The Stage Manager feature in iPadOS makes my iPad Pro a suitable laptop alternative

I’ve been testing the beta versions of iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura for several days now. And while some folks don’t like the feature, Stage Manager on the tablet is a game changer for me. Not so much on the Mac.

Stage Manager is an entirely new multitasking experience that automatically organizes apps and windows. For the first time on an iPad, users can create overlapping windows of different sizes in a single view, drag and drop windows from the side, or open apps from the Dock to create groups of apps.

The window of the app users are working on is displayed prominently in the center, and other open apps and windows are arranged on the left-hand side in order of recency. What’s more, Stage Manager also unlocks full external display support with resolutions of up to 6K, so you can work with up to four apps on iPad and four apps on the external display.

However, not every iPad owner can take advantage of this feature. It’s only available on the iPad Pro and iPad Air with the M1 chip.

Stage Manager on the Mac is a nice optional feature, but it’s not as important to macOS as that operating system already has great multi-tasking capabilities. 

I’m not ready to ditch my Mac and go full-out with an iPad. However, iPadOS 16, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and an external keyboard and mouse will allow me to do my Apple World Today work while traveling.