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iPad Does the RAM really limit you on a daily basis?

Kadin

Kadin

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
597
2
With all this talk about the Air only having 1GB, do *you* really see a noticeable affect from this? So many seem to talk about numerous tabs always open, etc. but is that really a typical situation you find yourself in often?

I typically have one, maybe two open at once. I will say this a recreational device for me, not for work or production of any kind. I never go in and close apps in the background and I have yet to experience any type of lag issues.

Either way, I'm beyond happy with this and it's a pretty big improvement over the Mini I had. Maybe it's not a huge leap from the 4th Gen but it seems great to me overall.
 
I usually keep around 3 tabs open, and if I'm not careful enough, I'll just have to wait for them to reload.
Needless to say I avoid opening more than 3 because that's a sure reload happening soon.
 
I had apps close on me twice yesterday while playing around with it. Is it a big deal? Not really, but if definitely could use more RAM.
 
Kadin said:
With all this talk about the Air only having 1GB, do *you* really see a noticeable affect from this? So many seem to talk about numerous tabs always open, etc. but is that really a typical situation you find yourself in often?

I typically have one, maybe two open at once. I will say this a recreational device for me, not for work or production of any kind. I never go in and close apps in the background and I have yet to experience any type of lag issues.

Either way, I'm beyond happy with this and it's a pretty big improvement over the Mini I had. Maybe it's not a huge leap from the 4th Gen but it seems great to me overall.
Click to expand...

I can't really notice a RAM limitation, but it's definitely happening on my Air.

I have 5 Low Memory logs in one half-day of what I consider to be "light" usage.

image.jpg
 
Kadin said:
With all this talk about the Air only having 1GB, do *you* really see a noticeable affect from this? So many seem to talk about numerous tabs always open, etc. but is that really a typical situation you find yourself in often?
Click to expand...
Yep, I usually, have at least 8 tabs open. More when I need to look up information for a form I'm filling up. Since there are a bunch of iPads at home (two for my use), right now I just use multiple iPads instead of switching tabs and risk losing all my entries.

I wouldn't exactly say the low amount of RAM is limiting but it's definitely annoying.
 
I was using Airplay to watch a movie on TV last night, while downloading a slew of apps. The movie quit twice, but and I don't have any low memory logs.
 
I don't actually think it's the RAM that causes the tabs refreshing (are you talking about web browsing tabs?). It's the way iOS 7 is programmed.

I have an iPad 1 on iOS 5 with 256 MB of RAM, and yet, it can hold quite a few tabs open in Chrome without refreshing them. Safari needs to refresh more often, but I can still do better than my iPhone on iOS 7.

If you're talking about how many apps running you have, that's probably different. It would help if it were made to not be so linear... I mean, having to exit your app and go to another app just to reply to a message? You should be able to do that right from the notification.
 
People using all the generations of iPad , and any issues they have experienced, I can assure you over 99% do not realise it's related to memory . And most issues are in fact not ram related. You average user is so far away from being a power user that they do not even require half of the 1gb they have

So I would say iPad users are not being limited by ram on a daily basis.

----------
LostSoul80 said:
I usually keep around 3 tabs open, and if I'm not careful enough, I'll just have to wait for them to reload.
Needless to say I avoid opening more than 3 because that's a sure reload happening soon.
Click to expand...

I always have 8 open. The reloading of those pages is not determined by how many tabs you have open, or running out of memory .

I'm running an iPad 3, and cannot remember the last time I had less than 8 tabs open.
 
MH01 said:
The reloading of those pages is not determined by how many tabs you have open, or running out of memory .
Click to expand...

Do you have any idea what you are talking about? :eek:

Safari on iOS keeps every page's cache in the RAM. When memory is running low, Safari unloads the further cached data from the RAM. Opening the corresponding tabs will result in the browser having to re-fetch all the data, since nothing has been ever saved to disk.

Your statement is completely false.

:rolleyes:
 
The RAM never limits me. And given my use case (note my signature...) that's saying something.

iDevices have NEVER been about spec checklists. They're about real world usability and practical performance. Not once ever on any iOS device have I encountered a situation where I thought "gee it'd sure be great to have more RAM!" Never.
 
It's a bit of a disappointment given how close to actual PC performance we are today. From refreshing tabs to programs that have to reopen during multitasking it's certainly something I notice. As the ipad further displaces the need for a separate computer it will become more noticeable. In practice it's not super irritating right now because web pages and programs load so fast, but the device would feel faster will if there were no wait.
 
My iPad air does seem to reload safari tabs far more often than my iPhone 5s does; with the 5s, it feels like I can have 10-12 tabs open at least and they're all ready to go when I bring them to the front. Other that that though, haven't encounter any low memory crashes that I can perceive.
 
I was hoping the iPad Air would have an increase in RAM. I currently use an iPad 4 to view and take notes on presentation slides in iAnnotate. My Safari tabs reload every time I switch between the two applications and I do this often (to look up a research report or a definition). It doesn't limit me but it does lower my productivity on a daily basis.
 
Safari keeps crashing on me and it's getting to be really fooking annoying:

8EOKZkO.jpg
 
FrankB1191 said:
I was using Airplay to watch a movie on TV last night, while downloading a slew of apps. The movie quit twice, but and I don't have any low memory logs.
Click to expand...
Ahhh yes found it.....it shows issues with poorly written javascript.
 
Altis said:
I don't actually think it's the RAM that causes the tabs refreshing (are you talking about web browsing tabs?). It's the way iOS 7 is programmed.

I have an iPad 1 on iOS 5 with 256 MB of RAM, and yet, it can hold quite a few tabs open in Chrome without refreshing them. Safari needs to refresh more often, but I can still do better than my iPhone on iOS 7.

If you're talking about how many apps running you have, that's probably different. It would help if it were made to not be so linear... I mean, having to exit your app and go to another app just to reply to a message? You should be able to do that right from the notification.
Click to expand...
It is an iOS7 issue.
 
anthonymoody said:
The RAM never limits me. And given my use case (note my signature...) that's saying something.

iDevices have NEVER been about spec checklists. They're about real world usability and practical performance. Not once ever on any iOS device have I encountered a situation where I thought "gee it'd sure be great to have more RAM!" Never.
Click to expand...

most average computer users never think it either

those who need it, know they need it
 
I use my iPad at weekly staff meetings to show my team my progress on the sites I build, which means I usually cue up several tabs. I also use it during production to test several different sites. When talking about some new feature we want to add, I'll use my iPad to sketch some wireframes and jot down notes in Pages. I also use it to prototype mockups for an app I'm designing and test development builds. I also bring it to meetings across campus to demo for our clients what we're working on. I photograph some of our events and sometimes I use the camera connection kit to live Tweet what's going on (especially for bigger press conferences). When we visit research centers out in the middle of nowhere, it's nice to pack a small pack with my iPad and 7D and dump as I shoot. Then we can post to our Instagram and Flickr while on the go (not a big fan of Instagram but we use it). When I go on vacation or in the evening I use Diet Coda to remote connect and fix if something with one of my sites blows up (very rare). Or if a client for my freelance company somehow ruined something on their site (like if they're screwing with stuff they shouldn't) I can fix it. I also use it to demo to those clients. In the evenings my wife and I browse the web a lot, I draw and paint, and we watch movies on Netflix and Hulu. Oh, and to stream NFL Sunday Ticket. I also play a lot of higher-end games. In college I used it all the time to record and take notes during lectures, as well as make lots of thumbnail sketches and mockups for designs. I also sometimes used it to build PDFs to show my design process.

What drives me crazy is when I'm doing research for a post (on here or elsewhere) and the freaking thing reloads when I come back. I'm now in the habit of copying my text before switching tabs, especially if it's a longer post, and I'll paste it into Notes. When I'm reading news I'll often look up different sources and use quite a few tabs. I also forget to close them.

More RAM would be nice as it would open up future apps to edit hi-res RAW photos and also have a big canvas for painting with more layers.
 
anthonymoody said:
The RAM never limits me. And given my use case (note my signature...) that's saying something.

iDevices have NEVER been about spec checklists. They're about real world usability and practical performance. Not once ever on any iOS device have I encountered a situation where I thought "gee it'd sure be great to have more RAM!" Never.
Click to expand...

Well, there is certainly an expectation that iDevices are the fastest and provide a near flawless user experience. How Apple accomplishes that, I don't think anyone really cares. They do care and start to question some of those choices when things begin to fall apart.

So far, we know that 64bit apps are using 20-30% more ram, apps are crashing, the OS is rebooting, and there are usage logs full of low memory entries. Looking at all that its not difficult to say that maybe these devices need more ram.
 
erawsd said:
So far, we know that 64bit apps are using 20-30% more ram, apps are crashing, the OS is rebooting, and there are usage logs full of low memory entries. Looking at all that its not difficult to say that maybe these devices need more ram.
Click to expand...

I dont think the crashes are due to the ram. I think that is an iOS 7 issue. My old iPad 4 went from safari crashing once a month to 5 crashes a day just by installing iOS 7. Same goes for some other apps. I only have 2 low memory warnings in the logs that happened the first 2 days i had the Air.
 
MH01 said:
People using all the generations of iPad , and any issues they have experienced, I can assure you over 99% do not realise it's related to memory . And most issues are in fact not ram related. You average user is so far away from being a power user that they do not even require half of the 1gb they have

So I would say iPad users are not being limited by ram on a daily basis.

----------



I always have 8 open. The reloading of those pages is not determined by how many tabs you have open, or running out of memory .

I'm running an iPad 3, and cannot remember the last time I had less than 8 tabs open.
Click to expand...

Virtually everything just said is completely incorrect, but this takes the icing on the cake:

The reloading of those pages is not determined by how many tabs you have open, or running out of memory .
Click to expand...
 
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