Testing Stage Manager on a 2018 iPad Pro With the New iPadOS 16.1 Beta

[Pezimak]

The best thing Apple has done in a while, also shows how full of crap they are! You need an M1 for this feature, it'll only work on M1, you need 8GB of RAM for this feature to work... all the excuses Apple engineers and executives gave as to why it wasn't in the older iPad Pro's, pure marketing BS designed to upsell you.

Thankfully the customer has won in this case and Apple gave in and awarded their complaints. The iPad Pro A12 is incredibly powerful and has no reason why it couldn't run Stage Show. As now proven.

It also shows their forced obsolescence tactics they try to use. Deliberately removing new features for barely 2 year old devices in software.

 

[tobybrut]

The best thing Apple has done in a while, also shows how full of crap they are! You need an M1 for this feature, it'll only work on M1, you need 8GB of RAM for this feature to work... all the excuses Apple engineers and executives gave as to why it wasn't in the older iPad Pro's, pure marketing BS designed to upsell you.

Thankfully the customer has won in this case and Apple gave in and awarded their complaints. The iPad Pro A12 is incredibly powerful and has no reason why it couldn't run Stage Show. As now proven.

A totally illogical argument, and I don't even like or use Stage Manager because it's a pointless feature. The original multitasking was fine as it was. If this were all marketing crap, they wouldn't have released this feature in the latest beta. The yelling had died down ages ago, so there was nobody "winning" their case because there was no one arguing the case anymore. They didn't have to extend the feature to other iPads, but they found workarounds that allowed them to run it in a limited fashion.

Anyone with an engineering background understands what's going on here, but those that don't throw out illogical arguments based purely on emotion. Apple was actually better off not extending this feature to lesser iPads because all they're getting is a resurgence of complaints. They're getitng more grief now by releasing the feature than they would have if they didn't bother expending additional resources figuring out workarounds. They, in fact, lose sales because they extended this feature, as some in this thread have said they were no longer going to upgrade now that it works on later iPads. They spent a lot of engineering resources to lose sales. Does that sound like someone trying to upsell? If they were doing so, they either would have released the beta feature AFTER introducing the M2 iPad Pros or they wouldn't have released it at all.

 

[teh_hunterer]

That’s a very well written potential explanation for this issue thank you. I never knew that memory swap was a thing for iOS. Although them reserving features for specific storage options wouldn’t be new for them (if I’m not mistaken some ProRes feature on the new iPhones is preserved only for the higher storage options?).

Like you said, one buys an iPad with so much unused power and potential in its chip, thinking it would be later unlocked and taken advantage of with software, but it seems that rather than that happening, they’re just abandoning those overpowered chips to do the same bare minimum as the 329$ iPad does. What a shame honestly.

Cheers. Yeah the 4k Pro Res limitation on the 128GB iPhones did occur to me when I was writing that. My guess is they find that annoying enough as it is that they don't want to go through it all again for the Air 4. It's one thing on the new phones, but another thing for an old iPad model they don't even sell anymore.

The whole thing is a mess, and I totally understand why people with Air 4 and 2018 iPad Pros feel burned.

 

[Pezimak]

A totally illogical argument, and I don't even like or use Stage Manager because it's a pointless feature. The original multitasking was fine as it was. If this were all marketing crap, they wouldn't have released this feature in the latest beta. The yelling had died down ages ago, so there was nobody "winning" their case because there was no one arguing the case anymore. They didn't have to extend the feature to other iPads, but they found workarounds that allowed them to run it in a limited fashion.

Anyone with an engineering background understands what's going on here, but those that don't throw out illogical arguments based purely on emotion. Apple was actually better off not extending this feature to lesser iPads because all they're getting is a resurgence of complaints. They're getitng more grief now by releasing the feature than they would have if they didn't bother expending additional resources figuring out workarounds. They, in fact, lose sales because they extended this feature, as some in this thread have said they were no longer going to upgrade now that it works on later iPads. They spent a lot of engineering resources to lose sales. Does that sound like someone trying to upsell? If they were doing so, they either would have released the beta feature AFTER introducing the M2 iPad Pros or they wouldn't have released it at all.

A wonderful excuse. Well written, even highlighting 'engineering'. Well Apple stated publicly the things I said, and now the exact thing they stated wasn't possible is working fine on older hardware. The facts are there in black and white despite what you post in your comment.
I'm afraid the marketing and sales tactics used fly in the face of any 'engineering' excuses.

 

[teh_hunterer]

A wonderful excuse. Well written, even highlighting 'engineering'. Well Apple stated publicly the things I said, and now the exact thing they stated wasn't possible is working fine on older, barely 4 years old, hardware. The facts are there in black and white despite what you post in your comment.

To be fair, they didn't put the full feature on there where you can hook up an external display and run 8 apps at once

What they've done is restrict it to 4 apps at once, which is another indication that the limitation comes from where many of us said it comes from: the low RAM and the lower quality storage that doesn't cope well with lots of virtual memory.

Now why the iPad Pro was being sold for the price it was in 2018 and 2020 when it only had 4GB/6GB RAM and phone-class storage, that's something Apple has to answer to. And ultimately I think it's the true source of this backlash.

 

[johnhackworth]

Just give all iPad Pro owners external display support FFS! Stage Manager looks like a bag of knackers.

 

[PsykX]

Please contact Craig F and let him know you found a solution with a 16 year old macOS beta from 2006.

Oh he knows it. Craig talked about it in an interview posted in an article here on MacRumors in June.

 

[Jim Lahey]

This is surely misinformation? The ultra-fanboys told us we were idiots when it was suggested there was nothing magical about Stage Manager that should necessitate the requirement of a quantum computer in order for it to run 🤔

 

[tobybrut]

A wonderful excuse. Well written, even highlighting 'engineering'. Well Apple stated publicly the things I said, and now the exact thing they stated wasn't possible is working fine on older hardware. The facts are there in black and white despite what you post in your comment.
I'm afraid the marketing and sales tactics used fly in the face of any 'engineering' excuses.

You totally mischaracterized what they said. They never said it wasn't possible. They said they ran it on a lot of different iPads and didn't find the performance acceptable. Does that sound remotely like what you said? No. Stop mischaracterizing things out of your lack of engineering knowledge. You have no facts at all. You have no idea what it takes to write software, so stop telling those of us who do it for a living what we know or don't know.

I don't even use the feature, so I couldn't care less if it was ever invented. I'd be just as happy if they pulled the feature completely tomorrow, and I have an M1 iPad Pro. I'm using my 30 years of knowledge in software engineering to know what is or isn't possible and can see what they are saying. Your zero years of experience is worth exactly what?

 

[CC88]

Dear all

I'm an iPad Pro 11" 2nd generation user. I always use my ipad with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. At time of writing I can use my external 32" monitor in 4:3 format with black bands.

Is there any chance to use my monitor at full 4k resolution or do I have to change my iPad to a new M1?

Thanks a lot for any help.

 

[Pezimak]

You totally mischaracterized what they said. They never said it wasn't possible. They said they ran it on a lot of different iPads and didn't find the performance acceptable. Does that sound remotely like what you said? No. Stop mischaracterizing things out of your lack of engineering knowledge. You have no facts at all. You have no idea what it takes to write software, so stop telling those of us who do it for a living what we know or don't know.

I don't even use the feature, so I couldn't care less if it was ever invented. I'd be just as happy if they pulled the feature completely tomorrow, and I have an M1 iPad Pro. I'm using my 30 years of knowledge in software engineering to know what is or isn't possible and can see what they are saying. Your zero years of experience is worth exactly what?

They lied. Are those testing it claiming the performance is not acceptable? You really have been taken in by the Apple marketing. You really believe a giant trillion dollar corporation is doing anything for your benefit? Like keeping features software locked because 'they don't work well', yet here we are barely a year later and they seem to be working fine:

And Craig in just one interview stated this:

“It’s only the M1 iPads that combined the high DRAM capacity with very high capacity, high performance NAND that allows our virtual memory swap to be super fast,” Federighi says. “Now that we’re letting you have up to four apps on a panel plus another four — up to eight apps to be instantaneously responsive and have plenty of memory, we just don’t have that ability on the other systems.”

Apple resizes the iPad’s workflow with Stage Manager

SVP Craig Federighi on stretching Apple’s iPad to fit new ways of working

techcrunch.com

So I'll stand fully behind my original post thanks, you can co to use to listen to Apples marketing spin if you choose to, as I said it's all there in black and white.

 

[tobybrut]

To be fair, they didn't put the full feature on there where you can hook up an external display and run 8 apps at once

What they've done is restrict it to 4 apps at once, which is another indication that the limitation comes from where many of us said it comes from: the low RAM and the lower quality storage that doesn't cope well with lots of virtual memory.

Now why the iPad Pro was being sold for the price it was in 2018 and 2020 when it only had 4GB/6GB RAM and phone-class storage, that's something Apple has to answer to. And ultimately I think it's the true source of this backlash.

If I were to guess, Apple is guilty of poor planning and expectations. On their iPhones, they annually produce phones with features the previous year’s model can’t do, so I’m assuming they didn’t think that people would be upset that they didn’t support every feature going back four years. That’s bad planning, as opposed to bad execution. If they had intended to support a feature like Stage Manager on the 2020/2018 iPads, they would have added the requisite silicon to the A12X and A12Z in preparation. But since they didn’t, they had to kluge a solution that basically only gives half the features. Who knows if Stage Manager was even on the roadmap back in 2018? Were they always planning the feature for M1’s and up or was it a late decision due to all the complaints about multitasking? Either way, they weren’t prepared.

 

[Unami]

Stage Manager is 2006 technology. It'll run on anything if they allow it. But, gotta sell new iPads.

Second opinion: If an ancient Intel processor can multitask better than every iPad currently on the market, that pretty much guarantees that Stage Manager "limitations" are just product-pushing tactics.

MacOS Ventura’s best feature is 16 years in the making

Apple introduced Stage Manager with MacOS Ventura, but it seems the feature may not be as new as we thought -- it's been in the works for 16 years.

www.digitaltrends.com

That might as well be, but even in 2006 I had 16GB of RAM in my Desktop, while my 2019 iPad Air still got a meagee 3GB - I can see how that could be the limiting factor.

 

[tobybrut]

They lied. Are those testing it claiming the performance is not acceptable? You really have been taken in by the Apple marketing. You really believe a giant trillion dollar corporation is doing anything for your benefit? Like keeping features software locked because 'they don't work well', yet here we are barely a year later and they seem to be working fine:

And Craig in just one interview stated this:

“It’s only the M1 iPads that combined the high DRAM capacity with very high capacity, high performance NAND that allows our virtual memory swap to be super fast,” Federighi says. “Now that we’re letting you have up to four apps on a panel plus another four — up to eight apps to be instantaneously responsive and have plenty of memory, we just don’t have that ability on the other systems.”

Apple resizes the iPad’s workflow with Stage Manager

SVP Craig Federighi on stretching Apple’s iPad to fit new ways of working

techcrunch.com

So I'll stand fully behind my original post thanks, you can co to use to listen to Apples marketing spin if you choose to, as I said it's all there in black and white.

“To be super fast”. If you look at his other interviews, he specifically said they tested it on other systems and found the performance lacking. He even talked about people’s expectations for instantaneous response, or did you miss that part? He’s telling you outright it was running on other iPads but the performance sucked. Now it only sucks less since they didn’t provide the full feature set. Be glad they found a workaround to make it work less badly. From what it sounds like, it works but not as well as it does on the M1.

If you want to be bitter about it, feel free. I deal with facts and what’s possible, not emotion, and that’s all your argument amounts to. I really don’t care about the feature itself. If they find a workaround to get it to work on A14’s, that’s great for those people. If they don’t, oh well. Some people take things far too seriously to always be thinking of conspiracies that someone’s out to get you.

Admit it. They didn’t have to extend the feature at all and nothing would have changed. Those who were bitter would still be bitter, and those who don’t care would still not care. I’m in the don’t care camp. Many of those who had 2018 or 2020 iPads would not bother to upgrade at all. All they did by releasing this extension was to lose sales and incur further bitterness by those who just can’t get over the fact that not all features will be backwards compatible forever. If anything, Apple is the best in the tech industry on backwards compatibility. No other company gives OS updates for seven years. No other company has watch bands that worked from the very first watch all the way to the latest watch even though that watch went from 42 to 44 to 45 and even 49mm watch faces. Even the iPad keyboard has been compatible for a lot of years and a lot of models. This latest feature release certainly wasn’t done to upsell since it did nothing but hurt sales. If they were really trying to upsell you, they would have released the feature after October’s release of new iPads. Explain that one. That’s why I said your argument was illogical. Timing is everything. If they were trying to upsell, releasing it now is the worst possible timing for them. It’s great for us because many of us won’t be upgrading anymore.

I guarantee the M2 will have features the M1 doesn’t support, but will I cry and complain my M1 iPad can’t do something like ProRes video, which is on the media engine of the M2 but is not on the M1? No. My 1.5 year old iPad would have been “obsoleted” in the opinion of so many here. Will I buy an M2 iPad Pro? Probably not, unless there’s something really compelling, but I don’t expect to.

 

[bn-7bc]

I think what people really wanted was the external monitor support (or at least a way to get rid of the black bars while mirroring their iPad).

Well most external duspkays are 16:9 byt the ioad ( even in landscape isn't, so unkess you want a mirrored immage to be deformed you will have to live with the black bars. Personally I lrefere bars to immages being stretched out of shape

 

[haemolysis]

They “figured out a way” for it to work, and all it took was for them to set the feature lock from “TRUE” to “FALSE” and BAM - it worked! Amazing!

Sadly I’m more concerned about them dropping home hub support in iPadOS.

So if I update I lose my hub and have to replace it with a worthless Apple TV I’ll never use? I have a smart TV!

Greaaaaaat. First time I’ve ever turned off auto-update.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Oh, Lord, here we go again.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

The best thing Apple has done in a while, also shows how full of crap they are! You need an M1 for this feature, it'll only work on M1, you need 8GB of RAM for this feature to work... all the excuses Apple engineers and executives gave as to why it wasn't in the older iPad Pro's, pure marketing BS designed to upsell you.

Thankfully the customer has won in this case and Apple gave in and awarded their complaints. The iPad Pro A12 is incredibly powerful and has no reason why it couldn't run Stage Show. As now proven.

It also shows their forced obsolescence tactics they try to use. Deliberately removing new features for barely 2 year old devices in software.

Relax with your theories, kid.

I have been testing it on older iPad Pro.

It’s quite demanding on the chipset.

It also uses more battery life so for best performance a more powerful and efficient GPU really is needed.

If I write too many words into this forum reply the text entry slows down quite badly.

It’s demanding. If you use it just don’t fill up all the RAM with it.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

It would be nice! I have all the devices and appreciate them for what they are. I think we’ll see the convergence of macOS and iOS in the next few years.

We will not.

The average iPad+Mac buyer is accustomed to two payments of $800-$2000 spread over a 2-5 years, and Apple subsequently makes some $2000-$4000+ on these costumers.

The average consumer, however, is not ready to drop $3000-$5000+ in one payment for one iPad Pro+MacBook Pro multi-device.

Also, neither Apple nor any other brand will turn two products from two different product categories into one product when consumers show no signs of being unwilling to buy two products and also happy to upgrade both frequently.

Apple doubles down on product segmentation and expands with more products and more product categories.

This is exemplified in what we’re seeing with the Watch lineup, what we saw happen to iPhones and iPads when they were split into budge, mid, and high end.

A device that gives full iPad and MacOS in one would instantly kill sales of several other single-purpose device products and thus will never happen.

 

[coolbreeze2]

Good news for me because I have a 3rd generation iPad Pro.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Stage Manager is 2006 technology. It'll run on anything if they allow it. But, gotta sell new iPads.

Concept and implementation are two different things.

When concepts like this were being tested in early-mid 2000s computers didn’t have retina displays, they didn’t do background blurring, GPU accelerated effects suffered badly at very high resolutions, and most interfaces were not scalable - they were still bitmap based.

You cannot run today’s operating systems, today’s interfaces, today’s graphics on any machine in 2006 without suffering very big performance loss.

A 2006 computer can’t even do something that appears simple like playback 4K movie rips.

 

[chucker23n1]

1. Apple releases M1 iPad Pro
2. Users: “what’s even the point? Even the 2018 is plenty fast. We need features that enable pro workflows, like multitasking, not more performance.”
3. Apple shows M1-only feature that improves multitasking. “This is the point of the higher performance.”
4. Users: that’s BS!
5. Users: …OK, at least give us the feature but without external monitor support.
6. Apple: it’ll be a bit stuttery, but alright, here you go.
7. Users: aha! So it was indeed BS!

 

[Pezimak]

Relax with your theories, kid.

I have been testing it on older iPad Pro.

It’s quite demanding on the chipset.

It also uses more battery life so for best performance a more powerful and efficient GPU really is needed.

If I write too many words into this forum reply the text entry slows down quite badly.

It’s demanding. If you use it just don’t fill up all the RAM with it.

It's beta. And others seem to think it's working fine?

 

[Pezimak]

“To be super fast”. If you look at his other interviews, he specifically said they tested it on other systems and found the performance lacking. He even talked about people’s expectations for instantaneous response, or did you miss that part? He’s telling you outright it was running on other iPads but the performance sucked. Now it only sucks less since they didn’t provide the full feature set. Be glad they found a workaround to make it work less badly. From what it sounds like, it works but not as well as it does on the M1.

If you want to be bitter about it, feel free. I deal with facts and what’s possible, not emotion, and that’s all your argument amounts to. I really don’t care about the feature itself. If they find a workaround to get it to work on A14’s, that’s great for those people. If they don’t, oh well. Some people take things far too seriously to always be thinking of conspiracies that someone’s out to get you.

Admit it. They didn’t have to extend the feature at all and nothing would have changed. Those who were bitter would still be bitter, and those who don’t care would still not care. I’m in the don’t care camp. Many of those who had 2018 or 2020 iPads would not bother to upgrade at all. All they did by releasing this extension was to lose sales and incur further bitterness by those who just can’t get over the fact that not all features will be backwards compatible forever. If anything, Apple is the best in the tech industry on backwards compatibility. No other company gives OS updates for seven years. No other company has watch bands that worked from the very first watch all the way to the latest watch even though that watch went from 42 to 44 to 45 and even 49mm watch faces. Even the iPad keyboard has been compatible for a lot of years and a lot of models. This latest feature release certainly wasn’t done to upsell since it did nothing but hurt sales. If they were really trying to upsell you, they would have released the feature after October’s release of new iPads. Explain that one. That’s why I said your argument was illogical. Timing is everything. If they were trying to upsell, releasing it now is the worst possible timing for them. It’s great for us because many of us won’t be upgrading anymore.

I guarantee the M2 will have features the M1 doesn’t support, but will I cry and complain my M1 iPad can’t do something like ProRes video, which is on the media engine of the M2 but is not on the M1? No. My 1.5 year old iPad would have been “obsoleted” in the opinion of so many here. Will I buy an M2 iPad Pro? Probably not, unless there’s something really compelling, but I don’t expect to.

Fascinating how you've turned a marketing and selling tactic into something about bitterness 🤣 rather then admit your shortcomings of your argument.

 

[chucker23n1]

If anything, Apple is the best in the tech industry on backwards compatibility. No other company gives OS updates for seven years.

Ehhh. That award belongs to Microsoft.