iPad multitasking is garbage

Stage Manager is fundamentally broken

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

I will open this piece with an apology: first for the click baity title and, second, for the rant that follows. I set foot again into iPadOS and I am left confused, disoriented and a bit angry. Most of this frustration is Stage Manager's fault, but I need to set the scene.

Weird Workflows

Let’s start with a simple one. The iPad is now designed with a keyboard in mind and, with its camera repositioned to the long edge of the screen, to be used in landscape orientation. Great: why is is so difficult to get apps organised in a horizontal tiling arrangement in Stage Manager? On the 11 inch iPad Pro, the windows always cross each other, making it difficult to move between apps in a way that isn’t distracting. Here’s an entirely run-of-the-mill example, with a textbook on the top of the screen and my files of notes underneath:

Stage Manager on an iPad Pro

You can just about see around a half of the active area of the PDF page obscured by the lower window. Trying to resize the window is futile because it just sort of bounces back to its original size, defining the limit of the window’s size. Notice also how there…