iPados Productivity & collaboration features reach new heights

This year’s updates to iPadOS are designed with productivity and collaboration in mind, with a stunning new multitasking experience called Stage Manager, an all-new iPad app called Freeform, and countless under-the-hood changes that make working on an iPad even better.

CHANGING THE GAME WITH STAGE MANAGER

There’s no denying that the iPad has been a major success since its inception, but as Apple began to put more focus on features for iPhone, the iPad has fallen behind somewhat in recent years. Sure, dedicated iPadOS functionality has given Apple an edge, but it’s true that consumers and professionals have felt that the operating system has become a little stale in recent years, and wanted more depth and functionality to make iPad a genuine alternative to a computer. Stage Manager is, without doubt, one of the most important features announced at this year’s WWDC, designed to change the way users multitask on the iPad. It presents sets of up to four apps per group in a system-managed tile formation and allows users to quickly swap between working on one project to another, and vice versa. It’s the successor to Spaces on the Mac (the feature will also be coming to macOS Ventura later this year) and could revolutionize the way users work from their iPads. Rather than endlessly tapping back and forth between apps, Center Stage is a unique workspace management approach that was designed for the Mac and iPad - but there’s a catch when it comes to using the feature.

Stange Manager will only be available to users with an iPad Pro or iPad Air with an M1 chip. According to Apple, Stage Manager is exclusive to M1 chips because of iPadOS 16’s fast memory swap feature — something Stage Manager relies on quite heavily. Similar to what we’ve seen on Android devices, this process allows apps to convert storage into RAM for more horsepower. Stage Manager allows users to run up to eight apps going at once, some of which can ask for up to 16GB of RAM. In other words, it demands a lot of resources. As such, the new window management feature needs M1 for smooth performance.