While I wish we got the 4gb, let's speak truth. The somewhat comparable MacBook Air only comes with 4 and it is a full fledged laptop. I don't feel like pulling up timelines but just about a 2 years ago we were fighting to get 1gb in our phones and tablets. Now we have 2gb of the fastest ram available as far as I know. To wrap up my point I have to point out one more thing. I have been a yearly iPhone buyer since day one and for some time it was necessary to have the latest to be able to perform the latest funtions and play the latest games. I haven't played a game in years that actually slowed down and iPhone though. Developers aren't keeping up with the power that the I devices already have, so would another 2gb really matter when you are probably going to repla ce your iPad in 2-3 years anyways
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2GB vs 4GB RAM Splits the Pro developer community.
- Thread starter TheRealAlex
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I can think of some apps that do exactly this. Look at what Office requires for example. It supports the iPad 2. But that doesn't mean it can't scale to more powerful hardware. And it doesn't mean I shouldn't be aggressive about my RAM usage when I design new features or new apps.
Another issue is that if we keep using apps like Photoshop as a gold standard, we are basically saying that the gold standard is bloated software filled with legacy code from the 80s and 90s, patched over with features and a level of risk aversion to changing anything too central. This is not streamlined code here, and it will tend to eat RAM as a means to bypass the age and complexity of the code rather than optimizing it well.
Honestly, my own hope is that newer developers with more nimble code bases eats the lunch of apps like Photoshop. My disappointment is that it will take years for new players to scrounge up the resources to compete with the behemoths.
I know that certain games don't support the iPad 2 but I saw no "iPad Pro recommended" apps in the AppStore that said iPad 2 wasn't compatible. Even though it is slow it seems app developers do not want to exclude support for it.
I have to wonder how people think desktop apps are made. How do people here think developers deal with the differing amounts of RAM on a normal desktops?
To be fair there, having a swap file on the desktop makes app developers consider RAM very differently. Target certain specs, but if RAM gets out of hand, then swap will generally save your butt and prevent it from crashing at the cost of performance. So unless you start hitting the virtual memory limits (4GB for 32-bit apps), there is a lot less incentive to care about RAM usage as long as performance hits your targets.
This mentality is one of the reasons why certain legacy desktop apps can be difficult to port to iOS. You can't just expect the OS to save you if you use a ton of RAM. Instead you have to start finding ways to conserve RAM again and load things from disk on demand if at all possible. Things you used to have to do when RAM was not as plentiful as it is these days in desktops.
Totally agree, my mum does leave more then 25 tabs open, she never closes them! But trust me the iPad Pro 9.7 handles them with real ease... Zero slowdown.
It's not slowdowns, It's refreshes and multitasking. The beefier iOS gets, the less you will be able to do in multitasking and the less ram will be available to applications. Would have been much nicer to have 1.75 gigs of ram per app, on a multitasking "Pro" device, than .75 - IMHO.
Please, buy the 9.7" Pro. I will not be.
See, both can be happy with their decisions.
Wouldn't be an issue if iOS opened up a little. Real file system argument time again....it also give swap file access as a bene. The little section of the drive anything can use. Running app A and B split they currently get their little world and whatever ram is free to access. Break down those walls, app can see oh I have gb's of swap file to play with now.
And apple can control this, since they seem to be control freaks with iOS. We can't even change the install (all those page one apps from apple we can't kill, we can only hide in a folder as an example). So it removes the sys admin powers to play with it.
Apply ye old 2 times rule if so desired by apple. 2 gb system, install hard codes 2 x Physical ram ='s swap and 4 gb swap file created. Apple controls that. We can't access/change this pre or post install. Its just that 4 gb has to be free roaming space.
Hardest part to the process could be marketing wording how that X gb device will be x - 4gb - iOS install space now. I know it goes against the iOS is simple thing. thing is as time marches on its simplicity and it just works is what , imo, is hurting it more in some ways.
iOS has a real file system. It just doesn't do swap and it doesn't have a user facing one.
You're confusing user accessible with imaginary.
I'm almost certain I work with a file system every day. I program my apps with very specific "what I like to call" file structures. Sometimes I even let users make these little places to store things in and give them their own special name and when that happens it makes this little special place inside the app that's, oh no, wait, that's clearly some sort of card tied together with string I'm thinking of. I get confused.
The Low ram amounts is frustrating to me. Even 4 gb is bare min for painting apps. A3 is supported but crashes allot when I run out of ram. I can't imagine trying to do work on 2gb. I could only sketch or do comps with the low pixel dimensions and low layer levels. The biggest reason I don't do finished paintings on my 12.9 pro is because of the small amount ram on the pro. Editing RAW is still frustratingly slow also. Not sure if this is ram limits or cpu limits.
I think Apple does not want to go after power user markets, the lowest common denominator makes more cash. If u only want to draw or paint in lower Rez for web it's ideal. That's what most people want.
I think Apple does not want to go after power user markets, the lowest common denominator makes more cash. If u only want to draw or paint in lower Rez for web it's ideal. That's what most people want.
Did you not read the comment you quoted? Please buy the iPad Pro? I already did! And you don't seem to know how multitasking works on iOS, 2GB is more then enough for the way it's handled under iOS.
Michael already gave a short answer, but I'll be a bit more pedantic.
Swap is managed by the kernel. It has to be, since it is tied into the memory management interactions between the processor's virtual memory map, and the kernel. Apps don't even have their own swap files on the desktop unless they are simply so bloated, they decided it was a good idea to override the OS' RAM management and try to invent their own poor alternative.
That said, apps do have their own space on the disk to play with. It's their sandbox. They can put whatever they want there. If a painting app wants to store layers on disk as a way of keeping their memory usage down, they are totally free to do so. You do trade off some performance to do it, and it isn't exactly cheap in development time to write such a beast for the first time, but it can be done.
The decision to not use swap on iOS was a design decision made by Apple. I don't know the exact reason, but I can easily imagine a couple reasons why it wasn't implemented:
1) The swap file would wind up on NAND. SSDs with many, many NAND chips have to use wear leveling to extend their lifespan of writes. Apple does something similar (the file system encryption keys are actually kept in a part of NAND that is immune to wear leveling), but it only has a couple chips instead of the many an SSD uses. I suspect the lifespan isn't quite up to the same level as a good laptop/desktop SSD, and a swap file will simply thrash and decrease the lifespan considerably.
2) Storing the contents of RAM on NAND is a bit of a security risk. The ability to push sensitive information into a swap file isn't exactly a new attack either. By avoiding a swap file, you avoid having to mitigate that sort of attack.
And Apple has been pushing at ways to allow apps to manage their own memory without a swap file. They notify when memory gets low, so that you can flush data to disk if you need to and release the RAM. iOS will even force background apps to quit to reclaim memory. Something not even OS X has at the moment. I could certainly leverage this mechanism for saving more complex state to disk. Many apps do not do this, sadly. This is likely another reason they haven't considered adding a swap file yet, because there are other approaches being employed to keep RAM available as applications request it.
Swap is managed by the kernel. It has to be, since it is tied into the memory management interactions between the processor's virtual memory map, and the kernel. Apps don't even have their own swap files on the desktop unless they are simply so bloated, they decided it was a good idea to override the OS' RAM management and try to invent their own poor alternative.
That said, apps do have their own space on the disk to play with. It's their sandbox. They can put whatever they want there. If a painting app wants to store layers on disk as a way of keeping their memory usage down, they are totally free to do so. You do trade off some performance to do it, and it isn't exactly cheap in development time to write such a beast for the first time, but it can be done.
The decision to not use swap on iOS was a design decision made by Apple. I don't know the exact reason, but I can easily imagine a couple reasons why it wasn't implemented:
1) The swap file would wind up on NAND. SSDs with many, many NAND chips have to use wear leveling to extend their lifespan of writes. Apple does something similar (the file system encryption keys are actually kept in a part of NAND that is immune to wear leveling), but it only has a couple chips instead of the many an SSD uses. I suspect the lifespan isn't quite up to the same level as a good laptop/desktop SSD, and a swap file will simply thrash and decrease the lifespan considerably.
2) Storing the contents of RAM on NAND is a bit of a security risk. The ability to push sensitive information into a swap file isn't exactly a new attack either. By avoiding a swap file, you avoid having to mitigate that sort of attack.
And Apple has been pushing at ways to allow apps to manage their own memory without a swap file. They notify when memory gets low, so that you can flush data to disk if you need to and release the RAM. iOS will even force background apps to quit to reclaim memory. Something not even OS X has at the moment. I could certainly leverage this mechanism for saving more complex state to disk. Many apps do not do this, sadly. This is likely another reason they haven't considered adding a swap file yet, because there are other approaches being employed to keep RAM available as applications request it.
For now - And I'm trying to keep the examples simple.
it is possible to quote another post, and take it in a slightly different direction. No offense was intended.
Congrats on your purchase.
I think that you worded this post perfectly and I completely agree. I use Office and Lightroom out of either necessity or because it's best for me right now, but both apps feel bloated and aged. It's obvious that they're built upon decade(s) of legacy code, but that code is what makes the application what it is. I like Apple's willingness to start from scratch, but where Apple fails is that they don't keep developing. They rebuild the basic structure from scrap and then stop. At least Office and Adobe keep updating, but these apps should not be considered the standard by which other apps are judged.
Another thread where the OP drops a bomb and then steps back to be entertained.