In conjunction with the release of iPadOS 16 on Monday, MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci shared some candid feedback about Stage Manager, a new feature that allows for multiple overlapping window apps on the iPad. Viticci expressed his continued frustration with Stage Manager, criticizing it as an ” over-designed” and “poorly tested” feature with “a muddled combination of missing features, bugs and confusing interactions.”
Viticci writes: “Stage Manager is like an alien alternative model that is tacked onto existing iPad apps, disabled by default, narrowed in scope, and loaded with bugs. It’s frustrating to see Apple mess up a feature that was an opportunity to improve the operating experience so badly”.
Viticci shared a long list of bugs, technical issues and challenges he has encountered with Stage Manager that are still present in version 16 of iPadOS, which was released to the public this week. For example, there are keyboard-related errors when enabling QuickType predictions, layout errors when switching the iPad from portrait to landscape, incorrect resizing of full-screen app windows, and more.
While he believes that the window management features on iPadOS are still useful, the entire implementation of Apple’s development and testing on Stage Manager has been wrong so far.
He writes: “There was the seed of a valid idea behind Stage Manager: to create an intermediary between the Mac and iPad that would allow advanced users to go beyond what iPadOS has offered so far. But this idea is paired with the worst implementation of multitasking technology I’ve seen in my years of using and writing about the iPad. Hopefully, Apple will be open to feedback and continue to iterate on Stage Manager in future versions of iPadOS 16.”
He also hopes that Apple will release an API for developers next year that will enable apps to better support multitasking capabilities.
Stage Manager supports managing and switching between up to four apps on the iPad’s built-in screen, while another four apps will be supported on the external display on iPad models with the M1 chip and newer versions. However, Apple has delayed external display support for Stage Manager and said the feature will return in a software update later this year.
