Apple Explains Why Stage Manager is Limited to M1 iPads in New Statement

[7149041]

I upgraded to the iPad pro to get split screen, ended up finding it useless (the screen is too small). Definitely won't fall for the same trick again.

And I already have two Macs (Mac Pro and MBP15) so won't be plugging the iPad into a screen either.

I am sitting out the whole M1/M2 thing at least a year or two more. There's no viable alternative for my two computers anyway.

The only good thing about this is: Apple is clearly going towards a Macbook/iPad hybrid (ie touch enabled laptop or iPad with optional full MacOS) - they keep pretending it's not what they are doing, but the direction is pretty obvious.

 

[hans1972]

No. The "M1 Pro" does a piss app job of running at most 8 tasks. Even my underpowered 4-year-old PC easily runs 20-30 tasks without slowing down.

The A12Z is so bad it can't ever be made to multitask at all. Because Apple is simply incompetent to make it possible, or because the so-called "Pro" chip has a technical limitation that prevents it from ever multitasking.

Wouldn't you agree?

Multitasking hasn't anything to do with running multiple windows at the same time.

If so, a computer without a screen or screen output couldn't multitask.

All iOS and iPad OS devices has supported multitasking from day 1. It's built into the kernel of the operating system. You can just look at the processes and threads on a device through Xcode to find that 30-40 processes are loaded when you just start the device and several of them are processed at the same time.

 

[Ludatyk]

The people here are funny. People were criticising them last year for not releasing features that took advantage of the M1 chip in the ipad, and now Apple is being criticised for doing precisely that.

If this isn’t evidence that people are just bashing Apple for the sake of bashing, I don’t know what is. Make a stand and stick with it, people!

Exactly this.

Back in iOS 9, Apple announced SplitView which was only available for the iPad Air 2 at the time and I'm sure previous generation users were complaining then. And as you mention, the criticism that Apple is getting are funny... I rather not respond to it because in the end Apple is pushing their vision forward.

Which the comment below explains it further because if we do this dance where Apple doesn't draw the line then they will never get to their vision for the iPad Pro.

You gotta draw the line somewhere — it reminds me how gamers are pretty much completely fed up that there’s been no new “next gen” games when “next” is now current but devs keep wanting to double dip and capture older consoles with the same release, therefore mostly stifling the innovation for true “next gen” games. The transition to Apple Silicon was always that: a transition. There’s no more transitioning, they are IN it.

 

[threesixty360]

All the window management features introduced in OS X over the past 20 years ran in less than 512 MBs using slow hard disks for i/o. There is even a leaked copy of OS X Leopard showing something similar to Stage Manager for the desktop.

Apple just wants us to spend more on our iPads. You are not gonna get me to upgrade from my 2017 iPad Pro though. I’m waiting until M4.

And thats why when your mac is low on memory everything slows down and is unresponsive.
However, iOS doesn’t do that. It would rather kill the application that drag the rest of the OS down.
Choices, choices, choices….

 

[hans1972]

Or there are growing number of us (IMO) who are getting more and more tired of promises or possible promises (like how long we have waited for something realistic to use on a iPad Pro) and we get fed little to nada.

Can you point out when Apple made such a promise? And what's a "possible promise"?

Also, why are you buing a device who can't do something realistic?

Buying hardware hoping the software will improve in the future is extremely risky and are almost never rewarded.

 

[Substance90]

Wouldn't be Apple if bs like this isn't pulled on us loyal customers.

 

[G5isAlive]

Keep dreaming. Apple would never allow one device to cannibalise another product category. It's why the iPad is still as useless today as it was when it launched.

You don’t know Apple. They routinely cannibalize one whole market for another. Before any of this was the wildly successful ipod…Apple knew the iPhone was the death of the iPod and went there anyway. And the iPad follows job’s vision of easy to use one app at a time portable device. It’s very useful to a lot, just not those that want it to be a Mac.

 

[Steve121178]

You don’t know Apple. They routinely cannibalize one whole market for another. Before any of this was the wildly successful ipod…Apple knew the iPhone was the death of the iPod and went there anyway. And the iPad follows job’s vision of easy to use one app at a time portable device. It’s very useful to a lot, just not those that want it to be a Mac.

The iPhone costs many times the price on an iPod so Apple won't be fussed about any lost iPod sales to the iPhone. Clearly not as the iPod is now dead.

And the iPad wasn't a vision. It was just a way of making more money. It may have started off as a vision on the drawing board but it's completely gimped by its OS and has been since day 1.

 

[G5isAlive]

This is the crux of the issue. Apple could push out an update that contains nothing but a few bytes of gibberish and people around here would call that "supported".

What it boils down to is a "**** you I got mine" mentality from fanboys with M1 iPads that are indignant over the fact that others are withholding money from Apple.

A) I don’t care what iPad you or anyone else buys.
B) The ‘experts’ badmouthing apple’s decision on stage manager are the same smug experts that were telling people to save a few bucks last year and not buy the M1 pro when it was announced. Oh well.

 

[hans1972]

What was the point of Selling these as pro devices when they couldn’t do any more than the entry level iPad.

Pro = Better hardware and more expensive

The MacBook Pro can't really do more than a MacBook Air, only faster.

The point was selling you a more expensive iPad with better hardware.

 

[hans1972]

Speaking specifically to the Stage Manager function (and not displaying to '6K monitors'), I don't buy their reasoning at all. Operating systems have had multiple applications/windows on screen simultaneously for decades. There's absolutely zero reason why my 2018 iPad Pro shouldn't be able to use the Stage Manager feature to some degree. [..]

[...]but would I expect it to be able to run some kind of window manager? Absolutely, no question. [...]

Apple won't allow you to use it to some degree. They want it consistent across all their iPads and if they can't achieve that without sacrificing performance you won't get it.

Also why did you buy an iPad which didn't have stellar multiple window support and no promises from Apple to make one?

 

[Steve121178]

The people here are funny. People were criticising them last year for not releasing features that took advantage of the M1 chip in the ipad, and now Apple is being criticised for doing precisely that.

If this isn’t evidence that people are just bashing Apple for the sake of bashing, I don’t know what is. Make a stand and stick with it, people!

There's no reason the A12X & A12Z from the 2018 & 2020 iPad Pro's can't handle Stage Manager. This is just a ploy to force people to upgrade. It's BS.

 

[blackcrayon]

There's no reason the A12X & A12Z from the 2018 & 2020 iPad Pro's can't handle Stage Manager. This is just a ploy to force people to upgrade. It's BS.

And yet the 2015 iPad Pro gets iPadOS 16. Must be a ploy to keep people with those iPads from upgrading!

 

[Abazigal]

There's no reason the A12X & A12Z from the 2018 & 2020 iPad Pro's can't handle Stage Manager. This is just a ploy to force people to upgrade. It's BS.

I suspect it has something to do with swap memory (which Apple seemed to make a fairly huge deal of), and Apple likely having a long-term vision of stage manager that will gradually unfold over the next few years, and they want to make a clean cut at the M1 chip. Rather than waste time and resources coming up with a watered down version of stage manager that possibly won't support the 2nd iteration anyways.

If anything, it seems more like a way to get existing M1 iPad users to invest in a magic keyboard (since the external monitor feature doesn't seem like one can control it without a mouse).

 

[tha_man]

I find it quite remarkable, that I could have more than 4 apps multitasking in multiple windows and several desktops at once in 1994 on my Amiga 1200 with 14 MHz single core 16/32 bit CPU, 6 MB RAM and 420 MB hard drive with incredibly low transfer rates for todays standards It was lower resolution and less colors, but still...

 

[hans1972]

Doubt it.
Been doing IT projects for close to 30 years.
That is not how they work.
Good for a chuckle though.
Thx

That's how it has worked for the projects I have worked on.

We decide before we start coding which feature to implement and which devices, operating system, browser or other things we are going to support before anything is coded.

Now, features might be dropped or scaled back later in the process and it's almost because you can't get the feature to be fast enough or error free. Dropping to get it to work on older versions of stuff is usually the first to get the axe.

 

[sorgo †]

So the parts in the mini-6 then are crap. Got it.

No, just the jelly roll—I mean display.

 

[Steve121178]

I suspect it has something to do with swap memory (which Apple seemed to make a fairly huge deal of), and Apple likely having a long-term vision of stage manager that will gradually unfold over the next few years, and they want to make a clean cut at the M1 chip. Rather than waste time and resources coming up with a watered down version of stage manager that possibly won't support the 2nd iteration anyways.

If anything, it seems more like a way to get existing M1 iPad users to invest in a magic keyboard (since the external monitor feature doesn't seem like one can control it without a mouse).

If memory was really an issue, then they could have easily allowed say 4 apps instead of 8.

Essentially, iPad sales are tanking so they are trying to force some upgrades. They could actually go about it another way and make iPadOS less of a stinking turd and it might encourage sales and perhaps make upgrades a no-brainer for those using really old iPads rather than pissing off a lot of people that spent a lot of money on "Pro" hardware.

It's better to dangle a carrot than to kick someone up the backside.

 

[hans1972]

Not to mention the Developer Transition Kit can run Ventura with SM on…

How much memory does the DTK have?

 

[hans1972]

If memory was really an issue, then they could have easily allowed say 4 apps instead of 8.

They could also have cut down on external resolution or support.

Bbut that's not the Apple way. Stage Manager as a set of features which includes up to 8 applications which can get up to 16Gb of RAM each and run on a 6K external display.

So when Apple says older iPad can't support that in a good way its believable.

 

[nebojsak]

Entitled? Apple was the one that claimed they couldn’t do it on the older iPads for various reasons. If they were honest about it, then just show how bad it is on those iPads. Don’t tell me they don’t have iOS 16 development alpha or beta running in those models. They are still being supported on ios 16 after all.

I don’t feel entitled as I don’t even have any iPads. Apple made a statement, and I simply want to see if they are being honest about it or not. Simple. Or do you believe anything big companies are saying?

Not all of the big companies. As far as I know, you can't be member of two or more rival cults at the time.

 

[hans1972]

That's a terrible example. You're essentially saying that multitasking requires a massive CPU.
It doesn't. It's not the same as comparing two different games from two different eras.

But tell us: what is this magical limitation that prevents a PRO device from multitasking, especially considering that the A12Z was also used in the 2018 Mac Pro dev kit?

The DTK had 16 Gb of memory.

M1 iPads have more memory and faster file I/O for swap. Fast swap helps delaying performance degrading when you're running low on physical memory.

Could Apple have cut some of the feature of Stage Manager to make it feasible to implement on older hardware? Yes, but that's not the Apple way.

 

[hans1972]

But people paid more money in 2020. There’s aren’t budget iPads we are taking about. People paid over £1,000 and less than 2 years later Apple are telling them that their devices are no more capable than the budget iPad.

So why did they buy an expensive iPad back in 2020 if it weren't more capable than a cheaper iPad?

If they bought it because they thought future software enhancement would make it a better device, then they were fools and I pretty happy they are now taught a lesson.

 

[Stuey3D]

The only reason I can see for proper external screen support not being available on the older iPads (and I’m not talking full Stage Manager here just the ability to have proper external screen with no black bars) is that the older iPads cannot run their fancy new 6K display because of the lack of thunderbolt. Rather than allowing us to have proper 2nd screen support at 1080p or 4K they would rather deny us that opportunity for some sense of “continuity” between the product lines.

 

[darngooddesign]

Yeah, I suppose I'll just shrug off the fact my two-year old $800 iPad "Pro" already isn't getting new tentpole features. Meh, it's just hard-earned money.

Apple saved Promotion screens for the second generation iPad Pro, which meant my six month old, $750 iPad Pro didn't get one of the defining features of the Pros. Yet here I am still happily using it. When Apple released the iPhone 5 with airDrop, my one year old, $650 4S didn't get that core iOS feature.