For years Apple has been touting iPads as a laptop replacement. And with the recent launch of the 2021 iPad Pro, which transplants the M1 chip and Thunderbolt 3 port from the Mac, the company appeared set to finally deliver on that promise.

But those hopes were dashed earlier this month. With the reveal of a meagre update to iPadOS, Apple has made it abundantly clear that the iPad Pro is still an expensive accessory for your laptop, and not a replacement.

Hardware-wise, it’s a difficult machine to fault. The M1 processor is up to 40 per cent faster than its predecessor, with RAM bumped up to 16GB, bringing performance in line with current Macs. The Thunderbolt 3 port widens the bandwidth to 40Gbps, so you can connect high powered accessories such as fast external drives and high resolution displays.

Then there’s the impressive miniLED display on the 12.9-inch model, which makes day-to-day usage a treat for the eyes, even if it doesn’t reach the contrast levels and inky blacks of an OLED display found on some other laptops and tablets.

The Magic Keyboard accessory which Apple continues to market alongside the iPad Pro makes it effortless to switch the device from tablet to laptop, provided you can get past its steep price.

All the ingredients are there to make the iPad Pro a viable laptop replacement, but it falls short thanks to a hamstrung operating system that is missing some crucial features.

Apple’s solution to multitasking on the iPad Pro is ‘split view’ and ‘slide over’, which allow you to run two apps side-by-side in addition to one other app in an iPhone-sized floating pane. But many apps don’t support these modes, nor are they as useful or intuitive as proper windowed apps.

File management on iPadOS is still severely limited, while connecting to external drives and servers can be hit or miss. Thankfully, the Files app is at least getting a progress bar in the upcoming iPadOS 15, which should make moving large files around less frustrating.