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Stage Manager Criticized as 'Poorly Tested' Feature With 'Plethora of Bugs' Still Unfixed as iPadOS 16 Released
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He has no idea and he won't be able to answer. He'll just downvote because he has nothing he can say.
The earliest versions of Mac OS X were buggy, sluggish, incompatible, demanding and restrictive and they were designed over 21 years ago.
Mobile Me was a crashie buggy mess and that was 14 years ago.
Apple Maps was a disaster at launch that fundamentally changed the Apple software team in a major way, and that was a full decade ago.
iOS 8.0.1 literally made phones cellular service completely unusable, and that was eight years ago.
The Touch Bar was six years ago and it still has issues to this day that haven’t been resolved that were there all the way back on day one.
To pretend like there’s been a dramatic decline in the past five years is unbelievably ridiculous.
Apple has always had a some really good and some really bad software, really the only difference now is that it’s just on a wider scale.
So no, I’m throwing that out of the window, stage manager is just a messy launch in a long line of messy launches from Apple that go back decades to before the first iPod.
I’ve talked to people who’ve interviewed for Apple.
Their interviews can be famously thorough and difficult, and that’s what I’ve heard described about their interviews for a simple retail job.
I highly doubt they’re letting anyone touch the internal iOS code who’s any bit not knowledgeable/capable.
And as we seem to hear about every week, they are not afraid to fire someone for even putting the slightest toe out of line, even if they’ve been working at the company for decades.
Stage manager is not a failure because of purple haired software engineers, that’s just a ridiculous statement.
Steve Jobs literally was a hippy who would show up to work barely washed and barefoot, and give lectures about the benefits of LSD during his work hours, how is that any better than people having the audacity to *gasp* put some happiness and color in their appearance while they sit and code for hours and hours on features for literally billions of devices.
I'm using it right now on MacOS -- just to try it out. I also am unsure what problem it is trying to solve. It's not bad on my 27" screen, but I did NOT like it on my smaller MB Air screen - it got in the way. I still find myself just Alt-tabbing around the open apps, or sometimes 4 finger swiping on the Trackpad. Not useful to me unless something changes.
Yeah I tried to play with it for a bit on my iPad and I honestly didn’t like it
It’s much better on Ventura, but I’m not sure I’ll end up using it there either
I’ll give it some more time before I decide
It’s much better on Ventura, but I’m not sure I’ll end up using it there either
I’ll give it some more time before I decide
After using the feature quite a bit over the last week I can say that it’s changed the way that I use my iPad in a positive way. I find my iPad feels more like a Desktop, but refined. I still use my MacBook final cut, however I am trying to get into the flow of LumaFusion. Really pleased with Stage Manager so far!
The problem is that it makes the iPad harder to use, because there are so many interactions already. Now I'm suddenly managing workspaces whereas first I didn't have to.
I understand Apple is forced to have a 'mode' that you turn on/off, because if you don't you essentially have to go for a desktop focused interaction system, making the iPad more complex for users who aren't looking to manage windows.
Let's brainstorm a solution.
So assume we still have that mode. E.g "windowing mode". Let's say I turn it on.
This will create the three-dotted menu at the top of the window (like now) and and the resize handle-bar (like now). But it would also show a tiny X on the top right to quickly close down the window, more akin to a desktop OS.
By default you'd just work in one workspace / stack. Unlike Stage Manager which essentially creates workspaces on the fly which for many is confusing.
If I'd press-and-hold an icon on the dock or an app on the desktop, I would see the option "+ new window", if the app supports it. It would also show the open windows of that specific app as thumbnails with an abbreviated title. Tapping it would bring forward that window.
The above does not solve for 'stacks' of windows - but IMHO it would be easier to manage.
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The alternative solution is to improve Stage Manager:
I understand Apple is forced to have a 'mode' that you turn on/off, because if you don't you essentially have to go for a desktop focused interaction system, making the iPad more complex for users who aren't looking to manage windows.
Let's brainstorm a solution.
So assume we still have that mode. E.g "windowing mode". Let's say I turn it on.
This will create the three-dotted menu at the top of the window (like now) and and the resize handle-bar (like now). But it would also show a tiny X on the top right to quickly close down the window, more akin to a desktop OS.
By default you'd just work in one workspace / stack. Unlike Stage Manager which essentially creates workspaces on the fly which for many is confusing.
If I'd press-and-hold an icon on the dock or an app on the desktop, I would see the option "+ new window", if the app supports it. It would also show the open windows of that specific app as thumbnails with an abbreviated title. Tapping it would bring forward that window.
The above does not solve for 'stacks' of windows - but IMHO it would be easier to manage.
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The alternative solution is to improve Stage Manager:
- I should be able to instantly drag an open window onto an existing stack and release it to have it added to that stack. Right now I can add it to the 'list of stacks' as a new item, but not immediately on top of an existing one. Why?
- 50% of the time, dragging an open window to the stack list doesn't work at all. FIX IT APPLE.
- When turned on, a new app opened IMHO should not create an empty stack for that window, but add it to the current stack
- I find it confusing that a left swipe shows/hides Stage Manager, unless no window is open, in which case it suddenly shows my widgets. The stack should be able to be called at any time for consistency reasons, and IMHO widgets should be called through a different interaction.
- Similarly, I find it confusing that dragging an app from the dock onto the desktop moves the icon to the desktop, away from the dock, but with Stage Manager the exact same action does something completely different: it opens up a new window of that app. Even more confusing, on macOS this action would remove the app from the dock and NOT show the app on the desktop (the infamous "poof!" effect). IMHO on iPadOS it can be forgiven because of the effect you see before you release your finger, but macOS should adapt the iPadOS behaviour and remove the "drag off dock to poof!" effect, and just keep that under a "right-click/keep in dock" action.
- I find it confusing that the three-dot-button on top of a window lists activities related to that window (logical!) except one, which is called "add another window" (illogical!) and implies you are adding a new window of the app you are interacting with, but doesn't. Instead it pushes all windows aside and allows you to add another app/window to the stack. Because of what it does, it does not belong under the three-dot menu. This should be removed, or moved to a tiny button that does this. To me this activity should exist at all.
- There should be improvements made to how I move/size windows. I get some of it is being automated - an interesting concept - but the resizing and placement in steps feels weird and sometimes works against what I want to accomplish.
Having used Stage Manager on an iPad Pro for about a week now, I agree with everything you said here. I think this is excellent feedback, and exactly how I would hope they solve each of these issues.
The only other comment I have is that with Stage Manager, swipe in from left is inconsistent due to the existing gesture within apps. More often than not, I’m unable to “swipe back” within apps because the system thinks I want to open the app list on the side. They really just need to let the user move that app list or consolidate it with the Dock.
I was really keen to use Stage Manager on MacOS as it was turned on by default, so I assumed Apple must be very confident in its abilities...
The first thing I noticed was how jerky the animation is, even on my brand new MacBook Pro with M1 Pro (see Photoshop). But OK, I decided they'd fix that in an update. The next thing I noticed was how utterly confusing and counter-intuitive it was.
So I decided to watch a few video tutorials on it. First Apple's. It didn't help. I was very confused. Then I found a much better one from MacMost. 12 mins later I felt I understood it... kinda.
It seemed like a good way to group windows that were being used for a specific task. So I tried to use it for that: Retro gaming stack. Programming stack. And a general Googling, whatever is on my mind, stack.
Except I opened a new Chrome window and it was immediately assigned to my Retro gaming stack. I tried to pull it out into its own stack, but it refused to separate. I gave up.
In my research I discovered Mission Control and Spaces... which has apparently been a feature for years, but which I didn't realise what it could do. Having multiple desktops is a MUCH better solution. So I've turned off Stage Manager and now I'm using Mission Control and Spaces with far greater success.
Too soon for primetime with SM, I think
The first thing I noticed was how jerky the animation is, even on my brand new MacBook Pro with M1 Pro (see Photoshop). But OK, I decided they'd fix that in an update. The next thing I noticed was how utterly confusing and counter-intuitive it was.
So I decided to watch a few video tutorials on it. First Apple's. It didn't help. I was very confused. Then I found a much better one from MacMost. 12 mins later I felt I understood it... kinda.
It seemed like a good way to group windows that were being used for a specific task. So I tried to use it for that: Retro gaming stack. Programming stack. And a general Googling, whatever is on my mind, stack.
Except I opened a new Chrome window and it was immediately assigned to my Retro gaming stack. I tried to pull it out into its own stack, but it refused to separate. I gave up.
In my research I discovered Mission Control and Spaces... which has apparently been a feature for years, but which I didn't realise what it could do. Having multiple desktops is a MUCH better solution. So I've turned off Stage Manager and now I'm using Mission Control and Spaces with far greater success.
Too soon for primetime with SM, I think
I've been having a great time with the Stage manager on 16' Max, honestly its super intuitive to me and I have my dock hidden so I can run After Effects on fullscreen and this feature solves a huge problem for me, its far more responsive than the dock for me, the grouping is super useful and the animations are silky smooth.
I don't see why ya'll complaining when you can just turn it off. Consumers nowadays are just salty for no reason instead of being thankful this **** even exists.
I don't see why ya'll complaining when you can just turn it off. Consumers nowadays are just salty for no reason instead of being thankful this **** even exists.
Maybe, just maybe some are complaining because they want to use it but it still doesn't work right for them! You ever thought about that?
Yes I have and feedback is very valuable to apple, but delivered in a manner "This is garbage." is just unnecessary attitude. In my country this machine costs twice as much as in the USA I'm thankful for Apple even trying, SM has some issues but they dare try, although some issues mentioned above truly sound absurd. I am yet to encounter such poor experiences with SM.
Actually were you around when the installation of Mac OSX would wipe your hard drive or brick your machine, long before this latest round. Apple has always had an issue or two. This is nothing new. They "usually" get it straightened out to a point. I have been using Mac's since around 2008... Not long by most standards, especially around this place, but I have seen my fair share of issues. So I think it goes a little farther back than 5 years!
There have always been "issues" but nothing like what we've seen in recent years.