iPadOS multitasking at WWDC 2022
Many predicting WWDC 2022 will see changes/advances in multitasking. Is this “finally” or better, another example of Apple’s enduring patience?
A twitter thread originally here.
WWDC always interesting. In the pre-show guesses, one topic caught my eye—even more windowing /
“multitasking” for iPadOS incl *resize*. This deserves to be thought of in the context of “Apple is always playing the long game…and is very patient”. https://www.macrumors.com/guide/wwdc-2022-what-to-expect/ /1
2/ Many will write about this in one of two ways. a) Toaster-refrigerator—apple keeps trying to make a big phone more like a laptop or b) FINALLY Apple does what “everyone” said should be done long ago. But still, iPad is a consumption platform blah blah
3/ Apple's been remarkably patient in evolving iPad—some say as slow. I see it as patient *because* they had Mac and had iphone they could play the long game.
This patience was necessity. Not stubborn. It was by design, feature-not-bug. At least 3 reasons:
4/ 1. orig iPad was a tiny 1024x768. Even if you could side-by-side or resize, way too small. On Win, ~all apps ran full screen (from data) which Mac ppl never got. Why? Win: menu bar is part of app wind AND maximize works. Mac: all apps always overlap and green button is random.
5/ 2. Generally, regular people don’t do more than one thing at a time. Normals aren’t doing email while watching GitHub errors in term. Even messaging & word processing isn’t routine. Besides notifications can handle context switch. Techies hate hearing and always say “not me”.
6/ 6/ 3. Battery life is an issue. iOS/iPadOS handled background processing by “freezing” invisible apps. This was a huge win for battery life the first few generations. (We did this on ARM Windows too). The cost of keeping overlapping windows updated is very real wrt battery.
7/ But much time has passed. Each of those have become non-issues. Screen on current iPad Pro is 2388-by-1668 (264ppi). There is much more room to move things around, especially on the 12.9 @ 2732-by-2048. MacBook Air is 2560-by-1600 (227ppi).
8/ @jensenharris pointed out to me for years that biggest issue with “apps” has been negative space—unused portion of app real estate at full screen. That’s why Windows 8 had snap modes for apps—to solve that. Running iOS apps has always left negative space. Easy to fix now.
9/ Humans have not changed much but as screens have gotten bigger the negative space issue is more of an issue, even in productivity. You don’t see it on slides or numbers, but on words you do (same with Windows). Mac ppl don’t see b/c apps have always started as narrow windows.
10/ iOS/iPadOS have really done amazing work at being able to permit background processing w/o draining battery. First this was for video (offloaded to video portion of SoC). Advances in M1 SoC AND in keeping bad-for-battery APIs off the platform only make this better.
11/ Apple took baby steps over several gens—frustrating those who wanted more toaster-truck convergence. Except for special use case (point of sale, checkin apps, etc.) mainstream productivity use of iPad is a laptop. APPLE HAS THE DATA that informs the pace of change.
12/ Having M1 on Mac and on iPad introduces a toaster-truck convergence question. iPad already has trackpad/keyb, and now windowing (?). So will the Mac get touch? Well it could easily add it, but it still would not work super well even with Apples control of ecosystem.
13/ Touch continues to drive very differnt UI model—repeated attempts at a framework that just “makes apps work” for touch or trackpad have not been successful, but closer. Again patience. BUT most all on Mac people really want will *never* be exclusively touch usable. Assertion.
14/ That’s on top of the general issue of what APIs are available to turn an iPad into a “full Mac-capable” converged device. Apple's been *incredible* at not opening up iPadOS too quickly maintaining the promise of battery life, security, reliability, quality over time, etc.
15/ Every year a few more OS subsystems are opened up on iPadOS that previously “required a Mac.” Audio, video overlay, networking/vpn, virtual cam (maybe), and so on. Maintaining a customer promise of iPad is key. Apple can do that b/c they have Mac and have phone. Patience.
16/ BUT now it seems so much more obvious to everyone because it is the same chips. Literally they are differentiated by software expressed through hardware. Only Apple can do that in a reliable manner. Amazing.
17/ For me, crazy/obvious we now get much better battery life on Mac M1 than iPad Pro M1 because the Mac has 50 whr v. 28 whr battery. I want my iPad to have full battery. Thats why I always think a clamshell iPad will dramatically move the iPad forward as “future of the laptop."
18/ We’ll see. I know nothing of course. I’m out here guessing like everyone else. Or maybe wishing.
One thing I believe: please stop shuffling around notifications, gadgets, etc. The yield is so low. Notifications are just evil—they are all turned off. There I said it.
PS/ Windows has long history of “tiled” windows. Few remember that Windows 1.0 was tiled much like _parts of_ Smalltalk. Most thought this was a better model. My view today is overlapping is just a world of futzing. There’s no place for it on a modern computer. Its an old model.
Post Show/1 In the beta, Stage Manager strikes me as an awkward solution. With existing windowing paradigms so engrained this is a super difficult design to add something new. As a reminder, it used to take videos and pages of docs to explain resize, drag and drop, etc.
2/ What I see as the miss with Stage Manager is how it breaks what the iPad so decidedly improved which was the removal of the distinction between launching and switching (Windows people — diff between start and taskbar.) You don’t launch from stage manager so you need dock too.
3/ Stage Manager *brings* that duality to iPad — creating awkward interactions.
That is compounded by using an external monitor where you have to use the trackpad v touch.
The feature is a “mode” set in control center.
Collectively, there’s a lot of conceptual overhead+friction.
4/ The fact that launching/switching were the same meant you never needed to worry about close (putting aside tech enthusiasts desire for order). But the limits of how many apps can be “staged” means that now what apps you’re running matters.
5/ There’s a long tail of compat issues. Apps on iPad are not designed to be continuously resized and some do not support the existing windowing modes already. Finally, the three dots are rather tricky to hit with the trackpad since there is resize handle embedded there too.
6/ I haven’t been convinced the iPad even needs windowing. It needs a solution for what to do with all the pixels as screens get bigger. w/4K External I love having more room for Photos, Spreadsheets, Presentations, etc. I can value more writing and browsing side by side.
7/ I’m unclear why this was added to the Mac other than for strategy.
But in beta this is overly complex, finicky, and futzy. Any time saved by being able to work side by side will be net lost just “setting things up.”
It is just beta 1. Lots can improve.
8/ I can’t let this go. One of the really awkward parts of stage manager is that it is really about switching. The thing is you have to have a keyboard/tp so switching is far easier with cmd+tab. Why take up the screen and build a switcher-only for a weird selection of open apps?
9/ So what to do to improve? I know what it is like to be on the receiving end, but absent some communications over what they were trying to do that might not be obvious or apparent (yet?) here are some suggestions:
1. Remove it from macOS. It is redundant there.
10/ 2. Remove “stage” part on iOS (side rail). I think it is redundant there with cmd+tab and dock.
3. Move/Remove the drag arrow from where the three dots are because of colliding hit areas.
11/ 4. Get rid of floating from the old model as it was always confusing
5. If there is “new window” then there should to be a “close” on three dots child windows, esp for safari. You end up losing browsing context and windows otherwise, esp full window.
12/ What remains is the ability to resize with step function sizes for most apps. This is just what it is like to run iPad apps on the Mac.
As @jensenharris said yesterday, this feels like they got trapped into over-designing or over-thinking. https://twitter.com/jensenharris/status/1533947411445321728?s=20&t=viVcxGzjJN77L1bL43FPNQ
