It comes back to talk about Stage Manager, the new iPadOS 16 feature that radically changes the way the Cupertino tablets equipped with the Apple M1 SoC will be used. We have already talked about Stage Manager in our special dedicated, but this time it is nothing less than Craig Federighi to talk about the topic, through an interview with TechCrunch in which delves into some very important detailssuch as the compatibility theme.
The release of iPadOS 16 marks indeed a clear turning point in the experience of using the iPadsince it creates a clear dividing line between products equipped with M1 SoCs and those based on chips Apple A And AX / Zestablishing that only devices equipped with the new SoC M family will be able to access the new interface with floating windows. The signal that something was about to change had already emerged with the release of a fifth-generation iPad Air equipped with this chip (here the review), an apparently incomprehensible choice that brought the tablet too close to the Pro series, but which now appears clearer in the light of the innovations that emerged from the last WWDC 2022.
In the aftermath of the opening keynote of the developer conference, Apple had to intervene several times to answer the question raised by the dissatisfaction of the many non-M1 iPad owners: why won’t Stage Manager arrive on my tablet? Also on the occasion of the interview with TechCrunch Federighi had to face the question and the answer that has been given is the most exhaustive among those previously issuedas it examines all the elements that led to the limitation of the function to a small circle of tablets, but which will continue to grow in the future.
Obviously the reasons for this choice are purely hardwarehowever they are not about a single aspect of the M1 SoC, but a whole series of elements which, if considered in their entirety, cannot be applied to the previous models. The principle that guided the development of Stage Manager on the iPad side (because we remind you that the function will also arrive on macOS Ventura) is to succeed in delivering a responsive and fluid user experience even in the busiest environment like what the new interface offers.
Unlike macOS, iOS and iPadOS handle RAM in a completely different way, requiring that applications load as much data as possible into memory – even the entire app, if feasible -, in order to guarantee an always prompt and immediate response from the app. On macOS or any other desktop operating system this doesn’t happen for several reasons.
The first is that the user experience of a mobile device and a desktop device is fundamentally different, since the second does not expect the reactivity and immediacy that is sought in the first (just think of the fact that controlling the UI using the fingers creates much more unpredictable scenarios for the system, as it becomes more difficult to predict what the next point of user interaction will be, while the use of a mouse or a trackpad slows down strongly the speed with which you interact with the system), while the second concerns the presence of the swap memory how swab excessive use of RAM.
There are therefore completely different memory requirements on iOS and iPadOS than in the desktop world, which is why it is not possible to directly compare the two user experiences, simply for the fact that mobile apps are designed to make more intensive use of memory. This raises the need to find a sufficiently high minimum RAM requirement to allow apps to continue behave as they always have even in a scenario where up to 8 (more details soon). IPads with M1 feature all at least 8 GB of RAM (up to 16 GB), thus ensuring a good starting point to meet this first condition.
One of the first limits therefore concerns the physical memory available, but it does not end there. Federighi also touches on the theme of the virtual one introduced on iPadOS 16 for iPads with M1who will be able to access up to 16 GB of swap memory on all models except the 64GB Air 5 which does not offer swap support. We do not yet know what are the limitations in terms of multitasking that this particular model will face, however Federighi has confirmed that only models equipped with SoC M1 have a internal memory fast enough to guarantee a practically invisible swap for the user, which is not possible on older models.
Subsequently, the theme of graphic performancesince the GPU of the M1 SoC is almost twice as powerful as the second best-performing iPad Pro (the Pro 2020), given that we are talking about 2.6 TFLOPS of M1 against 1.4 of A12Z. Federighi claims that the added graphics power of the M1 SoC allows the system to continue to handle all of them without problems new animations and transformation effects of the new UI also a high frame ratesthen at 120 fps when ProMotion is active, and during use on multiple screens at the same time, even when connecting iPad to a 6K panel.
Finally, then there is its own the topic of support for external monitors, something iPad users have been asking for for a long time and many have requested even on models not equipped with the M1. Federighi also responded to the reason for this choice, pointing out something that had already emerged from our test of iPadOS 16, namely the fact that Stage Manager and full support for external monitors are not two separate elements but complementary to each other, so if one is missing there cannot be the other as well.
This is particularly evident from the fact that the support for external monitors acts in a very precise way, that is create a second desktop for iPad in which to operate with floating windows, but does not reproduce the main screen of your tablet. It is therefore one decidedly malleable additional space, but that does not aim to offer the same user experience as a MacBook when connected to an external monitor. Also because an intervention of that type would have required further optimization of the interface, including the adaptation of the widgets and the app grid to the various screen formats.
At present, therefore, support for external screens is to be considered only as an extension of Stage Manager (if you connect a monitor without using the Stage Manager, in fact, the black side bands return), which is why – in Apple’s vision for its iPad OS – it can’t exist on its own. In addition to this there is also a technical reason again linked to M1or that only the latest chip from the Cupertino house offers full support for monitors with resolution up to 6K.
You can think whatever you want of Federighi’s words, even consider them as mere excuses or accept the explanations given. Net of this, it is undeniable that, if we consider all these elements at the same timeit is clear why it was chosen to use M1 as a base from which to start the new iPad course.
The purpose is to do not compromise on the end user experience proposed by Stage Manager and, in a certain sense, also answers the question of all those who have long been asking that Apple imprint a significant breakthrough to iPad and iPadOS, even at the cost of leaving the best performing models behind. This is exactly what happened, although perhaps few expected such a drastic cut (but we repeat, the very existence of the Air 5 had to sound an alarm bell), despite having wondered for months the sense of bringing an M1 chip to such a limited software platform.
In conclusion, we would also like to point out two other interesting aspects of Federighi’s intervention. The first concerns the aforementioned support for up to 8 active applications at a timethus confirming that the 4 apps that are sent to the background when switching from one workspace to another via Stage Manager continue to be active even if not in the foreground. We don’t know if this also applies to the 64GB Air 5 – which does not have swap memory -, but we expect that on this model in particular the limit is given exclusively by the weight of the running apps, thus presenting a more aggressive memory management than those equipped with swap. For more details we will have to wait for further tests and confirmations.
The second interesting news is that the current implementation of Stage Manager is not the final one. Federighi has in fact confirmed that Apple is already working on several new features for the interface that will arrive during the beta 2 and beta 3 (with others scheduled for the summer), which will implement many functions that were requested already in the first wave of feedback received by the company. Many of these feedbacks, Federighi added, concern corrections that Apple had already planned, so we can expect the platform to become more immediate and easier to manage with the next updates.
At the moment, in fact, Stage Manager has been implemented in its most basic version with the sole purpose of giving a starting point to developers to be able to start adapt your apps to the new scaling systemleaving the improvements related to the usability of the user experience to be implemented at a later time.
Indeed, the new UI is undoubtedly a clear step forward compared to the past, but it is often very confusing and not always immediate, especially in performing operations such as switching apps from window mode to full screen, and so on. We therefore expect the system to improve considerably by the release of the final version, expected in September.
