Stage manager doesn't look to me like a replacement for cmd+tab or exposé, but rather a more obvious and in your face replacement for Spaces (multiple desktops).

Still a little confused with Stage Manager, but thinking about it as a replacement/enhancement for Spaces makes it seem a lot more interesting and useful.

Even though Spaces is an awesome idea, I find it very inconvenient to use even with 4-finger swiping. Perhaps it's the lack of visual cues that is the issue for me. And I find that most of the left/right real-estate on my screen wasted anyways, so this might be something I can actually use.

Having played around with Stage Manager today, the best way I would describe it is "Spaces within Spaces". I didn't find turning it on very intuitive, but otherwise I think it's pretty clever.

I already rely on Spaces for day-to-day organization (one per task) but each individual Space can become really hectic when you have several things to reference simultaneously (e.g. wikis, specs, Figma, Zeplin, screenshots, etc...). This cleaned everything up nicely without having to drag windows off the edges of the screen or risk minimizing / hiding and having them show up elsewhere.

It really needs a way to magnify the little previews though, either by hovering to peek them or just magnification the way it works in the Dock.

Yeah it won't hurt me because it will probably get ignored like many other window management options on the macOS. In the end of the day, it is just slightly more intuitive virtual desktop with continuity.

I would pay for fancyzones on macOS