app switcher like the old one (which, personal opinion, still seems like a bridge too far and a metaphor too mixed), in 26.2 beta 3 there’s a new way to quickly replace which app is in Slide Over: You just drag an app’s icon out of the Dock and drop it on the Slide Over spot. That’s it. The app you dragged replaces the app that was there.
In 26.1, you could kick an app into Slide Over via the menu bar or by tapping and holding on the Stoplight buttons or via a keyboard shortcut. The 26.2 beta brings the Dock into the mix: if you drag an app icon out of the Dock and drag it to the left or right edge of the screen, you can drop it and it’ll be added to Slide Over.
Finally, if you’re in multi-window mode and you drag an app icon to one side of the screen, but not to the edge, the preview of the app window will change from more horizontal to more vertical (when holding the iPad in horizontal orientation, anyway), and an arrow will appear on the edge of the screen. These are both indicators that if you drop the window, it’ll automatically be tiled to that half of the display. So it’s a quick gesture to add a window already in one half of Split View.
Meanwhile, Apple has made good on some of its M5 chip speed claims that were previously hard to verify because they relied on pre-release software. Apple’s open-source MLX frameworks now support the M5’s Neural Accelerator, which enables dramatic speed improvements.
Federico Viticci of MacStories was also able to test the pre-release MLX frameworks on an M5 iPad Pro and reports some pretty spectacular results. Obviously, these are the earliest days, and it’s a prerelease framework, but it seems like the 26.2 updates will unlock a lot of the promised horsepower of the M5—at least on the AI-related GPU front.
Another Apple update in 26.2 will enable even higher-speed Mac performance in clusters of Macs. This new feature uses the 480Gb/s of the Mac Studio’s six Thunderbolt 5 ports to run shared workloads across (for example) multiple M3 Ultra Mac Studios, creating AI clusters that have enormous processing power while using potentially an order of magnitude less electricity than a more traditional processing cluster.
I have no idea how practical that is, but it’s clear that Apple sees a place where high-end Apple silicon Macs can play in the AI space, and it’s moving further in that direction with these 26.2 updates.
All of this stuff is in beta right now, but you should expect 26.2 final to ship before the end of the year.
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