That’s why many iPad users have to live with limitations

The new iPadOS 16 makes a powerful impression at first, but now the disillusionment follows. The best function is only for users of the youngest and fastest iPads. This will not change anymore, as we can see from Apple’s statement.

When presenting iPadOS 16 at WWDC 2022, the focus was on new, improved multitasking. What Apple didn’t announce, however, caused disillusionment. Both the “Stage Manager” and the associated improved use of an external monitor will only be available for iPads with an M1 chip. Ergo: Only the iPad Pro 2021 and the iPad Air 5 benefit from this, all other iPads get nothing.

M1 becomes “mandatory” for iPad users: Apple explains the facts

That makes me happy, also for my esteemed colleague Kaan Gürayer. He then suspects it base motives for Apple’s behavior:

“Apparently there are no technical reasons for Stage Manager’s M1 exclusivity. Rather, Apple is probably pursuing a simple goal with the restriction: to persuade owners of older iPads to upgrade to new models with gentle pressure.

Looks good, but also needs a lot of performance – iPadOS 16:

But is that really the case? At least Apple is now attempting a technical explanation of the situation. Apparently the cause is the resource-hungry “Virtual Memory Swap”. This allows the iPad memory to be used to expand the available memory for all apps. The makers of digital trends asked Apple and got the following answer (translated):

According to the company, Stage Manager is limited to M1 chips, largely because of iPadOS 16’s new fast memory swap feature, which Stage Manager makes extensive use of. It allows apps to convert memory to RAM (effectively), and each app can request up to 16GB of memory.

Because the Stage Manager allows up to eight apps to run simultaneously—and because each app can take up 16GB of storage—it uses a lot of resources. Therefore, the new window management feature requires the M1 for optimal performance.

Nothing works below 8 GB of RAM

Added to this is the fact: Only the iPad Air 5 and the current iPad Pro models offer at least 8 GB of RAM. The older iPads don’t have that much RAM at their disposal, the 2020 iPad Pro had a maximum of 6 GB RAM, which is probably still too little.