During the WWDC 2022 keynote, Apple showcased the new Stage Manager feature in the iPadOS 16 sessions. In short, the new model provides users with multitasking capabilities by bringing a macOS-like experience to the tablet, allowing some iPad users to resize or reposition tabs or windows at will.
Unfortunately, Stage Manager has a number of issues that may have forced Apple to delay the official iPadOS 16 updates. On the plus side, there’s a new rumor floating around about Project Irvine that could bring a layer of improvement to this multitasking feature.
Twitter user Majin Bu learned from an anonymous source that Apple is moving forward with Project Irvine, an upgraded version of “front-end scheduling.” The new version is expected to arrive with iPadOS 17 in 2023.
In its current state, Front Desk Scheduling appears to be a mess, with MacStores Federico Viticci’s editor-in-chief saying in an earlier tweet that he has disabled the feature on the iPad Pro because it requires numerous bug fixes. Problems encountered ranged from crashes every few minutes to difficulty using multiple windows for the same application. Also, he mentioned UI glitches everywhere.
This may be the reason why Apple delayed the release of iPadOS 16. Due to the many problems with “pre-stage scheduling”, Apple may be forced to redesign the function, which is the original intention of Project Irvine. Additionally, Apple has excluded previous-generation 2018-2020 iPad Pro users from the Stage Manager upgrade, and Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, said the experience users would get on the older version won’t be as great.
