Apple’s Craig Federighi explains why Stage Manager is only for the iPad M1

After the keynote at WWDC last week, Apple’s Head of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, spoke with Take CrunchMatthew Panzarino About the new Stage Manager feature for iPad and Mac. Notably, he clarified that Stage Manager is limited to M1 iPads.

On the iPad, Stage Manager allows users to resize apps into nested windows for an enhanced multitasking experience. Stage Manager also supports an external display with a resolution of up to 6K, allowing users to work with up to four apps on the iPad and up to four apps on the external display simultaneously.

in Joint statement with Rene Ricci Last week, Apple confirmed that Stage Manager “requires large internal memory, incredibly fast storage, and a flexible external display I/O, all delivered by iPads with the M1 chip.” Federighi explained this rationale in his conversation with Panzarino, telling him that the power of the M1 chip ensures that all applications used in Stage Manager “respond instantly.”

“Only the M1 iPads combine high DRAM capacity, ultra-high capacity, and NAND performance that allows our virtual memory to be swapped out at breakneck speed,” Federighi said. “Now that we let you have up to four apps on a pad plus four more — up to eight apps for instant response and we have a lot of memory, we don’t have that ability on other systems,” like the previous generation iPad Pro.

Released in April 2021, the iPad Pro is available with an M1 chip with up to 16GB of RAM, compared to 6GB in the previous iPad Pro. Apple also announces that the M1 iPad Pro has two times faster storage and up to 40% faster GPU performance compared to the previous model. Apple also released the iPad Air with the same M1 chip in March 2022.

“We really designed Stage Manager to get the most out of it [of the M1 chip]“If you look at the way apps tend and stay and how they are moved in and out,” Federighi said. To do this at very high frame rates, across very large screens and multiple displays, requires the highest graphics performance that no one else can provide.”

“When you put it all together, we can’t offer the full Phase Manager experience on any less system,” Federighi added. “I mean, we’d like to make it available everywhere we can. But that’s what it takes. That’s the experience we’re going to carry into the future. We didn’t want to limit our design to something less, we’re re-setting the standards for the future.”

As for Stage Manager on the Mac, Federighi said there are actually “many different ways” to multitask on macOS, such as using Mission Control or the Command-Tab keyboard shortcut to switch between apps, and Stage Manager is simply another tool in your toolbox.

“On a Mac, there are a lot of different ways to work. Some people use Spaces, some people get in and out of Mission Control. Some people are people on command tabs, some people like to make a mess, some people clean up clutter and some people use Minimize. I mean. There is no wrong answer here, there are plenty of valid ways to work on a Mac.”

“If 20% of users on a Mac end up saying this is another great tool up their sleeve… that’s great,” he said.