64GB iPad Air 5 no swap space despite Stage Manager

With iPadOS 16, Apple announced several new features that are exclusive to the M1-based iPad, such as Stage Manager for running apps on Windows, and virtual memory paging for the first time on an iOS device. Interestingly, while swapping memory is reportedly one of the requirements for Stage Manager, it turns out the base iPad Air 5 doesn’t have this feature.

For those unfamiliar, virtual memory paging is a feature often used by computers to reallocate some memory as virtual RAM when the computer’s actual RAM is already fully used by the system and applications. Even Macs perform memory swapping, and now this feature will be available for the first time on iPad with iPadOS 16.

According to Apple, iPadOS 16 allows the most demanding apps to use up to 16GB of storage as temporary RAM. And, of course, amid controversy over limiting the Stage Manager feature to iPad models with the M1 chip, Apple claims that running iPad apps in Windows requires ultra-fast virtual memory swapping, which is theoretically only possible with the M1 chip.

But here’s the thing. As the developer notes Steve Troughton-Smith on Twitter, the base model iPad Air 5 is not compatible with virtual memory paging. This is probably due to the fact that 64 GB of internal memory is not enough for swapping memory. As Apple discreetly states on its website, memory replacement on an iPad requires at least 128GB of storage in addition to the M1.

That’s perfectly understandable, but then the question becomes: why does Apple keep saying virtual memory swapping is a requirement for Stage Manager when the 64GB iPad Air 5 that supports Stage Manager clearly doesn’t have virtual memory swapping?

Scene director controversy

Since the announcement of iPadOS 16 at WWDC 2022, many users have criticized Apple’s decision to limit the use of Stage Manager iPads with the M1 chip. Apple’s PR team was quick to engage company executives in a public conversation that the feature required advanced hardware, but some previous generation iPad Pro owners remain skeptical of the requirements.

Stage Manager allows users to run up to eight applications simultaneously on the iPad. In addition, it provides support for a single external display that can also be used to interact with multiple applications on Windows.

The requirement for an M1 chip for the Stage Manager is somewhat clear. The iPad M1 has at least 8GB of RAM and is certainly more powerful than other iPads, but it seems that Apple may have made an effort to port Stage Manager to other iPads in some way, but chose not to.

Here’s what Craig Federighi, head of software development at Apple, said in a recent interview:

Only the iPad M1 combines high-capacity DRAM with very large-capacity, high-performance NAND memory, allowing our virtual memory paging to be ultra-fast.

Federighi emphasizes that Stage Manager is only made possible by virtual memory paging, which is not available on the base iPad Air 5. He also stated that the M1 is responsible for animations and shadows when using Stage Manager. Meanwhile, Intel Macs, which are less powerful than iPads, will get Stage Manager with macOS Ventura – does Apple know how bad Intel GPUs are at rendering animations?

Sight

As my colleague Ben Lovejoy pointed out, Apple could introduce Stage Manager with some limitations for older iPad Pro models or even the 4th generation iPad Air.

Working with a windowed interface depends not only on the number of applications that you can open at the same time. Personally, I rarely have more than four applications open at the same time on my Mac, but I still like to organize them the way I want. Some with large windows, others with smaller ones.

If you think about the current state of multitasking in iPadOS 15, every iPad model can already run up to three apps at the same time without performance issues. You can have two apps running side by side with split view and an additional slide app, not to mention picture-in-picture and quick note.

I’m pretty sure the A12X and A12Z iPad Pros, and owners who probably bought those iPads with the promise that “their next computers won’t be computers,” would be more than happy to have a Stage Manager limited to three to four. applications instead of eight. The iPad can already do this without a lot of RAM, swap memory, or a powerful M1 chip to render animations and shadows.

But what do you think? Could Apple have optimized Stage Manager to work with the iPad without the M1? Let me know in the comments below.

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