I’m a firm believer that the iPad Pro is maybe the most underrated product Apple makes. It is basically a MacBook Air in a smaller format, with a touch display. The hardware, at least, is just as powerful and capable of almost everything you might want to do on a device that portable.
Obviously, there are limitations–mostly, that it has all that power but is held back by software that doesn’t fully take advantage of it. For years, iPad Pro users have been asking a simple question: if my device has the same processor as a laptop, why it can’t it do the same things a laptop can do? Even better, why can’t it just run macOS?
Apple has slowly added multitasking to the iPad with features like Split View and slide over. This summer, Apple introduced an entirely new type of multitasking in iPadOS 16 called Stage Manager. It’s still in beta, but a lot of people have been testing it out, and the reaction has been, well, not great.
The idea behind Stage Manager is that it would let you arrange multiple apps in different groups. There are, however, a few problems with Stage Manager. The first is that it’s like a head-fake in the direction of free-form windowing. Instead of an app displaying in full-screen mode, you can have them in windows and move them around–sort of. It’s kind of clunky and the windows don’t always do what you expect they will do.
The other, more controversial, problem is that when Apple introduced Stage Manager this summer at WWDC, it was only available on iPads with an M1 processor. That means it only worked on the most recent iPad Pros and iPad Air. If you bought an iPad Pro just a few years ago, you were out of luck.
To say this limitation was controversial is an understatement. Part of the problem is that Apple’s explanation of why it limited Stage Manager to the M1 models seemed to overlook some important details. Apple said that the limitation had to do with the fact that only the M1 iPads were capable of virtual memory swap, allowing them to use the internal SSD as memory in order to keep apps running. The problem was that there are older versions of the iPad Pro that have more internal memory than the newer iPad Air.
I’m sure there are a number of reasons Apple didn’t want to bring Stage Manager to older iPads, and I don’t think any of them have to do with gating the feature to force people to buy newer models. I think it’s far more likely that Apple designed the feature to work on the M1 and was worried it wouldn’t be able to deliver a great experience on iPads with older A-series processors.
Now, Apple has changed its mind. It now says it will bring Stage Manager to all iPad Pro models from 2018 and later. The move does come with a compromise. Older iPad Pro models will get Stage Manager, but without support for running up to four additional apps on an external display.
It’s a little early to give Stage Manager a review since the feature is still in beta and has its share of bugs. Still, I think Apple deserves credit for figuring out what is apparently a real technical challenge in pursuit of providing a better experience to more users.
Apple had to balance the experience of running a feature on hardware that may not fully support it, against the experience of disappointment that comes with being unable to run a feature on a “Pro” device you bought only a few years ago. It decided to see if it could make it work, which is probably the right way to go.
It’s hard to blame Apple for not wanting to release a feature that doesn’t live up to the type of experience the company wants to provide, but at the same time, there is value in finding a way to make it work, even in a more limited form. Ultimately, it’s a powerful lesson in listening to your users.
Clearly, enough iPad Pro users with older models made it clear that they were willing to live with slightly less than ideal performance, if it meant they were able to use a better form of multitasking. It’s still to be seen whether Stage Manager is what users really want, but at least now, more of them will have a chance to find out.
