Stage Manager: A Problem of Perspective

• John

Federico and I have talked about Stage Manager a lot over the past couple of weeks, and after comparing our experiences, I’m convinced the problems with the feature on the iPad and Mac won’t be easy to fix, not because of technical issues but because from Apple’s perspective nothing is broken. Stage Manager works as intended.

At the heart of many of Stage Manager’s shortcomings is a foundational bias that favors a one-app-at-a-time windowing model. Multiple windows per stage are possible but discouraged by making them too hard to set up. That, in turn, largely defeats the purpose of having windows in the first place.