Apple's Craig Federighi Further Explains Why Stage Manager is Limited to M1 iPads

Craig Federighi, Apple's software engineering chief, talked with Matthew Panzarino about the new Stage Manager feature for iPad and Mac. He explained that Stage Manager was limited to M1 iPad.

Stage Manager on the iPad allows users to change the size of their applications. Users can use Stage Manager to work with up to four apps on the iPad and up to four on the external display at the same time.

According to Apple, Stage Manager requires large internal memory, incredibly fast storage, and flexible external display I/O all of which are delivered by iPad with the M1 chip. Federighi told Panzarino that the power of the M1 chip ensured that Stage Manager would be instantly responsive.

Federighi said that the virtual memory swap on the M1 iPad is super fast because of the high capacity and high performance NAND that is used. "Now that we're letting you have up to four apps on a panel plus another four to be instantly responsive and have plenty of memory, we just don't have that ability on the other systems."

The new iPad Pro with an M1 chip has more memory than the previous iPad Pro with 6 gigabytes. The M1 iPad Pro has 2x faster storage and up to 40% faster graphics performance than the previous model, according to Apple. The M1 chip was used in the iPad Air.

Federighi said Stage Manager took full advantage of the M1 chip. You can see how the apps tilt and shadow. The peak of graphics performance that no one else can deliver is what it takes to do that at high frame rates.

Federighi said that Stage Manager cannot be delivered on any lesser system. We want to make it available everywhere. This is what needs to be done. We will carry this experience into the future. We set the benchmark for the future because we didn't want to limit our design to something less.

Federighi said there are many different ways to use Stage Manager on the Mac, such as using Mission Control or the Command-Tab keyboard shortcut to switch between apps.

There are many ways to work on the Macintosh computer. People are in and out of Mission Control. Some people like to make a mess, some people clean up their messes, and some people use minimization. There are a lot of valid ways to work on the mac.

He said that if 20% of the users on the Mac end up saying that this is another great tool in the quiver for them, that is fantastic.