In a surprising, but welcome, a bit of news, Apple has enabled Stage Manager for more than just the M1 iPad models. Specifically, it’s the A12X and 12Z models, which means iPad Pros from 2018 and 2020 that will get Stage Manager when iPadOS 16.1 is released. They won’t, however, support Stage Manager on an external monitor.
Speaking of external monitor support, it appears that Apple is delaying this to actually get iPadOS 16.1 out the door. They’ll be enabling external display support for Stage Manager on M1 iPads in a software update later this year, per a statement to Engadget. This, paired with the just released developer beta of iPadOS 16.1 and the fact that it feels pretty stable even where Stage Manager is concerned, points to an upcoming release pretty soon. I’d expect this to coincide with new iPad Pro models, which may or may not get an actual Apple event, as previously reported.
It seems like Apple came to the same conclusion as I did: Just release iPadOS 16 already. The fact that they got Stage Manager (seemingly) stable, albeit without external monitor support, is just gravy.
