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Apple's Craig Federighi Further Explains Why Stage Manager is Only for M1 iPads
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Backlash seems to be working, two phony explanations in a week
Here’s a definition of forced obsolescence from the Cambridge dictionary:
“the fact that a product is intentionally designed and made so that it will not last for a long time”
The fact that iPad models without M1 will not get this particular feature is not forced or planned obsolescence. Your iPad won’t suddenly blow up. Your apps will continue working. And guess what? You’ll continue to get iPadOS updates for years to come. You can continue to use split view and slide over. And the existing multi-tasking interface will keep working. This feature wasn’t even on the Horizon when your iPad Pro 1st gen from 2015 was in development. Heck it probably wasn’t in active development until 2020 at best.
Now let’s also examine a few of the arguments floating around.
1. Old computers could do windowed multi tasking.
This is true. But could they do that while outputting to a 6K display? No. They lack the I/O, the GPU and the memory. Todays apps require vastly more memory and are an order of magnitude more complex.
2. 10 year old tablets and Samsung Dex can do windowed multi tasking.
Also true. But those devices are running crippled scaled up phone apps that use vastly less memory, are way less feature rich and can’t compete with the class of apps on the iPad. Android tablets never have and at this rate it’ll be a miracle if they ever do.
3. Apple could have just scaled the feature down on older iPads
Possibly true. And in doing so deliver a subpar experience. Does your iPad get to run two windowed apps? Three? What resolution does your iPad get to output to? 1080p? 1440p? It would create complexity and result in engineers having to go through the development hell of making the feature run in a less than ideal environment in each successive iPadOS release until those devices are no longer supported. For a 2020 iPad Pro that could be as long as 2027 if we compare to the iPad Pro from 2015 that still gets iPadOS 16. And all that work to deliver a rudimentary experience just to please a vocal minority? I think not.
4. The dev kit with the A12Z could do windowed multi tasking
Again true. But with 16GB of ram, running macOS and with access to large amounts of native, fast, flash storage. Not the 4GB of RAM of some of the iPadOS 16 supported devices with as little as 64GB of storage.
5. Apple could have made it work if they wanted to. Jail breakers can.
If jailbreakers are so talented then I applaud them. They should march upon Apple Park, demand the engineers at Apple resign and take up their jobs. Except most of them (with the odd exception now and then) are no where near as capable, talented, experienced or have the necessary skill to ship working features at scale. Jail broken features are often buggy as hell and just a complete mess.
I’m sure Apple could have made a lesser experience for older devices. But why should they? They have created what they believe is the full fledged experience that they want to act as a benchmark moving forward. The already 15 month old iPad Pro with M1 will get support. The current iPad Air will get support. And all future iPads with M series chips will get support too. That doesn’t mean you can’t continue to enjoy your current iPad or benefit from other feature updates in iPadOS 16.
But if you know better, then go demand Craig resign. Take on the role of SVP for software engineering and show them that “they could have done it if they wanted”. But that isn’t going to happen because 90% of the comments in this thread are from people with neither the skill, nor the conviction to even begin to understand the complexity of building these kinds of feature sets (or any for that matter as most people can’t code).
If you don’t like Apple’s decision, then don’t buy another iPad. Vote with your wallet. But that doesn’t mean you’re right or that anybody has to listen (or care). I’m sure you’ll be fine and so will Apple. Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to enjoy our iPads.
“the fact that a product is intentionally designed and made so that it will not last for a long time”
The fact that iPad models without M1 will not get this particular feature is not forced or planned obsolescence. Your iPad won’t suddenly blow up. Your apps will continue working. And guess what? You’ll continue to get iPadOS updates for years to come. You can continue to use split view and slide over. And the existing multi-tasking interface will keep working. This feature wasn’t even on the Horizon when your iPad Pro 1st gen from 2015 was in development. Heck it probably wasn’t in active development until 2020 at best.
Now let’s also examine a few of the arguments floating around.
1. Old computers could do windowed multi tasking.
This is true. But could they do that while outputting to a 6K display? No. They lack the I/O, the GPU and the memory. Todays apps require vastly more memory and are an order of magnitude more complex.
2. 10 year old tablets and Samsung Dex can do windowed multi tasking.
Also true. But those devices are running crippled scaled up phone apps that use vastly less memory, are way less feature rich and can’t compete with the class of apps on the iPad. Android tablets never have and at this rate it’ll be a miracle if they ever do.
3. Apple could have just scaled the feature down on older iPads
Possibly true. And in doing so deliver a subpar experience. Does your iPad get to run two windowed apps? Three? What resolution does your iPad get to output to? 1080p? 1440p? It would create complexity and result in engineers having to go through the development hell of making the feature run in a less than ideal environment in each successive iPadOS release until those devices are no longer supported. For a 2020 iPad Pro that could be as long as 2027 if we compare to the iPad Pro from 2015 that still gets iPadOS 16. And all that work to deliver a rudimentary experience just to please a vocal minority? I think not.
4. The dev kit with the A12Z could do windowed multi tasking
Again true. But with 16GB of ram, running macOS and with access to large amounts of native, fast, flash storage. Not the 4GB of RAM of some of the iPadOS 16 supported devices with as little as 64GB of storage.
5. Apple could have made it work if they wanted to. Jail breakers can.
If jailbreakers are so talented then I applaud them. They should march upon Apple Park, demand the engineers at Apple resign and take up their jobs. Except most of them (with the odd exception now and then) are no where near as capable, talented, experienced or have the necessary skill to ship working features at scale. Jail broken features are often buggy as hell and just a complete mess.
I’m sure Apple could have made a lesser experience for older devices. But why should they? They have created what they believe is the full fledged experience that they want to act as a benchmark moving forward. The already 15 month old iPad Pro with M1 will get support. The current iPad Air will get support. And all future iPads with M series chips will get support too. That doesn’t mean you can’t continue to enjoy your current iPad or benefit from other feature updates in iPadOS 16.
But if you know better, then go demand Craig resign. Take on the role of SVP for software engineering and show them that “they could have done it if they wanted”. But that isn’t going to happen because 90% of the comments in this thread are from people with neither the skill, nor the conviction to even begin to understand the complexity of building these kinds of feature sets (or any for that matter as most people can’t code).
If you don’t like Apple’s decision, then don’t buy another iPad. Vote with your wallet. But that doesn’t mean you’re right or that anybody has to listen (or care). I’m sure you’ll be fine and so will Apple. Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to enjoy our iPads.
This is a 100% business and marketing decision. They know it and if you been in this world long enough you would know it too. The technical requirements were designed to fit the M1 iPads only. Apple doesn't like that people are not upgrading their iPads fast enough, and this is a strategy to encourage that, hold back new features to the newest products only.
As for Craig F, well, he can't say anything else.
As for Craig F, well, he can't say anything else.
Before they brain wash you about the "weak" iPad Pro 2020 (A12Z) remember they used it to build the apple chip developer kits. I spent close to $1600 on my 2020 iPad Pro LTE with Magic Keyboard, stop gaslighting me that it is somehow ancient tech.
It would have been "more reasonable" to claim that the non M1s just don't have enough RAM.
everymac.com
It would have been "more reasonable" to claim that the non M1s just don't have enough RAM.
Mac mini Developer Transition Kit (DTK) Specs (Apple DTK, MYAL2LL/A, ADP3,2, A2330, 3568): EveryMac.com
Technical specifications for the Mac mini Developer Transition Kit (DTK). Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.
everymac.com
I don’t disagree. See below. The point I was making was that Apple is going to make people mad either way.
I wouldn’t mind if they’d given the old iPads anything. But the only thing they got was a new lock screen font…?
Hope you got the 256gb or the memory feature won’t work
They never cared about a good user experience. iPhones before the 12Pro with crappy RAM could never multitask. That’s not a $1k phone user experience. I was too naive when i bought the 2018 and 11Pro iPhone, both 4GB ram. The lack of ram still hounds me on the iPad. Posted a long time ago about the death of the 2018/20 iPads when the air got M1.
I was literally just about to say this. For those of you who just want to complain without knowing how this technology works, please go read up on how the A12X and the M1 chips are designed on Anandtech’s website first. They’ve explained everything really well and there’s very clear cut differences between the two. The M1 builds up more on the A14 than the A12X or A12Z but is way faster in terms of memory bandwidth and I/O.
Sure, maybe they could have had just a few apps be open. But I still think this would be a subpar experience which would have led to another debate about how “Apple is making my iPad obsolete”. People will inevitably complain and that’s fine. But sometimes there’s more to it than just pure business decisions. At least in this case to an extent.
Having tried Stage Manager every day since the beta has been out, I quite like it. I really thought I would never use it but it’s pretty good. The apps scale really well to the window sizing and everything remains fluid and open in the background. I’ve even increased the pixel density by turning on the “more space” setting and it makes it better. It’s still in the first beta and Craig said in an interview with Techrader that refinements are coming in seeds two or three.
As for the decision to have black bars on older iPads connected to external displays, that should have been fixed. Usb C on the iPad Pro 2018 and 2020, while still a lot slower than Thunderbolt on the M1 iPads, can still output up to 4K.
And before you come at me, I’m a PhD student and I also majored in Computer Science.
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It would be hilarious if next year, they introduced “BACKSTAGE Display“ that only ran on M2 iPads.
You do realize that those Mac’s also had more RAM, even though their SSD speeds were ‘slower’ than todays offerings.
The last we had 4GB RAM in Mac’s was the MacBook Air and Pro way back in 2012 to maybe 2014 ish. I had one of those Air’s and I can tell you that the memory pressure that it was going through with moderate apps was way too much. I ended up getting more RAM with a third party service that helped things.
Not to mention that most of those systems also had active cooling for such situations that the iPad does not.
I don't believe anything you have said. Do you really think Apple didn't plan this feature at least two or three years ahead?
Apple does know this feature and does know what is required, yet they still designed this way. It is funny to me that 2021 iPad mini couldn't get this stage manager. A less than one year old product is already unable to get all iPadOS feature. If this is not planned obsolesce, then what is?
I have Windows laptop which with 8th generation Intel processor hooked up with 4K display and I can run multi-windows without noticeable lag.
Yes. My last iPad was 2018 iPad Pro 12.9 and I really doesn't use it beside some bedtime movie watch. I rather want to use my decade old MacBook Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo) or Windows machine than using iPad.
The fact the iPadOS 16 stage manager is so awkward is very telling. The fact that you cannot resize windows to whatever size you wish, you have limitation on how many apps you can open at once. It is like Apple trying so hard to make iPadOS more desktop OS, but failed magnificently.
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Selling iPads after the release of M1 knowing the next OS would require it meets your definition of forced obsolescence.
Except no one is asking for 6k to be added to their existing iPad. Since existing iPads can already do multitasking there is no the reason this new UI can work without M1.
Most iPad apps are just iPhone apps with modified UI. Some don't even have the modified UI.
It wouldn't be a subpar experience given they already run multiple apps at once.
Then kill off more devices. Let apple admit they are not supporting older devices. That's their choice, but do it honorably and say we are no longer supporting hardware that is only months old. None of this cake and eat it to attitude.
This vote with your wallet nonsense needs to stop.
Anyone who purchased a non-M1 iPad already voted with their wallet.
In order to do that, they would basically have to give Stage Manager to those macs, but only allow it on the external screen, and only allow 1 full screen app. "Stage Assistant Manager"
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the how iPadOS works. My Apple IIgs has a 2.8 mhz 65816 processor and can run multi-windows too. Does your Windows laptop have 6 GB of RAM and an ssd the same speed as an A12 iPad Pro?
This is circular logic. How iPadOS works is irrelevant. They make iPadOS. If they can't get it to work build it differently so it does.
I would rather go back to no one getting OS updates than fragmenting product lines with post-sale limitations. Every iPad being supported should be exactly the same in terms of feature sets. Just like every iPhone should be identical and every copy of MacOS should be identical. Either the hardware supports the OS or it doesn't.
This would kill Apple's reputation, but it's better to be upfront than dishonest.
I wish they would just make it a more straightforward answer. There does not appear to be some magical performance requirement, as stage manager is supported on a 2017 MacBook (Intel m3).
iPads going all the way back to A10 chip outperform the Intel m3:
2017 MacBook with Intel m3 = 142/871 (single core/multi-core)
iPad 2 with A5 = 260/489
iPad 7th gen with A10 = 746/1419
M1 = 1699/7314
The real answer seems quite a bit more simple: they can't make it work with less than 8gb RAM. All M1 iPads (and no prior models) have 8GB or more. Interestingly, all Ventura-supported Macs also shipped with 8gb or more. Some models prior to the supported models shipped with less.
iPads going all the way back to A10 chip outperform the Intel m3:
2017 MacBook with Intel m3 = 142/871 (single core/multi-core)
iPad 2 with A5 = 260/489
iPad 7th gen with A10 = 746/1419
M1 = 1699/7314
The real answer seems quite a bit more simple: they can't make it work with less than 8gb RAM. All M1 iPads (and no prior models) have 8GB or more. Interestingly, all Ventura-supported Macs also shipped with 8gb or more. Some models prior to the supported models shipped with less.
No, you missed the point. They don't want to build it a different way. It is already working properly. They know how computers work that do that- I bet they've even heard of Macs!
iPadOS (and iOS) have somewhat different goals, and they work differently as a result. That's why iPadOS kills background apps and browser tabs, and has limited multitasking, while macOS will happily consume memory until the system grinds to a near halt in critical memory situations.
I bet those 8GB RAM Macs also have "laptop" class storage hardware vs. the more "tablet/mobile" class storage that's also in pre-M1 iPads.