Stage Manager isn’t bad. They just crowbared it in without tidying up the rest of the OS. Consider:

- sliding in from the left with an app open brings up the stages but doing so on the cold desktop brings in the dashboard.

- the dashboard is still just a narrow column and cannot fill the whole display.

- sliding up from the bottom also brings up the stages but you can see all of them at once instead of the most recent 4-5.

This UX is all terribly ill-thought out. The Mac doesn’t have the advantage of having the ‘slide up’ gesture which is better in every way. It works the same regardless of where you are in the OS, it shows every stage simultaneously and closing apps is a breeze.

If they’re going to double down on the sidebar then it needs to be accessible from the desktop which means ditching the dashboard altogether for desktop widgets.

If they’re going to keep the dashboard then it should be accessible from every part of the OS and not just the desktop just like the App Library is.