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Alongside the release of iPadOS 16 on Monday, MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci shared some candid feedback about Stage Manager, a new feature that allows for multiple overlapping windowed apps on the iPad. Viticci expressed his continued disappointment with Stage Manager, criticizing it as an "over-designed" and "poorly tested" feature with a "muddled constellation of missing features, bugs, and confusing interactions."

ipados-16-stage-manager.jpg

"Right now, Stage Manager is just another mode that was tacked onto existing iPad apps, disabled by default, slimmed down in scope, and shipped with a plethora of bugs," wrote Viticci. "It's disheartening to see Apple fumble this opportunity so badly."

Viticci shared a long list of bugs, technical issues, and challenges that he experienced while using Stage Manager and that he says are still present in the iPadOS 16 version released to the public this week. For example, he said there are keyboard-related bugs when QuickType predictions are enabled, layout bugs when switching the iPad from portrait to landscape orientation, full-screen app windows resizing incorrectly, and much more.

While he believes that windowing on iPadOS can be useful, Viticci said that Apple has botched the execution with Stage Manager so far.

"There's the seed of a valid idea behind Stage Manager: create a continuum between the Mac and iPad that allows power users to go beyond what iPadOS has offered thus far," he wrote. "But that idea has been paired with the worst technical implementation of multitasking I've seen from Apple in the several years I've been using and writing about the iPad."

Viticci is hopeful that Apple will be open to feedback and continue to iterate on Stage Manager in future iPadOS 16 versions. He also hopes that Apple will release an API for developers next year that will allow apps to better support the multitasking feature.

Stage Manager supports up to four apps on an iPad's built-in screen, while another four apps will be supported on an external display on iPad models with the M1 chip and newer. However, Apple delayed external display support for Stage Manager and said the functionality will return in a software update later this year.

Viticci's full Stage Manager review can be read over at MacStories.

Article Link: Stage Manager Criticized as 'Poorly Tested' Feature With 'Plethora of Bugs' Still Unfixed as iPadOS 16 Released
 
He's not wrong.

I'm over the moon about it on the Mac.

On the iPad, its a UI that causes me to lose a good 1/3 or more of my app workspace when apps are at their max because I can't get rid of the dock and struggle to get rid of the sidebar. And that's for a single app. Start adding multiple apps to the mix and its a ******** of missized clutter-clausing apps, some acting like iPhone apps, some like iPad Mini apps, some just totally lost and crashing and others that forget their very existance.

In my thread praising the Mac implementation, I called the iPad implementation a refinery fire with fireballs and explosions. I stick to that.
 
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Stage Manager on macOS hasn’t been working so well for me. For one, it mainly makes sense if you keep apps to a very small window, but on the limited screen real estate of a MacBook Pro, I virtually never do that, so I always have the sidebar covered by the app window. Seems like it would work better on a 5K display. Secondly, I noticed that when opening a new document in Pages or anything that takes a few seconds to load, Stage Manager thinks Pages has closed and reloads a different app you have open for a couple seconds while the document opens, then goes back to Pages. It’s really annoying. I’m not sure if I’ll keep using this feature at the moment.
 
Stage Manager is the solution to a problem that didn't even exist. Makes sense to try and unify the experience across iPadOS & macOS, but it seems like macOS does this pretty well already. A better 'solution' would probably be to just bring the macOS Desktop to iPadOS...
 
I think the best case scenario will be that Stage Manager improves over time (obviously) or it evolves into the rumoured “limited version of macOS” — not as a separate OS, but a more Mac-like desktop experience option for those who want it. One can dream… lol.
 
The software/OS developers usually don't mind, and are even happy to see these bugs exist and when users are annoyed by these bugs. Because users will still need to rely on them and continue paying them. Evernote, Windows and Apple are examples.
 
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I spent a few minutes yesterday playing around with it on both a MacBook Air and an iPad Pro.

On the iPad, it doesn’t totally suck. I don’t tend to want to do a lot of multitasking on the iPad, but, when I do, I’ll certainly use it rather than the complete disaster that the whole split-screen mess was before.

On the Mac … it’s useless. Double-click the title bar and it obscures the stage manager dock. I fiddled around for a moment resizing windows … and realized it gives me nothing whatsoever that I didn’t have before. Or, if it does, it’s too far hidden for me to care.

b&
 
Stage mananger is kind of irrelevant in an desktop macOS UI and under ipad screens that are barley 11" most of them
This is great for external display and this is the future for the ipad if Apple invest more and more time for this
Maybe i can see the use case if the rumored of an 14" ipad pro is becoming true but still nothing compares to ipadOS on an external 21" or 27" etc
 
When the behind-the-scenes tell-all book is written about the Tim Cook Era (and it will be), this period will no doubt reveal a shtstorm of bad employee morale; infighting and competing agendas within teams and between cross-functional teams; a lack of direction from upper management; initiatives like Apple Car and VR/AR going rudderless; distractions from legal battles on all fronts and high level executives/creatives leaving; pandemic related supply chain and logistics issues; union and WFH issues, etc etc etc etc. It will be regarded as a miracle that any products went out the door at all.

Everyone: Sooooo.....pretty much like every company the past five years?

Me: Yep.
 
Why stop with Stage Manager?

the new release is embarrassingly buggy. For example, open a folder from the dock and 90% of the screen is dimmed. Can’t tap in the regular 10% area, so have to tap in the oversized box area.

there’s two problems here. One, no way to miss this bug. no way. ..it’s tapping on your dock and opening a folder. And yet apple shipped it anyway.

and how did this bug get created in the first place? It’s not like apple changed the dock in iOS 16.

tim needs to spend less time at F1 waving flags and more time paying attention to the rotten software core. O way to be a services business if the software to run it do not work.
 
He's not wrong.

I'm over the moon about it on the Mac.

On the iPad, its a UI that causes me to lose a good 1/3 or more of my app workspace when apps are at their max because I can't get rid of the dock and struggle to get rid of the sidebar. And that's for a single app. Start adding multiple apps to the mix and its a s***show of missized clutter-clausing apps, some acting like iPhone apps, some like iPad Mini apps, some just totally lost and crashing and others that forget their very existance.

In my thread praising the Mac implementation, I called the iPad implementation a refinery fire with fireballs and explosions. I stick to that.
It certainly doesn’t fix most of the issues with stage manager, but if you press and hold on the toggle in control center, it lets you automatically hide and show the sidebar and dock
 
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