perhaps it's not that they don't manage remote machines, just that they do it differently to you.. nested tmux with $HOSTNAME/$IP in the hardstatus make this very easy imo, tells you where you are whilst also allowing you to keep a minimal prompt.. as i find long prompts can be incredibly annoying

also, using ^a^a to send commands to the nested tmux isn't so bad.. but to get to the third one down you need to use ^a^a^a^a as you need to send a ^a^a to the second one in..

for the fourth nest you need 8 ^a's, but again, it's a bit like code indentation, if you're 4 tmuxes deep, then there's a good chance you're doing it wrong

but still, it's nice to be able to do it if necessary