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It seems very reasonable this will be a future feature. I've long suspected iPad OS' stage manager feature shipping so half baked was really more of getting the

by cududa 3y ago

It seems very reasonable this will be a future feature. I've long suspected iPad OS' stage manager feature shipping so half baked was really more of getting the platform ready to support multiple apps and easier manipulation (from a developer perspective) of the double buffered "window" textures - given Vision Pro is based on iPad OS. With Stage Manager on macOS now, it feels like they have all the primitives in place to "transpose" macOS stage manager windows textures to Vision OS/ the iPad OS foundation. Though this will be tricky to get right for all apps. Will be interesting to see if it's a macOS App store only feature/ API, opt-in, or some other option

refulgentis 3y ago
They shipped iPad Stage Manager half-baked, to get iPad developers ready for double-buffered windows, so they could eventually ship the visionOS macOS integration half-baked? Doesn't sound right at all to my ears, even though I'm stoked for my order! EDIT: -5* doesn't make sense, this is the most polite way you can point out that getting macOS apps windowed on visionOS has ~0 to do with double-buffered windows on iPad OS. n.b. I didn't use half-baked, OP did.
- cududa 3y ago
  No, I'm saying they shipped iPad stage manager half baked for their own uses/ to refine for AVP. I'm positing that a major reason for macOS stage manager's existence is as a transport layer/ "texture formatter"
- Terretta 3y ago
  I don't think it's half-baked. I think it's lightly toasted. :-) I use iPad Pro as a kind of sidecar daily driver, in the magnetic dock magic keyboard w/ trackpad. As I type this, the screen shows a traditional MacOS style dock across bottom, four Stage Manager window clusters I can tap with a thumb on the left, and Safari plus Messages taking 2/3 and 1/2 of screen respectively. There's more app and pixel real estate than most Windows laptops, and bringing screen sets to the foreground or swapping them back to the side is so natural I almost feel like giving up that space on my Mac as well. The big thing I saw happen from apps over the past two version of iOS is app devs realizing their windows will not always be full screen or 1/2 screen size, but arbitrary size. By now, most iPad apps of any serious nature are effectively window size independent, making them play well with others in stage manager. It's easy to see how that would make them play well with the headset one day.
- Jcowell 3y ago
  On another operative, I use Stage Manager everyday of Mac & iPad and it’s pretty neat. I actually forgot I was until you mentioned it
  - ChadNauseam 3y ago
    Same here, I actually really like stage manager on my Mac.
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
They can already do this with the desktop composition software they use today. All the windows are virtualized onto backing layers that you can draw anywhere and add effects to. It’s how window shadows work, and how certain window effects are done. They just haven’t done it.
- ncr100 3y ago
  So Apple could have done this, but did not. Why? (Speculation and leaks welcome) - [Profit on basic innovation] Did they want to wait and see how their customers would adopt VisionOS's native free-floating windows, so as to avoid cognitive overload by commingling with MacOS windows? - [Benevolence to fellow competitors] Did they not want to takeover the existing market of virtualized VR desktops?
  - theultdev 3y ago
    Most likely because it wasn't polished, so get it out now in a polished and limited state and now you have a fancy update to tout when it is done.
  - realslimjd 3y ago
    I'm reasonably certain it's a combination bandwidth and tech issue. The Vision Pro is effectively using AirPlay to mirror the whole screen. If you used AirPlay to mirror each window as a whole screen, you'd run out of bandwidth pretty quickly. The windowing system in MacOS, Quartz Compositor, also isn't built to stream window information. Right now it has a big built in assumption that any windows its displaying are on a screen it also controls. It was probably too big a lift across teams to also re-write the graphics stack for MacOS for the launch of the Vision Pro. Hopefully they get it working in the future, but neither of these problems are easy to solve.
    - NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
      [dead]
    - ncr100 3y ago

by cududa 3y ago

refulgentis 3y ago

They shipped iPad Stage Manager half-baked, to get iPad developers ready for double-buffered windows, so they could eventually ship the visionOS macOS integration half-baked? Doesn't sound right at all to my ears, even though I'm stoked for my order! EDIT: -5* doesn't make sense, this is the most polite way you can point out that getting macOS apps windowed on visionOS has ~0 to do with double-buffered windows on iPad OS. n.b. I didn't use half-baked, OP did.

cududa 3y ago
No, I'm saying they shipped iPad stage manager half baked for their own uses/ to refine for AVP. I'm positing that a major reason for macOS stage manager's existence is as a transport layer/ "texture formatter"
Terretta 3y ago
I don't think it's half-baked. I think it's lightly toasted. :-) I use iPad Pro as a kind of sidecar daily driver, in the magnetic dock magic keyboard w/ trackpad. As I type this, the screen shows a traditional MacOS style dock across bottom, four Stage Manager window clusters I can tap with a thumb on the left, and Safari plus Messages taking 2/3 and 1/2 of screen respectively. There's more app and pixel real estate than most Windows laptops, and bringing screen sets to the foreground or swapping them back to the side is so natural I almost feel like giving up that space on my Mac as well. The big thing I saw happen from apps over the past two version of iOS is app devs realizing their windows will not always be full screen or 1/2 screen size, but arbitrary size. By now, most iPad apps of any serious nature are effectively window size independent, making them play well with others in stage manager. It's easy to see how that would make them play well with the headset one day.
Jcowell 3y ago
On another operative, I use Stage Manager everyday of Mac & iPad and it’s pretty neat. I actually forgot I was until you mentioned it
- ChadNauseam 3y ago
  Same here, I actually really like stage manager on my Mac.

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

They can already do this with the desktop composition software they use today. All the windows are virtualized onto backing layers that you can draw anywhere and add effects to. It’s how window shadows work, and how certain window effects are done. They just haven’t done it.

ncr100 3y ago
So Apple could have done this, but did not. Why? (Speculation and leaks welcome) - [Profit on basic innovation] Did they want to wait and see how their customers would adopt VisionOS's native free-floating windows, so as to avoid cognitive overload by commingling with MacOS windows? - [Benevolence to fellow competitors] Did they not want to takeover the existing market of virtualized VR desktops?
- theultdev 3y ago
  Most likely because it wasn't polished, so get it out now in a polished and limited state and now you have a fancy update to tout when it is done.
- realslimjd 3y ago
  I'm reasonably certain it's a combination bandwidth and tech issue. The Vision Pro is effectively using AirPlay to mirror the whole screen. If you used AirPlay to mirror each window as a whole screen, you'd run out of bandwidth pretty quickly. The windowing system in MacOS, Quartz Compositor, also isn't built to stream window information. Right now it has a big built in assumption that any windows its displaying are on a screen it also controls. It was probably too big a lift across teams to also re-write the graphics stack for MacOS for the launch of the Vision Pro. Hopefully they get it working in the future, but neither of these problems are easy to solve.
  - NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
    [dead]
  - ncr100 3y ago