iPadOS 26 Developer Beta 3
How much has Apple really “nerfed” Liquid Glass in the latest beta?
Here’s a comparison between iPadOS 26 developer beta 2 (first image) and beta 3.
Wow they kinda did the thing? Fullscreen apps on iPadOS work a lot more like fullscreen apps on macOS now — they generate a new ‘space’, and you can swipe between them.
Truly another S-tier iPad multitasking change.
You can swipe back and forth between full-screen and windowed "spaces" AND if you re-resize a full-screen app, it automatically goes back to the windowed space.
Love this.
10 years ago in macOS El Capitan, Apple added a convenient and fun new feature for the system cursor.
Shake the cursor back and forth rapidly and it would enlarge, making it easier to locate.
[…]
And now in iPadOS 26 beta 3, the same feature is coming to the iPad.
The iPad is already getting a more Mac-inspired cursor in iPadOS 26. It now looks like a proper pointer, rather than the circle that was available in iPadOS 18.
They’re really all-in on stealing all the good ideas this cycle
“Concentricity.”
Previously:
- Menu Bar Madness in macOS 26 and iPadOS 26
- iPadOS Windows Mess Up Data Saving
- Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass
- iPadOS 26 Audio and Video Capture
- iPadOS 26 Announced
Update (2025-07-09): John Gruber:
This is not a thoughtfully spaced-out dialog box. (Journal app, iPadOS 26 b3.)
Update (2025-07-10): Steve Troughton-Smith:
While the new Liquid Glass sidebar design looks great in a window when picking up the wallpaper background, it looks kinda awful in fullscreen over white, which is the default mode for iPad apps. It's a very weak comparison with what you got before, in iOS 18
This one’s tough to objectify, but going from using the web on my Mac to the M4 iPad Pro just feels slow to me. Part of this is what I mentioned above where I’m locked to 60Hz output compared to my Mac using the same display to render the web at 240Hz, but it’s also raw performance – websites just feel like they load slower than on my Mac. This is true on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro as well as my M1 work Mac.
Update (2025-07-21): Mario Guzmán:
The entire, fundamental design of Liquid Glass is… as best I heard someone describe it: Misguided. From letting the UI recede to elevate your content and translucent/glass container views… it is all the worst of the worst for usability.
I’ve been saying this since flat UI became a thing… print design for fashion magazines does NOT translate to application design.
There is no clear, visual hierarchy as everything just blends with each other.
(Compare to iOS 6 Music)
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15 years in, Apple throws in the towel and admits the Desktop model is the superior way to work. Great! iPad is a slow kludge to multitask with (if a use case is supported at all) compared to macOS.
So why does iPadOS need to exist at all? If iPadOS is just slowly recreating everything from macOS, but more restrictive and shittier, why not replace it with actual, better macOS? Or maybe macOS hard-coded to "App Store only" when running on iPads for Tim Margin?
If iPad used macOS, they have a backwards-compatibility mechanism for existing apps (Catalyst).
If iPad used macOS, the same UI and huge touch targets still exist (since Liquid Ass is being forced everywhere).
iPad Peasants celebrate getting crumbs from the Desktop Master Race table.
What's iPad's killer-use going to be once a touch MacBook comes out?
@Hammer If you watch the recent WSJ interview, it seems like the plan is to never bring touch to the MacBook because they want you to buy both.
