Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 is receiving a lot of criticism for being "fundamentally misguided" in its approach to bringing a new level of multitasking to the iPad experience, with some even calling on Apple to delay the feature completely due to its flaws.
Federico Viticci, the founder and editor in chief of MacStories and a prominent member of the Apple community, expressed his frustration with Stage Manager in a thread on the social networking site. Stage Manager has design decisions built into it that are "fundamentally misguided," according to Viticci.
If Stage Manager is the future of iPadOS for pro users, I hope Apple doesn't rush it. Viticci suggests that Apple delay Stage Manager's release completely and rethink its approach.
Stage Manager gives users the ability to use external display support with their iPad. Apple's implementation of the feature isn't as clear-cut as some might have thought.
Stage Manager is Apple's answer to the calls of iPad fans who want the company to take advantage of the iPad's power and multitasking potential. The narrative about iPadOS and its inability to take full advantage of the iPad's hardware took a huge leap when Apple brought the M1 Apple chip to the iPad Pro in April 2021.
Stage Manager only works with iPads powered by the M1 chip, which is one of the points of contention. Apple believes that the unified memory architecture of the M1 chip is the only way to power Stage Manager.
Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said at the time of the Stage Manager announcement that they have the foundation for a big leap forward in user experience.
One of the new features of iPadOS 16 is Stage Manager, which is also present in macOS Ventura. Stage Manager's implementation on iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura could not be more different than the one on the other operating systems.
As Viticci noted in his early overview of iPadOS 16, Apple is looking to alleviate the heavy lifting often faced by Mac users of having to perfect position their Mac windows to create an ideal workspace. Stage Manager on iPadOS 16 keeps the main app in the center of the stage while other apps move to the side. At the time, Viticci wrote the following.
The idea behind Stage Manager is that you'll get a system that wants to help you keep the benefits of overlapping windows while offering tools that should alleviate some of the pains behind window management for people like me, who have historically disliked the Mac's overlapping windows.
Stage Manager also takes care of automatically focusing on the 'center app', and you can choose to hide or show the dock and recent apps on the left side. If you keep the dock, you'll have a fast way to drag in new windows into a workspace.
Two feedback reports he filed with Apple about Stage Manager are still being tested. It is not currently possible to move windows from the iPad to an external display. When connected to an external display, the system destroys the workspace for apps.
Apple said it "behaves as intended" for the latter report. After carefully considering the idea of making it easier to move windows and spaces to an external display, Apple decided not to move forward with it.
In a departure from tradition, Apple is planning to release iPadOS 16 later in the fall rather than in September as has been the case before. Due to the delay in iPadOS 16's launch, Apple will have plenty of time to address concerns around Stage Manager.
Stage Manager won't be pulled from iPadOS 16 when it's released, but Apple could always label it as a trial feature until it works out the bugs, like it did for Universal Control in macOS Monterey.
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