Apple tested Stage Manager on iPads without the M1 chip and wasn’t satisfied

As more post-WWDC interviews with Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi surface, we continue to learn more about Apple’s reasoning behind iPadOS’s new Stage Manager feature being limited to iPads with the M1 chip.

The latest interview was published by Forbes contributor David Phelan, who asked Federighi if Apple had attempted to make Stage Manager work with iPad models without the M1 chip. In response, Federighi said that Apple did some early testing of the feature on other iPads, but Apple was not satisfied with the experience it delivered on those devices.

“We started some of our prototypes incorporating those systems and it quickly became apparent that we could not deliver the experience we were designing with them,” he said. “Sure, we’d love to bring some new experience to every device, but we don’t want to hold back the definition of a new experience and build the best foundation for the future in that experience. And we really do. Could only do this by building on M1.”

In an interview shared with TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino earlier this week, Federighi said the M1 chip’s performance ensures that all apps being used in Stage Manager are “instantly responsive,” as customers touch-and-go. based interface.

In a statement shared by René Ritchie last week, Apple stressed that Stage Manager requires “large internal memory, incredibly fast storage, and flexible external display I/O, all of which are supported by the M1 chip by iPads.” distributed together.”

The M1 iPad Pro is available with up to 16GB of RAM and a Thunderbolt port, while the previous generation iPad Pro has 6GB of RAM and a USB-C port. The M1 iPad Pro also features 2x faster storage and up to 40% faster GPU performance than the previous model. The fifth-generation iPad Air is also equipped with the M1 chip, but the iPad mini, entry-level iPad, and older iPad Pro models are not.

Introduced as part of iPadOS 16, Stage Manager allows users to resize iPad apps to overlapping windows for a better multitasking experience. The feature fully supports an external display with 6K resolution, allowing users to work with up to four apps on the iPad and up to four apps on the external display simultaneously. There is also a version of Stage Manager available on macOS Ventura to put Windows in front and center.