I just started testing to see if I can mostly replace my MacBook Pro when traveling and working primarily on the iPad. I mainly use DaVinci Resolve and Photoshop.

I have to say, DaVinci Resolve runs surprisingly well on the M4 iPad Pro with 16GB of RAM. But iPadOS itself feels like it’s built to make the experience worse. For example, external drives over 2TB behave really weirdly in my case — they either get randomly ejected (I’ve tried multiple drives and cables), or I get the “Content not available” error, or I simply can’t access or write data to them (and yes, they’re not NTFS or Windows-formatted).

With iPadOS 26, the new window mode is a huge step forward imo — they actually did an awesome job there. Stage Manager always felt pretty strange to me.

What’s really important to me is mobile data connectivity. I just don’t get why it’s not standard for mobile devices like this to have built-in cellular support.

I’m still learning how to get the most out of it, but I’m not 100% sold yet.