Apple usually limits some options of its new operating systems to older hardware. The explanation for this is twofold. On the one hand, it encourages users to renew their products to keep up with the news. On the other hand, the power and complexity of new features sometimes require specific hardware that older devices don't have. This is the case, for example, of Visual Organizer in iPadOS 16. This function It is only compatible with iPads with the M1 chip and Apple has explained why: the complexity of the function requires too many resources.
High requirements for Visual Organizer in iPadOS 16 limit its availability
iPadOS 16 introduces a substantial improvement in the ecosystem. After many years exhibiting complex news in iPadOS, Apple has allowed overlapping windows and applications. It does this through a function called Visual Organizer. This organizer allows us to have groups of applications on the side that we can launch just by clicking on them.
In addition, Visual Organizer is compatible with external monitors, so the function improves even more when we work in multiscreen mode. They can be thrown up to eight applications at a time which means great power and complexity for the resources of the iPad. This is one of the options why the new option of iPadOS 16 has only reached the iPad with the M1 chip, that is: the iPad Air (5th generation), iPad Pro 12,9-inch (5th generation), and iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation).
From Digital Trends they wondered what was the real reason to limit the option to the M1 chip and this was Apple's response:
According to the company, Visual Organizer is limited to M1 chips mainly due to iPadOS 16's new fast memory swapping feature, which is widely used by Visual Organizer. This allows apps to convert storage to RAM (effectively), and each app can request up to 16GB of memory. Since Visual Organizer allows you to have up to eight apps running at once, and since each app could request 16GB of memory, it requires muchos means. As such, the new window management feature needs the M1 chip for smooth performance.
That is to say, the M1 chip has the necessary and sufficient power to manage the Visual Organizer resources. It is clear that when the M2 chip arrives in the iPad Pro, it will also support this function and may even be more powerful since the jump from M1 to M2 includes significant improvements.
Of course, of course that's why... it's not for you to buy a new iPad.
The real explanation is: “planned obsolescence”