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

[aevan]

The homebrew community has some really powerful features both unlocked and totally written from scratch.

The homebrew community will always accept more compromises than Apple. And maybe these compromises are acceptable to most users, maybe not - I don't know what they are. But that's a different topic.

Again, you're way too certain for something you can only speculate on.

 

[landi.erik]

Fusion Drives didn't provide fast swapping. It was just normal slow SSD speed on SATA. I wouldn't be surprised if the M1 together with the flash memory in modern iPads can provide up to 10x faster swapping speed.

I have an iMac with Fusion Drive and if you use a lot of memory and it starts swapping, it will slow down a lot because after 4Gb of swapping, it has to utilise the HDD quite often.

Yeah I’ve got it running on my 2011 iMac still going strong. That’s why I love apple products the thing is 11 years old and still works great. I don’t have a problem with it because Multitasking was well designed, iPad OS has always had this issue and now they way to fix it is some magical chip?

 

[aevan]

And we’ve been asking for proper multitasking for YEARS now… two things can be right at the same time. I agree M1 is the way to go for future proof. But we’ve asked a looooooong time for a well designed app manager/multitask interface.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have found a way to do this sooner, maybe less resource intensive. I'm just saying that the solution they chose probably wouldn't work well on older models. That's it.

 

[landi.erik]

The homebrew community will always accept more compromises than Apple. And maybe these compromises are acceptable to most users, maybe not - I don't know what they are. But that's a different topic.

Again, you're way too certain for something you can only speculate on.

We have the screen caps showing 7apps running congruent? I mean I only want three at a time with full display support. That’s literally the bare minimum they could do.

 

[nebojsak]

All I wrote was “anti-apple”. I don’t really see how someone can read “anti-apple” and assume it refers to “people WITH apple products that don’t like apple”. As can be determined from the headlines of stories here and across the internet, there’s a significant number of people that have made a livelihood or just find it entertaining to be anti-apple. And, just going by the number of folks that own Apple devices, their numbers are likely larger as well.

Is it possible that “anti-apple” and “folks with apple products that don’t like Apple” cross over in their statements about Apple? I’d say that’s possible.

WTF did I just read

 

[aevan]

We have the screen caps showing 7apps running congruent? I mean I only want three at a time with full display support. That’s literally the bare minimum they could do.

Well, look, it depends on the apps. Procreate takes at least 2Gb for an illustration, Safari can easily take 1Gb - and that fills your total memory quite quickly. So not sure what the homebrew thing is doing (maybe they are swapping to the disk), and what the performance is, but I know that whenever I started Procreate on my older iPads, very few apps would survive staying in background.

As for the fact that you want full display support - I feel you. Apple decided to tie this to Stage Manager - they could've done it differently and allow it on more iPads. They didn't, and perhaps that's a bad decision - but, again, that doesn't mean the limitations are artificial for the approach they chose.

 

[hans1972]

So then what about swap files running on spinning disks? I mean this to me was a slap in the face response (from Apple not you aevan). Swap files have been around for decades in OSX-Windows-Linux.

And they're slooow.

You and others wants "multitasking where the user is in control and it's the user's responsibility to make sure it doesn't get slow and if it do it's the users fault". Apple wants "multi-tasking which can never be slow no matter what the user are trying to do".

The first one is easy to implement. Apple doesn't want that feature.

 

[landi.erik]

Well, look, it depends on the apps. Procreate takes at least 2Gb for an illustration, Safari can easily take 1Gb - and that fills your total memory quite quickly. So not sure what the homebrew thing is doing (maybe they are swapping to the disk), and what the performance is, but I know that whenever I started Procreate on my older iPads, very few apps would survive staying in background.

As for the fact that you want full display support - I feel you. Apple decided to tie this to Stage Manager - they could've done it differently and allow it on more iPads. They didn't, and perhaps that's a bad decision - but, again, that doesn't mean the limitations are artificial for the approach they chose.

I’ll tell you why it’s artificial, in iOS 15 extended display support is available on an app by app basis. Developers have to add some function calls but you don’t always have black bars. The feature is there but not system wide, that’s artificial.

 

[hans1972]

It doesn't bother me much either. What bothers me is Apple's disastrous PR, going with an outright lie ("the old iPad does not support multitasking") and then trying to change that to "the old iPad can actually multitask, but it doesn't perform as we expect".

Had they stood silent, or even said "we have done that due to financial decisions" would still be horrible, but at least I would respect them a little more.

Can you point to a statement from Apple where this quote is from?

 

[aevan]

I just tested the drive speeds on my 256 M1 iPad Pro and my 256 iPhone 12 Pro Max - using an app called Jazz Disk Bench. Not sure how accurate it is but my iPad had W: 900-1000Mb/s and R: 3050Mb/s while the iPhone had W: 250Mb/s and R: 1200Mb/s. So, the new iPad Pro has roughly 3x faster drive speeds than my iPhone. I don't have other iPads to test the speed with, but I can assume it's at iPhone levels.

So, M1 iPads have at least twice the RAM and three times the SSD speed compared to other iPads. That's a big difference when it comes to virtual memory.

 

[johnhackworth]

Most people are really bad at reading original statements from Apple. They rely on third parties to relay it and they are so angry they can't think clearly.

Large internal memory = most iPads don't qualify
Incredible fast storage = most iPads don't qualify, they probably only have fast storage
Flexible external display I/O = my experience is that most iPads sucks with external displays but this is something I have little experience with.

You manage to be both insulting and wrong. I am not disputing that the only iPads capable of running Stage Manager are M1 iPads (this may or may not be the case and this statement from Apple does not address this question). Apple didn't say that non-M1 iPads were incapable of running Stage Manager - they merely stated that M1 iPads can run Stage Manager.

Very different thing - and somewhat telling.

 

[hans1972]

Sure if you don’t mind yearly updates on $1000 iPads this totally makes sense.

If running multiple applications at once in a windowed environment was important to you, you should never have bought an iPad. iPads never really supported that feature. You should buy products which does what you want them to do.

Being able to run multiple applications and have good control of their windows is a major reasons I use a Mac instead of an iPad. Since I know what I'm doing and are able to plan my life, I don't have to upgrade every time Apple comes out with a new feature. I have patience and can wait.

 

[landi.erik]

I just tested the drive speeds on my 256 M1 iPad Pro and my 256 iPhone 12 Pro Max - using an app called Jazz Disk Bench. Not sure how accurate it is but my iPad had W: 900-1000Mb/s and R: 3050Mb/s while the iPhone had W: 250Mb/s and R: 1200Mb/s. So, the new iPad Pro has roughly 3x faster drive speeds than my iPhone. I don't have other iPads to test the speed with, but I can assume it's at iPhone levels.

So, M1 iPads have at least twice the RAM and three times the SSD speed compared to other iPads. That's a big difference when it comes to virtual memory.

Ran 2 runs off My iPad Pro 11’ 2020 with 256GB storage and 6GB RAM. Write is about 75% ish of M1 and Read is 35-40% ish. I really don’t think that’s an enough difference just on RAW read\write performance. So again makes me think this is artificial.

 

[rui no onna]

I just tested the drive speeds on my 256 M1 iPad Pro and my 256 iPhone 12 Pro Max - using an app called Jazz Disk Bench. Not sure how accurate it is but my iPad had W: 900-1000Mb/s and R: 3050Mb/s while the iPhone had W: 250Mb/s and R: 1200Mb/s. So, the new iPad Pro has roughly 3x faster drive speeds than my iPhone. I don't have other iPads to test the speed with, but I can assume it's at iPhone levels.

So, M1 iPads have at least twice the RAM and three times the SSD speed compared to other iPads. That's a big difference when it comes to virtual memory.

Latencies are where you see a big difference.

2018 iPad Pro 12.9 1TB


2021 iPad Pro 12.9 1TB

 

[4jasontv]

They aren't incapable of running Stage Manager but might be running it in a good way.

Let's say you have 4Gb of memory in your iPad. What should Stage Manager/iPad OS do if one application request 16Gb of memory?

Without having a lot of time to think about it... freeze apps in the order of last used. What I don’t want to see is user management of system resources.

If running multiple applications at once in a windowed environment was important to you, you should never have bought an iPad. iPads never really supported that feature. You should buy products which does what you want them to do.

Being able to run multiple applications and have good control of their windows is a major reasons I use a Mac instead of an iPad. Since I know what I'm doing and are able to plan my life, I don't have to upgrade every time Apple comes out with a new feature. I have patience and can wait.

What if what is important to you is getting reliable and complete OS updates? A far better approach would have been to hold this feature back until the entire lineup was m1, and then launch it.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

You know the 4th gen air was the current gen up till a grand total of 3 months ago, right? It’s hardly approaching end of support…

There ARE sites that help folks that have a strong fear of missing out.

MacRumors Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy iPhone, Mac, iPad

This page provides a product summary for each Apple model. The intent is to provide our best recommendations regarding current product cycles, and to provide a summary of currently available rumors for each model. This page is based on rumors and speculation and we provide no guarantee to its...

buyersguide.macrumors.com

Anyone that checked 3 months ago would likely have seen “Don’t Buy”. Anyone that MUST have the latest but then doesn’t check to see if what they’re buying is the latest… well that’s on them.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Wow.
Never worked at a place that does it that way.
Mine have always been much more structured and the “device(s)” was never an up front factor unless it was decided beforehand as part of the project statement.

I’ve actually not known any software company that doesn’t define “system requirements” right up front. Which would include which devices it is expected to run on. So that folks don’t build for a phone and then find out at the end that the “device” was supposed to be a mainframe.

 

[aevan]

Latencies are where you see a big difference.

2018 iPad Pro 12.9 1TB
View attachment 2018279

2021 iPad Pro 12.9 1TB
View attachment 2018277

Wow, those write speeds are much faster on 1Tb models.

 

[4jasontv]

There ARE sites that help folks that have a strong fear of missing out.

MacRumors Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy iPhone, Mac, iPad

This page provides a product summary for each Apple model. The intent is to provide our best recommendations regarding current product cycles, and to provide a summary of currently available rumors for each model. This page is based on rumors and speculation and we provide no guarantee to its...

buyersguide.macrumors.com

Anyone that checked 3 months ago would likely have seen “Don’t Buy”. Anyone that MUST have the latest but then doesn’t check to see if what they’re buying is the latest… well that’s on them.

And anyone who goes into an apple store and says give me the newest iPad…? What about them?

 

[Mr. Dee]

iOS shares most of the basic kernel and low-level code with OS X / macOS.

iOS has built-in pre-emptive multitasking and the same memory management mechanism as macOS.

It's just that iOS and iPad OS just takes more control and disallows the user/developer to run applications simultaneously and use too much memory.

Hence the reason then a 2018 iPad should not be missing functionality like Stage Manager. If it shares so much in common with macOS, there isn't any reason why Apple needs to implement arbitrary requirements. The limited support for the 2018 iPad is as bad as it is, but come on, not even the 2020 iPad with A12z or even iPad with A15? Nah, that's crazy. I hate to interject Steve Jobs here, but he would not allow it. You can't start having these forked experiences in the product lines. Its not a good look for the overall user experience.

 

[hans1972]

I wanna support your argument, but that's a bit of a stretch. Are you suggesting freezing apps is a form of multitasking?

Example 1:
Let's take an app which plays music like Music or Spotify.

It can both

1) play a song

and simultaneously

2) update the screen with lyrics, counting up the time which has passed since the song started etc.

3) downloading the next song in the background

Boom! We have multitasking.

Example 2:
Or even on early iPhones:

1) Play some music
2) Start a navigation in the Maps app
3) Start the Mail app and it downloads the newest emails while you are
4) open, reading and deleting emails

Boom! We have multitasking

Example 3:
You have a chess app and an iPad with 6 cores. There are 32 possible moves in the current position. The app uses Grand Central Dispatch to create 32 threads to calculate the chess positions further down from those 32 first moves.

The iPad OS scheduler will run those 32 threads across 6 cores 6 threads at a time.

Boom! We have multitasking and the device calculating 6 things simultaneously.


People seems to think that the unit of multitasking is an application, which it isn't. It's processes and threads.

 

[throAU]

The 2020 iPad Pro is approaching the end of support??? 🙄

By the time this is out of beta, it will be close to 2023 and Applecare ends after 3 years. If you bought a 2020 ipad pro in 2020, it is now most certainly "mid life" (approaching the latter half) in terms of product cycle.

The 2020 pro was basically the same as a 2018 Pro. It was not a new product in 2020. A12X to A12Z was a tiny spec bump of little significance.

Whether or not it works or technically gets security updates beyond that is another matter, but as far as being a target for active product development of new features... don't expect much. It's essentially a 4+ year old product at this point.

 

[aevan]

A far better approach would have been to hold this feature back until the entire lineup was m1, and then launch it.

Better for whom? Why would you limit more powerful devices because of less powerful ones? They are not limiting the entire OS, but why wouldn’t they design cutting edge features exclusive to best hardware?

Should they also limit new iPhone features until they trickle down to previous iPhones or iPhone SE?

 

[landi.erik]

If running multiple applications at once in a windowed environment was important to you, you should never have bought an iPad. iPads never really supported that feature. You should buy products which does what you want them to do.

Being able to run multiple applications and have good control of their windows is a major reasons I use a Mac instead of an iPad. Since I know what I'm doing and are able to plan my life, I don't have to upgrade every time Apple comes out with a new feature. I have patience and can wait.

I own both, I just wanna run Zoom calls and reference something in excel on this device. I don’t think that’s too much to ask which has been asked by me in numerous betas FOR YEARS.

Hiding that fix behind hardware shows at a bare minimum lazy coding or mis-managed UI guidelines and from a more cynical perspective a business decision.

Also kinda rude to tell me how to buy products, I’ve not told anyone how to fan-boy (or fan-girl) or apple-bash. Ive merely stated that the technical explanation Apple has stated does not jibe with evidence provided (Jailbrake mods, Dev flags in iPad OS, A12Z DTK, stage manager like functions in OSX beta). There is enough evidence to at least question the decision, as an RF Electrical engineer I use questions\skepticism as the base of iterative design.

 

[4jasontv]

Better for whom? Why would you limit more powerful devices because of less powerful ones? They are not limiting the entire OS, but why wouldn’t they design cutting edge features exclusive to best hardware?

Everyone. It's better for everyone if the only choice one needs to worry about at POS is what size device they want. No one loses anything if they never had an alternative.

Should they also limit new iPhone features until they trickle down to previous iPhones or iPhone SE?

YES! Absolutely YES! I have been saying this for years. The only difference that should exist between different iPhones or iPads is the size of the screen. If you can't fit the M1 in the mini, keep it out of the Max/Pro.