A few passing notes on Stage Manager, then I’m done with the subject

1.

This post on the always-excellent Michael Tsai’s blog is an encompassing must-read to grasp the whole debate about Stage Manager and its bafflingly restrictive system requirements.

2.

I’m insisting on this Stage Manager brouhaha, not because I particularly care about this feature — I still believe it’s an unnecessarily convoluted multitasking UI for a tablet — but because it’s just maddening that the previous iteration of a product is just cut off from it. I understand that in the past Apple has done the same — putting out a major OS release with certain features not being able to run on older hardware — but it usually was the case of much older hardware, not the immediately previous iteration. (Going from memory here; I may be wrong). I find this to be consumer-hostile. And I often have the impression that people at Apple are so insulated that they end up handling these things with a bit of tone-deafness.

In turn, what always baffles me is how some Apple fans and/or pundits just side with Apple on these things. I realise that technology is constantly moving forward, but sometimes tech companies should stop and think more about their customers’ pace and the time (and money) they need to adapt, to upgrade, to change habits, to adopt new features or different workflows. I’m not necessarily advocating the constant hand-holding of customers. I’m aware that any tech company must always be moving in order to keep their products relevant and alluring, but sending customers who purchased an A12Z iPad Pro in 2020 the message that their quite premium device is already not good enough is kind of preposterous.

Josh Centers at TidBITS writes:

In the bluntest terms: Apple could have engineered Stage Manager to work on non-M1 iPads; it just didn’t want to degrade the overall experience to make that happen. This isn’t necessarily nefarious plotting on Apple’s part but rather the standard way Apple makes business decisions. From Apple’s perspective, it’s a total win. Stage Manager:

Provides a rich multitasking experience that makes people want iPads

Encourages users with non-M1 iPads to upgrade

Justifies the purchase of customers who already own M1 iPads

See, I don’t even think Apple “didn’t want to degrade the overall experience to make that happen”. I think Apple didn’t want to waste resources to engineer a separate, optimised implementation of Stage Manager for non-M1 iPads — while being well-aware that most people don’t upgrade their iPads every 1–2 years. Optimising means you work hard to provide an equally seamless experience on a technically less powerful device.

And those hardcore Apple fans who keep backing Apple even when the company makes unpopular decisions display the same kind of tone-deafness. After reading my numerous tweets where I vented my frustration about Stage Manager being restricted to M1 iPads, someone wrote me an email message basically telling me, If you want Stage Manager, just get an M1 iPad, man.

My reply? Hey, just send me 1,200 Euros via PayPal and I’ll get an M1 iPad, man.

These people just think we all have the money tree (Ficus Pecunia) growing in a corner of our living-room.

3.

When Dashboard was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4.3 in 2005, it featured certain effects and animations that not all Macs were able to perform. To enjoy the full experience, your Mac had to be equipped with a powerful-enough graphics card supporting CoreImage. Still, Dashboard was made available for all Macs, and those models with lesser graphics cards simply didn’t show those effects and animations. There was no true loss of functionality, just an absence of further eye candy.

I think Stage Manager could use a similar approach in order to be made available on slightly older iPads. At least on iPad Pros with an A12X and A12Z Bionic chips and 6 GB of RAM, which are inarguably still very powerful devices. Deliver the core experience, strip down the eye candy.

But, as Josh Centers points out in the afore-quoted bit, [This is] the standard way Apple makes business decisions. Business decisions, not technical decisions. Technically, I don’t think a ‘Stage Manager Lite’ isn’t feasible. Technically, an M1 iPad is indeed more powerful than an iPad with an A‑series chip. It’s just that Apple wants M1 iPads to be also perceived as more powerful and desirable. It’s all about creating artificial differences. A maxed out 2020 iPad Pro with an A12Z Bionic chip and a 2021 iPad Pro with an M1 chip are basically indistinguishable in normal use. Only stress tests and the resulting benchmarks reveal differences. When last year the M1 iPad Pro was introduced, many people asked, What’s the point of this machine? when there’s probably just Final Cut Pro and maybe another app out there that would make the purchase of an M1 iPad Pro at least a bit worthwhile.

Apple can make M1 iPads perceivably superior by developing M1-only features. Makes strategic sense. Still a dick move, though, if you ask me (and the people in my Inbox who bought an iPad Pro in 2020).

4.

File under: “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!” but the joke’s on you, Apple.

This is dedicated to those who messaged me with snarky comments saying (with a straight face, I suppose) that Apple’s innovation can’t be stopped or hampered!

Thanks to @teknisktsett, I was made aware of Tech Reflect, a great blog by a former Apple employee, who has been sharing a few memories, personal stories, and bits of Apple history (at the time of writing, some of them have already been removed, a clear sign that Apple noticed the blog and wasn’t pleased about them — sigh). In a post that has now been taken down (but here’s an archived version), The author of Tech Reflect talks about how in 2006 they created the ancestor of what is now Stage Manager, but the project was scrapped at a later date.

As you can see in the picture, apart from the obvious changes in appearance, the functional changes between that 2006 project and the 2022 version of Stage Manager appear to be rather minimal. So very innovative of Apple to regurgitate a 16-year-old concept. How lazy and unimaginative this company has become software-wise is absolutely depressing.