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

[walnuts]

I'm sorry, but the whole reason it took so long to get multiple windows is not that we needed to wait for M1 iPads, it was Apple being pushed to figure out a new way to do it that wouldn't scare the folks who wanted a simple iPad. Apple for years shipped way less powerful Macs with less ram than the prior generation iPad that somehow were able to display multiple windows on screen.

To be clear, I don't think its some conspiracy- I think it was an engineering choice. Making it work with the older iPads probably would have required more aggressive memory swap, etc. and they made the choice to cut it where they did. I disagree with that choice.

I think it would a disappointing exercise to go back and watch when they announced the last iPad Pro, and listen to them talk about all the amazing things it could do, knowing that "display multiple windows" apparently isn't one of them.

 

[ruka.snow]

My old MacBook had 512 MB and it was able to run iTunes, AOL, MSN and AIM simultaneously just fine. Either that is BS or Apple lost the plot when it comes to how the iPadOS architecture is built

Those applications also consumed 10s of MB if RAM, not almost a GB each. Your old MacBook doesn’t have enough RAM to run WindowServer that is pulling over 900 MB on my Mac just now. Even Discord is taking over 1GB and this forum is eating up 188 MB on Safari plus the 150 MB from the main Safari process.

 

[Manzanito]

the crap is stages itself , over complicated . Just give full view external monitor without multi tasking !

That would have been great, even running a single app in different windows (e.g., video or photo editing apps) would make it worth the effort.

 

[aevan]

People: "We have these M1 chips in iPads, but they are not used to their full potential. Why would the iPad even have an M1 chip inside? Apple, give us something that is built for all that power, give me a reason to buy an M1 iPad!"

Apple gives us something that is built for all that power and a reason to buy an M1 iPad.

People: "Why doesn't it work on older chips, though?"

 

[TimB21]

There's an awful lot of whining going on in here.

If you can do better, do better! Otherwise...

 

[Elijen]

I assume they will not say "it's because we want you to buy a new iPad LOL" or "A14 and A13 suck"

 

[Wando64]

the crap is stages itself , over complicated . Just give full view external monitor without multi tasking !

Apps can already do this, if the developers want to.
For example, I can edit a video in Lumafusion while playing the video full screen on an external 4K monitor.

 

[Tubamajuba]

in before "iPadOS 16 on Unsupported iPads Thread"

Technically, some older iPads are "supported" on iPadOS 16. As in, some form of code will be pushed to them later in the fall with the iPadOS 16 name attached to it.

Realistically? They're dead. Based on the way they've treated 1- and 2-year-old iPads this year, I wouldn't be shocked at all if they drop support for all A-series iPads and Intel Macs next year.

 

[Alex Cai]

Maybe Apple can cut the external display since there’s no thunderbolt or 2x faster usb-c. But if the external display function is cut, the iPad is left with 4 windows at once, which definitely possible on A12Z and A14. I just don’t like Apple cutting the whole thing off

Apps can already do this, if the developers want to.
For example, I can edit a video in Lumafusion while playing the video full screen on an external 4K monitor.

Yes and users need thunderbolt 4 to do this

People are going to still whine, but Apple just provided a definitive technical reason. As far as I’m concerned the case is closed.

The same goes for new iOS versions on older iPhones. It’s a super laggy experience that most people wouldn’t actually want, which is why Apple periodically stops supporting older models.

I think you’re right

Apple knew this would be a point that was going to be brought up and surely even had this statement and response ready.

Apple challenged themselves with their new M1 chip to push iPadOS to a new limit and achieved it.

Stage Manager looks great. And true external monitor support, cmon.

Yeah, Apple heard that users are wanting external monitor suppport so they’ve made it. Hardware have to be good enough to accomplish that

 

[Jim Lahey]

External display, maybe, but Stage Manager? Pull the other one. Computers have been doing this stuff for literal decades. I don't buy the notion that somehow in 2022 it requires a quantum processor in iPad. I'd rather they just admit that too many buyers are not willing to upgrade past the 2018 Pro.

 

[Manzanito]

People: "We have these M1 chips in iPads, but they are not used to their full potential. Why would the iPad even have an M1 chip inside? Apple, give us something that is built for all that power, give me a reason to buy an M1 iPad!"

Apple gives us something that is built for all that power and a reason to buy an M1 iPad.

People: "Why doesn't it work on older chips, though?"

Kind of. Maybe the whole stage thing isn’t possible to run on older chips, but some sort of external screen might have been possible to implement.

 

[Htsi]

I knew the 4GB ram would be the death of my 2018. Their explanation still huff.

 

[BF1M]

External display, maybe, but Stage Manager? Pull the other one. Computers have been doing this stuff for literal decades. I don't buy the notion that somehow in 2022 it requires a quantum processor in iPad. I'd rather they just admit that too many buyers are not willing to upgrade past the 2018 Pro.

Exactly. Especially considering 90 percent of what 90 percent of iPad owners use their iPads to do, you can do adequately on what? The original air?

 

[Tubamajuba]

Yeah, Apple heard that users are wanting external monitor suppport so they’ve made it. Hardware have to be good enough to accomplish that

I'm sorry, but if Apple can't make full external monitor support work on something like the A12X that has almost a teraflop of GPU performance and CPU performance nearing that of an i7-7700, they may very well have the least qualified developers to ever set foot in any major tech company.

Even full fledged macOS supported true multitasking with 4 and 6GB of RAM, so why can't Apple do it when they're working with significantly faster CPU, RAM, and SSDs?

The truth is, they can do both of those things. However, as this thread exemplifies so well, the massive amount of fans that believe everything they say without question ensures that they don't have to.

 

[BootsWalking]

Stage Manager is a fully integrated experience that provides all-new windowing experience that is incredibly fast and responsive and allow users to run 8 apps simultaneously across iPad and an external display with up to 6K resolution. Delivering this experience with the immediacy users expect from iPad's touch-first experience requires large internal memory, incredibly fast storage, and flexible external display I/O, all of which are delivered by iPads with the M1 chip.

Aside from the external display support, which is entirely optional to the feature, a $99 Chromebook running an Intel Celeron N4000 provides a "windowing experience". The Geekbench 5 score for the N4000 is 389/689 (single/multi-core). A 2018 iPad Pro running an A12X has a score of 1118/4731, which is approximately equivalent to an Intel 11th generation Rocket Lake, which was only just recently supplanted by Intel's 12th generation.

 

[AppliedMicro]

I wouldn't be shocked at all if they drop support for all A-series iPads and Intel Macs next year.

Realistically, they won't.

They released two new A-series iPads less than a year ago.
And the iPad mini will likely still be sold next year.

 

[barkomatic]

This is disappointing as I feel my 2020 iPad Pro shouldn't be missing out on this feature, but I've pretty much placed iPads solidly in the entertainment category. A device to take with you on a trip to watch content when you don't wanna lug a laptop and that's it. It's really not good for anything else and Apple will never allow it to be much more than a secondary device.

 

[Tubamajuba]

Stage Manager is a fully integrated experience that provides all-new windowing experience that is incredibly fast and responsive and allow users to run 8 apps simultaneously across iPad and an external display with up to 6K resolution. Delivering this experience with the immediacy users expect from iPad's touch-first experience requires large internal memory, incredibly fast storage, and flexible external display I/O, all of which are delivered by iPads with the M1 chip.

Aside from the external display support, which is entirely optional to the feature, a $99 Chromebook running an Intel Celeron N4000 provides a "windowing experience". The Geekbench 5 score for the N4000 is 389/689 (single/multi-core). A 2018 iPad Pro running an A12X has a score of 1118/4731, which is approximately equivalent to an Intel 11th generation Rocket Lake, which was only just recently supplanted by Intel's 12th generation.

I cannot stress enough how ****** the Celeron N4000 is. Google basically turned water into wine with how smoothly Chrome OS runs on it.

Meanwhile, Apple is trying to tell us that the half-full glass of water they sold us a little over a year ago can't hold more water.

 

[ruka.snow]

This is disappointing as I feel my 2020 iPad Pro shouldn't be missing out on this feature, but I've pretty much placed iPads solidly in the entertainment category. A device to take with you on a trip to watch content when you don't wanna lug a laptop and that's it. It's really not good for anything else and Apple will never allow it to be much more than a secondary device.

When I bought my M1 iPad Pro with 16 GB RAM, I bought it based on what it could do right there and then with the software I am using and developing. If Stage Manger was destined for the 2023 iPad Pro and not mine, mine is still doing everything I bought it to do.

 

[barkomatic]

When I bought my M1 iPad Pro with 16 GB RAM, I bought it based on what it could do right there and then with the software I am using and developing. If Stage Manger was destined for the 2023 iPad Pro and not mine, mine is still doing everything I bought it to do.

Well, Apple did market the iPad as a "computer" and sold a keyboard for it with a price to match(when you added it together). Even with this upgrade, it still lacks the full capability of a Mac or PC laptop as window management and multitasking is still a nightmare. If the only tech you need for work is answering email I guess it will work for you but much beyond that Apple cripples it. Way too pricey for what it doesn't do. It's a really good content viewer though.

 

[ruka.snow]

Well, Apple did market the iPad as a "computer" and sold a keyboard for it with a price to match(when you added it together). Even with this upgrade, it still lacks the full capability of a Mac or PC laptop as window management and multitasking is still a nightmare. If the only tech you need for work is answering email I guess it will work for you but much beyond that Apple cripples it. Way too pricey for what it doesn't do. It's a really good content viewer though.

It is indeed marketed as a computer with its current OS and not based on any promised OS enhancements. Amazingly it is also way more capable than you are giving it credit, many businesses are entirely run on iPads and even for professional photography I am now able to import nearly a TB of RAW images which I fully edit and then deliver to clients right from the iPad Pro with no fuss. Sure it would be a little faster on my Mac Studio, but that isn’t in my camera bag and doesn’t come with me to remote and hazardous environments. The new updates to iPad OS will hopefully let me do more, but they aren’t stopping me now or I would have bought a laptop.

 

[jcshas]

Finally something my M1 iPad Pro can do, other iPads cannot. Kidding aside, Stage Manager along with full screen external display Support will be a great feature and I can’t wait to try it out.

 

[superberg]

First, people talking about smoothly moving and resizing windows on old computers are forgetting that you were usually working with an outline of the window, not the full contents of the window itself. They didn’t have the power to perform the calculations to do it live for a good decade or two. Even then, there was a lot of lag! Apple is not going to publicly release something they know will reflect poorly on their product.

Second, iPad apps are not designed like desktop apps. They may not all be built around being resized. There are still apps out there that don’t support features like split screen. Apple has to code workarounds for apps like this, and that will require extra processing and memory.

Third, non-M1 iPads do have external monitor support, but it has to be written into the app. The springboard does not resize to an external monitor, probably because the interface is so obviously touch-based. Mouse interaction was an afterthought.

There are plenty of things Apple does that are worth complaining about, but “Apple didn’t give me a free new feature for an iPad that was never advertised to support it” isn’t one of them.

 

[teh_hunterer]

I'd agree if the A12Z wasn't already on par with some of the chips in macs that will have this feature.

The CPU/GPU power of the A12Z is - the RAM and storage is not though.

 

[ian87w]

Lol. Apple is not going to demo anything to convince anyone. The tiny minority of users unwilling to accept it, can buy a new iPad or get another brand.

Well, this is a company who spent time and money to hold a keynote just to show that antennagate wasn't real.

The new Apple apparently can just BS their way. It actually would've been better if they just stayed silent like usual. Apple never made any statements explaining why previous devices didn't get some features. It's interesting that they made up some excuses now, but it's an empty one since they won't bother showing the evidence.