Apple backtracks, will extend Stage Manager multitasking support to older iPads - Ars Technica

When Apple delayed iPadOS 16 in August, one of the primary culprits was the new "Stage Manager" multitasking feature.

But with their four efficiency cores and four performance cores, both the A12X and A12Z chips were clearly dry-runs for the M1, and they're still powerful enough to run iPadOS and its apps well—it's nice to see them pick up support for Stage Manager, too.

Apple software engineering SVP Craig Federighi said in an interview earlier this year that Stage Manager was only happening on M1 iPads because those models have extra RAM and faster flash memory (for swapping to the iPad's storage when RAM is full) that were necessary to make the feature run smoothly.

But Federighi was also specifically talking about a version of Stage Manager with eight apps running at once, four on the iPad's display, and another four on an external display.

Limiting Stage Manager on older iPads to one display—and thus, to a total of four apps, instead of eight—was apparently a workable compromise for performance on older devices.

The developer beta that adds Stage Manager to older iPads is out now, and the public version should be available within a couple of days.