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iOS 4.3 amazing memory management

S

spammerhamster

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 5, 2010
288
1
:eek::eek:
I think Apple really did something magical. They added extra memory with a firmware update! (Or they introduced an amazing memory management subroutine)

Webpages with large images which couldn't be fully loaded with the ipad1 on iOS4.2.1, can now be fully loaded!
No more blue questionmarkboxes!

Anyone noticed this too? It annoyed me enough to make me want to upgrade to ipad2, but now I have to rethink.
 
Examples:

pretty much all picture topics on this site used to partially load:
But here's an example.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=835864


Also this one page used to crash icab. It's a nightmare of mobile browsers. A combination of multiple animated gifs, video's, hundreds of large pics, and insane javascript (firefox on my quadcore machine with 6GB ram and SSD is choking on that page)

It's still slow to load, but it's loading everything.:
http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/26033/Akihabara+Guide.html
 
spammerhamster said:
Examples:

pretty much all picture topics on this site used to partially load:
But here's an example.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=835864


Also this one page used to crash icab. It's a nightmare of mobile browsers. A combination of multiple animated gifs, video's, hundreds of large pics, and insane javascript (firefox on my quadcore machine with 6GB ram and SSD is choking on that page)

It's still slow to load, but it's loading everything.:
http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/26033/Akihabara+Guide.html
Click to expand...
Those last 2 links are a nightmare practically on my desktop... almost a total slide-show when scrolling.

If that entire page can load in Safari now on iPad 1, I'm damn impressed...
 
I have engadget, tuaw, eurogamer, igoogle and macrumors open in different tabs. Going back and forth and it's not forced reloaded yet? Good work.

Could they have enabled the virtual memory trick themselves I wonder?
 
Kadin said:
Those last 2 links are a nightmare practically on my desktop... almost a total slide-show when scrolling.

If that entire page can load in Safari now on iPad 1, I'm damn impressed...
Click to expand...


It's certainly not easy for the iPad. It takes like 4 , minutes to load, but it's loading. And it's loading everything. I do notice it's faster and smoother on portrait than in landscape though.
 
MacRumorUser said:
I have engadget, tuaw, eurogamer, igoogle and macrumors open in different tabs. Going back and forth and it's not forced reloaded yet? Good work.

Could they have enabled the virtual memory trick themselves I wonder?
Click to expand...

Are you serious? I can't wait to update mine tonight. Just picked up a 32GB from Craigslist.
 
spammerhamster said:
They fixed a hardware limitation with an software update? WOW!
Imagine how powerful ipad2 and iPhone 5 would be!
Click to expand...

Ever heard of virtual memory?

All the memory in the iPad is flash to begin with. It's not hard to allow the system to use free space on the disk to cache.
 
gloss said:
Ever heard of virtual memory?

All the memory in the iPad is flash to begin with. It's not hard to allow the system to use free space on the disk to cache.
Click to expand...

If it's actually swap. We don't know for sure until 4.3 is jailbroken. Apple never did vm so it'd be new. Diskusage is the same though.
 
spammerhamster said:
They fixed a hardware limitation with an software update? WOW!
Imagine how powerful ipad2 and iPhone 5 would be!
Click to expand...

Or how powerful the iPad 3's camera will be? I had an iPad and will buy an iPad 2, but people do cut Apple too much slack sometimes. I also own AAPL shares so I'm not a total troll.

It's a hardware (and now apparently software) limitation because Apple designed it that way. They knew what trade offs are being made and they did it to boost the bottom line. They didn't put extra RAM in nor put in the proper programming of the OS to take advantage of the onboard flash. People didn't mind and bought the iPad in droves so it's all right, but let's not praise them for fixing something that they could've done right a year ago when the product came out.
 
MacRumorUser said:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/12/2010_in_photos_part_1_of_3.html


My iPad prior to 4.3 would get to image 21-22 and then all the rest would be ??

Now it loads all 40 images.

100% improvement.
Click to expand...

So it would never load images 23-40? Or would it load after a while?

I don't have an iPad right now, but I am testing iOS 4.3 on the iPhone 4. When I load that Boston.com site, I get the checkerboard as I scroll down the site, but then after a bit, the images do load up. All the images end up loading. No question marks. But as I scroll back and forth quickly amongst the site, the checkerboard sometimes comes back up.

Do you see the checkerboard pattern still, even though all the images are still loading?
 
Just Sold Mine-I'll Never Know the Joy

Well after about a week on the market I just sold mine. I really wanted to have a chance to check out 4.3 on my iPad before popping for a new one. I was wondering if 4.3 would make things better for the gen. 1 iPad.
 
MacRumorUser, kudos for picking a website that truly tests memory management capabilities of the iPad. Most don't understand what the issue really was for iPad Safari and the RAM limitation.

Well, you're right. I just updated to 4.3 on my iPad. Not only can I load all the pics from Big Picture for the first time, but two other tabs that I had previously loaded in Safari STILL did not have to refresh when I went back to them. Now THAT is impressive! I'm truly surprised.

I was planning to upgrade to an iPad 2, partly to fix this very issue. This is making me rethink a little, but I do believe that the better CPU, greater RAM, and better memory bandwidth of the iPad 2 will make browsing far better. I think many people are overlooking the potential improvements in web browsing on iPad 2 given the greater power under the hood.

Most likely what I will do at this point is hit up an Apple store this weekend, bring my iPad 1, and do a side-by-side performance comparison on some heavy-duty websites with the iPad 2. I'll report back.
 
JoelMarcey said:
So it would never load images 23-40? Or would it load after a while?

I don't have an iPad right now, but I am testing iOS 4.3 on the iPhone 4. When I load that Boston.com site, I get the checkerboard as I scroll down the site, but then after a bit, the images do load up. All the images end up loading. No question marks. But as I scroll back and forth quickly amongst the site, the checkerboard sometimes comes back up.

Do you see the checkerboard pattern still, even though all the images are still loading?
Click to expand...

iPhone 4...iPad.

HUGE difference in how many images can be loaded...
 
EthanNixon said:
iPhone 4...iPad.

HUGE difference in how many images can be loaded...
Click to expand...

I never really paid attention much on either the iPad or iPhone 4. All of the images on the iPhone 4 for that site load up. There are no ??? anywhere. I just get the checkerboard pattern as I scroll up and down. Maybe it won't do that on the iPad -- I never really took notice if it had checkerboards before.
 
spammerhamster said:
Examples:


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=835864
Click to expand...

So you're saying that ALL of the pictures loaded properly? No more ? in a blue little box?

If so, that is simply awesome! I frequent the photo forum on Skyscraperpage.com very often and it bugged the crap out of me to the point of where I would visit the site only on my desktop. Can't wait to pick up my iPad 2 on Friday since I sold the iPad 1 already and can't test it myself.
 
I just updated my wife's iPhone 4 to 4.3 and am keeping mine at 4.2.1 until a jailbreak is released but I tested both iPhone side by side with this website...

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=189079

On 4.3, the iPhone loaded all images and in a decent amount of time. The 4.2.1 iPhone took about twice as long to load and nearly 1/2 the images came out as little blue boxes with a ? in the center. Amazing that Apple was able to fix this...I thought for sure it was a RAM problem.
 
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