The Stage Manager (front-end scheduling) in Apple's iPadOS 16 Beta has been severely criticized for its new multitasking adaptation and poor experience on the iPad. Some people said that this was a "fundamental mistake". , and even called on Apple to delay the release and improve the feature.
MacStories founder and editor-in-chief Federico Viticci, a prominent member of the Apple community, outlined his disappointment with the iPad front-of-house schedule in a Twitter post earlier this week. Viticci said the design decisions built into frontend scheduling were "fundamentally wrong," arguing that the feature was unstable, difficult to use, and had user interface glitches in the experience, among other things.
"If pre-stage scheduling is the future of iPadOS for pro users, I hope Apple understands that it can't be rushed. We've been waiting for a few years for this, but it's best to launch in spring 2023," Viticci said, suggesting that Apple delay the stage. pre-scheduled release and reconsider its approach.
For the first time, pre-stage scheduling allows the user to overlap windows and use an external monitor on his iPad. However, Apple's implementation of the feature wasn't as clear-cut as some had hoped.
iPad enthusiasts have longed for the company to make better use of the iPad's power and multitasking potential, and pre-stage scheduling is Apple's answer to those calls. When Apple introduced the M1 Apple Silicon chip to the iPad Pro in April 2021 and the iPad Air last fall, the narrative around iPadOS and its inability to fully utilize the iPad's hardware took a major leap forward.
Pre-stage scheduling is designed to only work on iPads with the M1 chip and newer, which is making the feature increasingly controversial. Apple believes that only the unified memory architecture of the M1 chip, originally designed for the Mac, can provide support for the heavy lifting required for front-end scheduling.
"With technologies like display scaling and virtual memory swapping, we're laying the foundation for a giant leap in user experience that can change the way users experience it," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, in announcing the pre-stage schedule at WWDC in June. Pro users can get work done on the iPad.”
Pre-stage scheduling is one of the few new features in iPadOS 16, but it also exists in macOS 13 Ventura. Although they have the same name and the same basic idea, the implementation of pre-stage scheduling on iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura is quite different.
For example, as Viticci pointed out in an early overview of iPadOS 16, Apple is looking to ease the heavy lifting that Mac users often face of having to perfectly position overlapping Mac windows to create the ideal workspace. With pre-stage scheduling on iPadOS 16, the system automatically moves apps to keep the main app in use at the center of the "stage" while other apps "gracefully move aside" as they open.
"The idea behind front scheduling is that users will get a system that wants to help preserve the benefits of overlapping windows while giving users who don't like the Mac's overlapping windows a tool that can alleviate some of the pain behind window management.
The front desk scheduler is also responsible for automatically focusing on the "center app", where the user can choose to hide or show the left Dock and recently used apps. If you keep the Dock, users will be able to quickly drag new windows into the workspace. "
The fact that going back to classic Split View and Slide Over feels *so* nice right now is...pretty telling.
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) August 18, 2022
If Stage Manager is the future of iPadOS for pro users, I hope Apple understands that it can't be rushed. We waited years for this; might as well get it in Spring 2023.
Please note: it's not *just* an issue of stability. Many design decisions of Stage Manager are fundamentally misguided.
— Federico Viticci (@viticci) August 18, 2022
Pictured: two feedbacks I submitted regarding external display support. Both marked as "behaves as intended". Both baffling implementations of how this works. pic.twitter.com/f8pdosqZXX
Viticci shared on Twitter two feedback reports he submitted to Apple about front-of-stage scheduling, which are still being tested. First, he came up with an easy way to move a window from the iPad to an external monitor, since it's not possible to do that yet. Another feedback report outlines how the system "destroys" an app's workspace when connected to an external display.
For the latter report, Apple responded that it was "acting as expected" and Viticci said it was "puzzling." Another suggestion to make it easier to move windows and spaces to an external display, Apple said after "considering" the idea, is not going forward.
Unlike the precedents of the past few years, Apple plans to release iPadOS 16 in October this fall, rather than the expected launch in September alongside iOS 16, according to the revelations. The delay in the release of iPadOS 16 should give Apple enough time to address concerns surrounding front-of-stage scheduling.
It's unlikely Apple will remove the pre-stage scheduling feature when iPadOS 16 is released, though it could choose to mark it as a beta feature until it's fixed and perfected. Just like Universal Controls in macOS Monterey.
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