Enjoyed reading this article from David Pierce at TheVerge on Stage Manager. It is not going well for Apple as far as iPadOS is concerned.
Here in the real world, trying to figure out how Stage Manager works turns into a wild puzzle requiring a wall of Polaroids and a ball of yarn.
The issue seems to lie in “product vision” part. I think David nails it.
The company has a complicated history with multitasking in general. Jobs was famously and loudly against the entire concept — he believed in helping people focus on one thing at a time, not in helping them overwhelm themselves with windows. In Jobs’ mind, the best thing to do for users was to make it easy to switch between tasks rather than do several tasks at once.
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This tension is only becoming more acute, too. Apple is now all-in on keyboard attachments for iPads — it even moved the camera on the new 10th-gen iPad to the center in landscape mode, which is as clear a sign as you’ll ever see that most people use their iPads horizontally on a desk. Apple’s also trying to break down barriers between Mac and iPad so that you can do all your work on all your devices.
It is not easy to switch out the direction of a product that is already performing well in the market. Expectations are high. It is even harder to do it with yearly releases cycles for software and 2-3 year release cycles for devices. We’re in that messy transition where it isn’t quite clear whether Apple’s confused about what role iPad plays in their line up, or is it just taking so many years to change course for their new vision for the device…
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