With iPadOS 16, the iPad's software finally lives up to the promises of its great hardware.

iPadOS 16 and iOS 16, coming this fall, will add a bunch of big new features and tweaks. It’s a laundry list of fixes and improvements that nerds have been dreaming of for years. But the biggest of all these changes is that the iPad is finally getting the Weather app. Just kidding, but only a little. No, the big news here is Stage Manager and what Apple is calling “Full External Display Support.” This will let you lay out your apps in resizable windows on the iPad screen, then connect them to an external display and use them like a Mac.

“With iPadOS 16, we finally have a software story that justifies the existence of the M1 iPad Pro,” writes iPad superuser Federico Viticci on his Mac Stories blog.

The iPad is an incredible machine. It’s powered by the same M1 chip as several Macs, and it can do just about anything you could want. But even for hardcore, long-term iPad “power users,” getting basic tasks done can sometimes be frustrating. For example, you can drag and drop images, text, and files between apps, but the real problem is switching between those apps to do so. Apple has tried several methods to get around this limitation, but has thus far ignored the best one, one that Apple invented with the Mac all the way back in 1984: app windows.