M5 iPad Pro: Did Apple Just Kill Samsung DeX?

Apple just released the impressive M5-powered iPad Pro, and my wallet is crying. But before we get to it, I think Apple may have shot themselves in the foot, and the irony is they did it by listening to people like me who’ve complained about iPadOS for years. Apple will hate me for saying this: for the majority of us, the M5 iPad Pro is a waste of money, because for the first time in years the software has finally caught up with the hardware in a meaningful way. The full video is here.

The software finally moved the speed limit

I’ve called the iPad Pro a Ferrari stuck in a school zone more than once. With iPadOS 26 (I’m on the 26.1 developer beta as I write this), Apple has finally moved the speed limit sign. The new windowing is genuinely flexible: more than four windows open and actually workable, freely arranged, with your setups remembered. People report seven pages of documents on one screen; in honest practice I’ve comfortably worked across more windows than Stage Manager ever allowed before, without the UI collapsing.

There are now days I’d rather take the iPad on the train than my laptop, purely for this. Not video-editing days, but writing, light photo work, admin? The iPad is it.

And Liquid Glass, which I’m still on the fence about on the iPhone (a bit performative, a bit messy), actually belongs here. On the big screen the layered panes, the depth and the blur make sense. It doesn’t make me more productive; it makes me enjoy using the iPad, the same hard-to-describe way the Magic Keyboard makes me enjoy writing.

The Pencil Pro story has matured too. Squeeze and barrel roll still feel like a cheeky upcharge, but first and third-party apps now genuinely use them, and that’s something the Android tablet world doesn’t get: developers embrace iPadOS first. It makes the pencil feel less like a fancy stylus and more like a tool.

The spicy bit

Here’s something I never thought I’d say out loud: for pure window management, iPadOS 26 now feels nicer than Samsung DeX. Yep. I said it. It looks modern, it’s consistent, it gives you more freedom, and even the animations please. It hurts to say as a long-time DeX advocate, and DeX still has more breadth (it runs on practically every Samsung device, not just tablets). But visually and structurally, DeX is dated now, and I hope this is the kick Samsung needed. Scary thought for them: imagine Apple bringing this windowing to the iPhone one day.

The RAM tier: my usual cynical self

Let’s talk about that questionable 16GB RAM tier, and I’m being polite with “questionable”. In years of testing I can’t recall a single genuine RAM bottleneck complaint on an iPad. Apps are only now allowed caps of around 5-6GB on the 8GB models and 12GB on the 16GB ones, and the number of iPad apps that actually use that is tiny. Let’s be real: if your workflow needs that much memory, you’d be on a Mac.

Apple has been nudging people toward the 1TB/16GB configs since 2020, and to me the extra RAM remains a classic Apple tax, a margin booster for them more than a life-changer for you. My M4 iPad Pro with 8GB and 256GB handles script writing, research, pencil work, Lightroom and creator admin like a beast. I’m 100% not getting invited to Cupertino for this, but I’d rather be frank and save you the cash. Spend it on a nice weekend with your family instead.

So who should actually upgrade?

Here’s the crazy thing: Apple, accidentally or not, made the older iPad Pros a lot better with software, to the point where upgrading for a chip bump makes less sense than in any previous year. If you own an M2 or M4 Pro, iPadOS 26 will do more for you than new silicon. If you’re coming from anything older, or buying your first serious tablet, the M5 is a genuinely lovely machine and the software finally deserves it.

What’s still missing for me is pro-app parity with the Mac: same plugins, shared projects, a “continuity project” dream where you work in Final Cut or Logic on the Mac by day, then do light touches on the same project from the sofa with the pencil at night, no storage gymnastics. Apple clearly has the skills; the multitasking proves it. Go the extra mile.

Next, I put this thing directly against the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra to see who’s actually pushing tablets forward: that head-to-head is on the site. Apple had no say in any of this, and I bought the iPad myself.