Why Stage Manager Requires an M1 iPad
Apple, in a statement to Rene Ritchie:
Stage Manager is a fully integrated experience that provides
all-new windowing experience that is incredibly fast and
responsive and allow users to run 8 apps simultaneously across
iPad and an external display with up to 6K resolution. Delivering
this experience with the immediacy users expect from iPad’s
touch-first experience requires large internal memory, incredibly
fast storage, and flexible external display I/O, all of which are
delivered by iPads with the M1 chip.
Stephen Hackett:
A lot of folks with 2018 iPad Pros and 2020 iPad Airs are pretty
upset about this move, especially given the fact that the Apple
silicon DTK ran on an A12Z. My guess is that the company
just wasn’t happy with the performance of Stage Manager on those
older iPads.
If Stage Manager ran well on older iPads, Apple would enable it on them. It might just come down to RAM — the M1 iPads start at 8 GB, but older iPad Pro models start at just 4 (2018 with A12X) or 6 GB (2020 with A12Z).
