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iPad Pro Stage Manager (almost useless)
- Thread starter MBX
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The best part of Stage Manager (for me) is external display support. After going to the 16.1 release I again hopped on the beta train (16.2) just to get it back. I’m not sure why it’s part of SM, as it’s incredibly useful on its own. It’s probably the first iPadOS ‘multitasking’ feature that really changes how I use the iPad and takes it much closer to a legitimate laptop replacement/computer.
I’m disappointed in the performance of Stage Manager. Hopefully, they will be able to work out the bugs soon. My Google apps (Sheets, Drive) are freezing up when using SM, but are fine when I turn it off. It may be a Google thing, or it may be an Apple thing, but I’m hoping for a quick resolution. I agree with @MBX ‘s assessment.
I find the split/slide over arrangement more convenient that Stage Manager. What I’m working on goes full or split screen while what I’m referring to goes in the slideover. I don’t understand why they created a second dock down the side of the screen when they already had a dock they could use at the bottom. The whole thing is clunky and over thought with less utility than a windowing interface that everybody in the world knows how to use almost intuitively.
As for use on the mac, the existing windowing is so superior that SM does not even deserve a look. It is another feature, like Launch Pad that 99% of Mac users will never know exists. It combines the “not even remotely necessary” of Launch Pad with the “poorly executed” of the Mac’s native window snapping behavior which should just work like Windows or any of the Linux window managers or even like Better Snap Tool.
They could have done less work, spent less money, and made more people happy and excited about the product by providing a standard windowing interface with a little Apple JuJu to make using it with touch better. It’s hubris to believe everything everything needs to be reimagined.
As for use on the mac, the existing windowing is so superior that SM does not even deserve a look. It is another feature, like Launch Pad that 99% of Mac users will never know exists. It combines the “not even remotely necessary” of Launch Pad with the “poorly executed” of the Mac’s native window snapping behavior which should just work like Windows or any of the Linux window managers or even like Better Snap Tool.
They could have done less work, spent less money, and made more people happy and excited about the product by providing a standard windowing interface with a little Apple JuJu to make using it with touch better. It’s hubris to believe everything everything needs to be reimagined.
Virtually all features being added to an OS are useless (to me) these days. Most of the time when I hear about some new feature, I swear to god, my thought is, "How do they come up with this crap, and who could possibly use such a stupid feature? Did anyone actually ask for this?" I sure as hell don't want, don't need and didn't ask for dialog box requesting approval every time I want to paste something from the damned clipboard into an app. I also didn't ask to have to deal with a "report junk?" prompt every time I delete a messages thread. I SAID DELETE, JUST DELETE IT!! If they're going to come up with this crap, the should at least provide a way to turn it off.
In the meantime, stupid simple stuff that I consider important goes unaddressed. For example, showing that a VPN connection is active in the "status bar" at the top of an iPhone screen. I don't CARE if some app is using my location. I don't need that useless "your location is being used" arrow in the status bar, but I would like to easily see that my VPN is on and working.
You know what else I could use? Auto-deletion, across all devices, after 5 minutes, of any Messages thread that is a 2FA verification code. I hate having to constantly manually delete those messages. But I doubt Apple would ever provide such a useful feature.
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Stage Manager looks amazing on a 4K 55” display with a wireless mouse and keyboard this becomes a daily driveable MiniMac. But it’s an M2 iPad Pro.
I am starting to find some utility in Stage Manager (other than, of course, the very usefull extended display support).
In particular it remedies one of the big iPadOS shortcoming, lack of top and bottom split screen in portrait mode. It's still not as good as Samsung OneUI but it's definitely a welcome option compared to the very limited split screen implementation of iPadOS, which has barely improved since IOS 9....
In particular it remedies one of the big iPadOS shortcoming, lack of top and bottom split screen in portrait mode. It's still not as good as Samsung OneUI but it's definitely a welcome option compared to the very limited split screen implementation of iPadOS, which has barely improved since IOS 9....