I Replaced My Mac With an iPad for an Entire Week. It Went as Well as You'd Expect

WIRED

3 hours ago

Aug 14, 2025 7:00 AM The latest iPadOS makes Apple's tablet behave more like a Mac than ever. Can an iPad now finally replace a Mac for everyone? We find out.
Even the most die-hard iPad fans have started to lose faith in recent years. Apple has constantly hobbled its tablet's potential, twinning laptop-grade chips with an operating system that screamed, 'You still need a Mac to do your work.' But now iPadOS 26 promises Mac-like multitasking, a revamped Files app, and proper background tasks. All of which sounds like something that should be fully investigated.
Because we do things properly here at WIRED, this could not be a mere cursory glance at new features. To see if Apple's tablet now passes muster, it was decided that someone should work solely on an iPad. For an entire week. And if you're thinking only an idiot would do that, I am that idiot. So in the name of science, here's the account of how I shut down my iMac, set up my iPad Pro with a mix of accessories and misplaced optimism, and resolved to use Apple's tablet exclusively for work and play alike. Day 1: Slate Expectations
With much trepidation, my gaze shifts from my M1 24-inch iMac to my 6th-gen iPad Pro M2 with 16 GB of RAM. In terms of raw power, I decide it's a fair fight. To avoid being confined to the iPad's relatively small display, I hook up a 13- inch 1080p external screen using a USB-C HDMI hub. Next, I add an Apple keyboard and trackpad, along with my Ruark MR1 Bluetooth speakers. One quick pairing later and audio pumps out of the Ruarks. A good start.
But I quickly find app gaps. There's no BBEdit. No Transmit for FTP and network storage access—although FileBrowser steps in there. I'm suddenly reminded Scrivener on iPad lacks the Mac version's two-up page view I use for long-form writing. So I wheel out Apple's Pages for the first time in forever. (Sorry, Scriv—fix your iPad version and I'll be back!)
The new iPadOS 26 windowing system is a revelation. No more fiddly Stage Manager and its infuriating limitations. Windows now go precisely where I want them to; and there are plentiful shortcuts—touch and keyboard—for tiling and snapping windows, along with moving them between displays.
It's all stolen from the Mac, of course, as is the new menu bar, which annoyingly auto-hides. Even more annoyingly, the menu bar replaces (rather than augments) the fantastic keyboard shortcuts 'cheat sheet' that appeared when you held the Command key in iPadOS 18. Come on, Apple—don't make people hunt through menus.
At some point, it dawns on me that although this is all technically work (research!), I should probably do some actual work on this setup tomorrow. For now, I unplug the USB-C hub and head off with the iPad for an evening's reading. It feels weird to carry my 'work' computer into relaxation time. My silenced iMac looks on, presumably in abject jealousy. Photograph: Craig Grannell Day 2: Snap Decisions
I quickly settle on swiping between a few apps expanded to full-screen and a single 'windowed' screen that often mimics the old iPad Split View. This brings a sense of focus and fewer distractions than I tend to end up with on my iMac. Much of that is down to using smaller displays—there's less space to waste. But flexibility now also exists on the iPad when I need it.
The iPad Pro itself becomes secondary, mostly used for Face ID (way better than Touch ID on my iMac), video calls, reference, and Apple Music. At some point, I realize I've recreated a typical laptop-in-office setup, but, hey, it works. At least for research and writing. Sterner tests are yet to come.
I do miss my Wacom tablet, which I use as my primary input device, although not the RSI I get from my terrible habit of typing while holding its stylus. Worse, I miss the Mac's broader customization. BetterTouchTool is absent. All my custom keyboard shortcuts are gone. As is the Mac-standard Option + up/down arrow to send the cursor to the start/end of a paragraph. My muscle memory is screaming.
Productivity is sapped further by Pages allowing precisely one open document at a time, and Google's tragic iPad apps. Fortunately, Google's efforts improve in Safari—although that just makes me yearn for web apps, like you get on the Mac. Hint hint, Apple. Day 3: Crash and Burned
A mixed day. The iPadOS beta is increasingly crashtastic. Apps lose focus. The external display randomly blanks out until it's replugged. The menu bar refuses to make an appearance on the second display for an entire day. And there's no clamshell mode, so the iPad screen must always be on, glowing in my peripheral vision.
Also, too many apps still desperately cling to saving everything in their own folders within iCloud Drive. That's not how I file things—nor probably how you do either. I hope some of these issues will be fixed by September.
Between the crashes, I nonetheless manage to be productive. I'm working more across multiple devices than usual: WhatsApp and Slack on an iPhone only when I need them, whereas I'd usually have everything constantly active on the one iMac display. Focus! Also: problematic when cross-device copy/paste fails. Still, everything is going swimmingly until I need to work on some images.
Photoshop decides to be uncooperative, clashing in a big way with the iPadOS 26 beta. I argue with it for a while, give up, and install Affinity Photo 2, a highly capable rival app but not one you want to learn on the fly when deadlines are blazing past. Lesson of the day: When moving to iPad, make sure your essential apps exist and work, well in advance. Photograph: Craig Grannell Days 4 and 5: Shelf Help
Mercifully, a weekend! Two whole days to pretend technology doesn't exist while putting up shelves. Ish . Because I still have invoices to generate, which means hunting down files, totting up numbers, and emailing PDFs.
The document-creation bit is fine. Other bits are not. Even the new iPad windowing system can't save how Files still feels like baby Finder, not least due to its comically spacious design. The going is slow when searching for and collating documents, and that's not what I want at the weekend. And it makes me consider that many aspects of the iPad remain weirdly sluggish. Inertial scrolling. Pop-up menus. The Mac is just snappier .
Perhaps the iPad can't quite shake its origins as a lean-back device for relaxing with, rather than fully embracing being a tool for people frantically trying to meet pressing deadlines. Or maybe iPadOS designers are just really into pretty animations. Day 6: Backup Plans
I'm in a groove now. Writing. Image editing. Even local audio capture and video export in the background, just because I can. Nothing exploded. Everything worked. Which makes a mockery of even an M4 iPad not being able to do all this before June 2025. But there we are.
I mostly don't miss my iMac. But every now and again, a reminder slaps me hard across the face like a wet iPod Sock. Today, I discover the answer to 'What happens when you need to use an app that Apple wants nothing to do with on the App Store?' The answer: You can't. A tiny snag when I need to shoot a grab of a piece of software running on System 7.
On my iMac, I'd fire up Mini vMac and be done in seconds. Apple, despite softening its stance on emulators, rejected Mini vMac recently, because heaven forbid anyone have an interest in Apple's history or want to play Shufflepuck Café on an iPad. In the end, I load a disk image into an online emulator, take a screen grab, and grumble incessantly.
This also reminds me backup tools are another category that don't really exist on iPad. I'd not thought about that before now, because I don't usually think about backups at all. My iMac constantly safeguards data with a mix of local drives and offsite backup. With a chill, I realize the iPad solely uses iCloud, which I trust as far as I can throw an entire data center. I resolve that if I ever do go iPad-only to figure out a local backup system using a connected SSD. Or five. Day 7: Windows of Opportunity
The final day is uneventful. Things just work. (As do I.) The week over, I power up my iMac with a sense of relief—and yet a pang of sadness. Because aspects of this experiment have been terrific. That sense of focus I just don't get from my iMac. Being able to instantly shift from 'desktop' to 'laptop' to 'tablet' with one Apple device. (Sure, you can do most of that with a MacBook. But rip off its screen for a session of handheld reading or digital art and you're definitely voiding your warranty.)
The new windowing and workspaces system elevates all of this significantly , removing a key friction from moving solely to an iPad. Five Macs out of five. Good job, Apple. For creativity and power use? A solid four. (Most apps are there. Background tasks too. But gaps remain.) File management, though? Two and a half Macs out of five—and I'm being generous. And as for installing whatever you like? Zero Macs out of five. That aspect of the iPad remains a joke.
To sum up, then: Can you replace your Mac with an iPad? It depends. I faced shortcomings. You probably would too. But whereas I'd have grown to despise this weeklong trial in an iPadOS 18 world, iPadOS 26's improvements make an iPad tantalizingly and frustratingly close to a laptop-grade experience. And in some ways, it's arguably superior.
If only Apple could get out of its own way a bit more. But then, that's long been the case. What we're seeing here is the solution Apple should have shipped five years ago with the first M1 iPad. So perhaps the real question today is whether it's all too late.