Last Updated on June 14, 2022 by srinivas
If there’s one new feature people are talking about a whole week after the WWDC keynote, it’s Stage Manager. Stage Manager, a radically new interface for the Mac and iPad, has already generated quite a few reactions, with some people loving the new multitasking method and others questioning its benefits†
According to Craig Federighi, those reactions were to be expected. In an interview with TechCrunch, he explained that Apple is listening to Stage Manager’s early critics and has improvements in the works for future beta releases. However, if anyone expects massive system changes similar to last year’s Safari redesign, think again:
“There’s nothing we’ve seen that got us thinking like, ‘Hey, that’s unexpected news.’ A lot of them are either the response we expect from people who haven’t adapted a bit to the system or in areas where we have in-flight refinements, so yeah, we’re definitely going to continue with that.”
Federighi also reiterated that Stage Manager is limited to Apple silicon machines due to the huge demands of the new system, and will not be coming to older devices. Stage Manager requires the fastest graphics, storage, and RAM to achieve the responsiveness Apple wanted. “If you look at the way the apps tilt and shadow and how they move in and out,” Federighi said, “to do that at super-fast frame rates on very large displays and multiple displays requires the pinnacle of graphics performance that no one else can.” can deliver.”
That is, Stage Manager will not come to older devices. Federighi said he would “love to make it available everywhere” but “can’t deliver the full Stage Manager experience on a smaller system.”
But for those who have hardware that can run the new system, you can look forward to tweaks, changes, and improvements throughout the development cycle. “Some of the feedback we’ve received is things where we’re like, ‘Yeah, I mean, that’s coming in seed two or seed three!’ We’ve already identified those things, either that or bugs or just incomplete elements or tweaks to behavior.”
The first developer betas of iPadOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura are out and the public beta should arrive in July.