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Calling others fanboy is also against the rules, but more than that it's a tactic used by people to bolster opinions of themselves by declaring themselves superior to "others who disagree."


I was looking for the fallacy in argument earlier, i mean the official term..
 
Yes it is. You are being juvenile and condescending. You are calling them names because you don't agree with them. What's next; hitting?

No he's right. It's brand loyalists that aren't going to be taken seriously (and hitting? Seriously? We're a on a forum dude! :rolleyes:). I could name a few off the top of my head on this site. No real tech person would take anyone "brand loyalist" seriously because they can justify anything a company does even when it's below what the competition offers. All they care about is that it looks cool and has a logo on it.

Example: iPad mini was introduced with a non-retina display. The Nexus 7 had a retina display and was cheaper. Last year the mini gets updated with a retina and has a price increase. Heck the iPad Air is STILL at 16GB at $500! That's pathetic! The competition offers much more for much less. In many ways, the iPad is behind. Heck the iPhone is rumored to get a bigger screen this year. So what? It's been done. I'm already enjoying a 4.7" screen for almost two years now!

While I'm not for name calling, I don't consider that particular term to be name calling.
 
If you're inferring ios uses a swap file, it doesn't. :(

Yeah, I'm referring to multitasking

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1. I know - this is what I've referred to in all my power consumption remarks above.

2. Nevertheless, I don't think adding another GB of RAM would have severely reduced the battery life. Again, see the example of the 2GB-equipped Nokia 1020. Does it have much worse battery life than an 1GB Nokia (say, the 92x series)? Of course not. We're talking some 3-5% of battery life degradation at most.



Flash storage can't be used as dynamic RAM, regrettably. Otherwise, there would be absolutely no crashes, app or Safari tab unloading because we would have Gbytes of (virtual) RAM. Which we obviously don't have - as opposed to your "flash storage equals to RAM" statement.

So I see that once again, you have taken someone's statement and turned it into a straw man. I did NOT say flash storage equals to RAM.
 
While I'm not for name calling, I don't consider that particular term to be name calling.

You're not for name calling, as long as they are *real* tech people and aren't "brand loyalists." [rolls eyes]

The term 'fanboy' is incredibly derogatory and calling someone a 'fanboy' is against the rules, regardless what you think of the term. BTW, stating you don't think it is a bad thing, *is* offensive.
 
Yes it is. You are being juvenile and condescending. You are calling them names because you don't agree with them. What's next; hitting?

I'm not condescending. As I stated above, I just can't take anyone seriously stating 1GB is the sweet spot and that Apple couldn't have done better. Tons of competiting models on the market prove I'm right. Do these 2/3GB-equipped models have much worse battery life (apart from Android's toll on the battery - this is why I've contantly been referring to the WP8 Nokia 1020)? Do they have much more volume? Nope.

Apple made a, for us end users, very bad decision because of plain greed. To maximize their (Apple's) revenues (adding a 2GB chip would have increased the manufacture cost of each iDevice by $5-$6, which, as the end user prices wouldn't have risen, would be a $5-6 revenue decrease for Apple) and to make people more inclined to upgrade to the next iteration, which will surely include 2GB of RAM.
 
I’m so not picking a side on this because I think the entire discussion is ridiculous, but I just have to ask. Have you designed a phone recently? You say you “don’t think” adding more RAM would have a significant impact on battery life, and you seem so sure of it I would assume you’re a highly proficient electrical engineer to make those claims. You don’t think that there are engineers at Apple who have thought the exact same thing? At some point sombody with their fingers all over the development of these phones made the exact opposite call from what you’re suggesting, and it probably didn’t have anything to do with mustache-twiriling devilishness.

My point is, nobody on here can back up these assumptions about RAM without puting in effort to basically disassemble a phone, add a gig of RAM, and then run it through a series of benchmark tests to determine whether it does adversly affect battery life or not. You don’t have any basis for comparison, none of you, so stop pretending you do.

Oh, and saying “it works for that one Nokia” is a terrible argument. Different OS, different battery, all different hardware. Do I really have to say it? Apples to apples, folks. Apples to apples.

Well said. I'd also like to add that it was actually a Windows Phone engineer that once explained to me how adding more RAM would drain the battery and that it's a very difficult decision without a larger battery.

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I'm not condescending. As I stated above, I just can't take anyone seriously stating 1GB is the sweet spot and that Apple couldn't have done better. Tons of competiting models on the market prove I'm right. Do these 2/3GB-equipped models have much worse battery life (apart from Android's toll on the battery - this is why I've contantly been referring to the WP8 Nokia 1020)? Do they have much more volume? Nope.

Apple made a, for us end users, very bad decision because of plain greed. To maximize their (Apple's) revenues (adding a 2GB chip would have increased the manufacture cost of each iDevice by $5-$6, which, as the end user prices wouldn't have risen, would be a $5-6 revenue decrease for Apple) and to make people more inclined to upgrade to the next iteration, which will surely include 2GB of RAM.

You started this entire tirade by calling out "Apple fanboys" with a straw man argument, as if anyone that disagrees with you is an Apple fanboy. That is condescending, it's also pigeon holing.

You are also completely assuming that this is "pure greed" when there's not even evidence that greed is involved at all. This is a company that has been known to spend more on higher quality parts just for the sake of symmetry let alone performance.
 
So I see that once again, you have taken someone's statement and turned it into a straw man. I did NOT say flash storage equals to RAM.

You stated the following:

"RAM is a balance of necessity and battery life - it is constantly sipping away at battery power. And since the onboard storage of the device is fast flash memory, it's not necessarily a deal breaker."

The above citation can only be understood as "much as there is only 1GB of RAM in iDevices, that isn't a problem, because the flash storage is fast". Which can be interpreted as equalling the two.

If you instead meant fast app / Safari tab reload times (after being shut down by the OS), then, I have some bad news: with a lot of titles, reloading can take a LOT of time (see the XCOM example above with its 30+ seconds). And I haven't even mentioned the problems of losing HTML form contents, dynamically retrieved data using AJAX etc...
 
No he's right. It's brand loyalists that aren't going to be taken seriously (and hitting? Seriously? We're a on a forum dude! :rolleyes:). I could name a few off the top of my head on this site. No real tech person would take anyone "brand loyalist" seriously because they can justify anything a company does even when it's below what the competition offers. All they care about is that it looks cool and has a logo on it.

Example: iPad mini was introduced with a non-retina display. The Nexus 7 had a retina display and was cheaper. Last year the mini gets updated with a retina and has a price increase. Heck the iPad Air is STILL at 16GB at $500! That's pathetic! The competition offers much more for much less. In many ways, the iPad is behind. Heck the iPhone is rumored to get a bigger screen this year. So what? It's been done. I'm already enjoying a 4.7" screen for almost two years now!

While I'm not for name calling, I don't consider that particular term to be name calling.

The Nexus 7 is a 7" 16:9 tablet (a good one at that) and the mini is a 7.9" 4:3 tablet. Different tablets, different experiences. The Galaxy Note 8, Note 10.1 and Xperia Z 10 also come with a base storage of 16GB and have similar MSRPs to the mini and the Air respectively.

Or are they automatically better because they run Android.
 
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My point is, nobody on here can back up these assumptions about RAM without puting in effort to basically disassemble a phone, add a gig of RAM, and then run it through a series of benchmark tests to determine whether it does adversly affect battery life or not. You don’t have any basis for comparison, none of you, so stop pretending you do.

Again: ALL other high-end models, phones and tabs, have 2+GB of RAM. ALL of them.

How come it's only Apple that still has 1GB of RAM? Are the other manufacturers better? Or, are we just speaking of Apple's well-known greed and not wanting to lose even the $5...6 / device that an additional 1GB of RAM would have cost, assuming keeping the same end user price ($499 for 16G/WiFi Air etc.) and the cost of other components?

I do think the latter is the case. Apple certainly has some great engineers. They could certainly deliver the current crop of iDevices with 2GB RAM to allow for a much more seamless experience. They chose not to. Why? Can you explain it? Why can't Apple do the same as all their competitors have already done? Is it indeed the question of technical feasibility?
 
That's not a big deal.
OS-X has been on PowerPC and Intel.
When it was called NeXTStep is ran on 68030, 68040, Mips and Sparc.
Porting the base OS is not, nor has ever been an issue.

No matter what they say the ARM is still not a desktop class processor, even in 64 Bit trim.
iOS has most of MacOS just crippled for the masses. iOS is still BSD below.

ARM started on the desktop - it was ludicrously fast compared with the x86 processors at the time - 1987, when it appeared in the Acorn Archimedes. This machine was capable of running a full WIMP GUI in colour and did great 3D graphics too at a time when PCs were still stuck with DOS. There's nothing about the ARM processor that precludes it from being in a desktop other than the design decisions to make it low power and efficient which is where it found a niche. A full desktop class design is totally possible and it would certainly give other RISC processors a run for their money.
 
Well said. I'd also like to add that it was actually a Windows Phone engineer that once explained to me how adding more RAM would drain the battery and that it's a very difficult decision without a larger battery.

I'd like to see some figures. Assuming we have an 1500 mAh (that is, comparatively low-capacity) battery, how much effect the increased RAM would have on the battery life with current(!) RAM tech? 3%? 5%? 10%?

And the above only applies to the iPhone because of its comparatively small battery. On the iPad and its much-much larger-capacity (8000 mAh?) battery, the difference would be barely visible. With iPads, one really can't seriously state "they don't have 2GB of RAM because it'd have seriously decreased the battery life". Except for brand loyalists, that is - but no one should take them seriously in a question where they need to justify Apple's greed.
 
OK, now I see what you mean.

Let me phrase my argument this way: "Apple fanboys tend to state Apple did the right and best thing when only delivering even the latest iDevices with 1GB of RAM".

Again, this argument is technically nonsense. Anyone knowing the battery life of competing 2GB RAM-equipped WP products (the Nokia 1020) know the additional power usage of having to constantly power on an additional 1GB of RAM is negligble and in no way result in vastly inferior battery life. (Again, I purposefully not list 2/3GB Android phones because their OS is far less battery-friendly than either iOS or WP and, consequently, don't represent a battery-wise ideal OS.)

And there isn't a space / volume constraint either - after all, for example the Nexus 7 2013, which has a considerably smaller volume than the Retina iPad Mini / Air, has managed to pack in 2GB of RAM. The volume argument ("2GB of RAM would take far more volume") is also very often cited by Apple fanboys - by the above-cited "gaussian blur" over at DPR as well.

All in all, this is why I consider the argument "1GB is the best compromise" fanboyish. Because it's simply not true, neither battery life- nor volume-wise.

Really it comes down to Apple trying to save a couple bucks, at least IMO.

Do I think 2GB is 100% necessary right now? No. Do I think 2GB would still be beneficial to some degree? Yes. But the 5s with 1GB performs better than my Nexus 5 (and Nexus 4, and Nexus 7) with 2GB. OS optimization goes a long way. Is that me trying to justify Apple's decision? No, I would still much rather have 2GB than 1, anyone would. My main point is that Android users typically focus on numbers that really don't tell the whole story.
 
Apple made a, for us end users, very bad decision because of plain greed. To maximize their (Apple's) revenues (adding a 2GB chip would have increased the manufacture cost of each iDevice by $5-$6, which, as the end user prices wouldn't have risen, would be a $5-6 revenue decrease for Apple) and to make people more inclined to upgrade to the next iteration, which will surely include 2GB of RAM.

I agree with this.

You are also completely assuming that this is "pure greed" when there's not even evidence that greed is involved at all. This is a company that has been known to spend more on higher quality parts just for the sake of symmetry let alone performance.

And an argument can be made that spending the time and money on symmetry came at the expense of potential performance and user experience.
 
Really it comes down to Apple trying to save a couple bucks, at least IMO.

Me too - this is what I've referred to in https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18946428/ , asking "GeneralChang" to explain me why all competitors have 2+GB of RAM in their devices. (My answer was, of course, Apple's greed, particularly WRT the large-battery iPads, where one can't even state there would be any significant battery life hit by including 2GB of RAM.)

But the 5s with 1GB performs better than my Nexus 5 with 2GB. OS optimization goes a long way. Is that me trying to justify Apple's decision? No, I would still much rather have 2GB than 1, anyone would. My main point is that Android users typically focus on numbers that really don't tell the whole story.

Exactly. This is why I've continuously been pointing out that I'm comparing iOS to Windows Phone (most notably, the 2GB Nokia 1020) and not Android WRT battery usage.

Nevertheless, while iOS is indeed very well optimized (along with WP, naturally; and as opposed to Android), there are some sore points. For example, UWebView's (and, consequently, Safari's) huuuuuge memory usage. While 7.1 has indeed been brought us some improvements, Web pages still take up far too much memory under iOS.

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This is a company that has been known to spend more on higher quality parts

Well, tell the same to the owners of these iPhone 3GS'es (all shots, except for the bottom-most, are made by me):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33448355@N07/sets/72157633931601917/

(notice the "nicely" swollen, 2.5-year-old batteries - legendary Apple "quality"...)

And tell the same to people whose iPhone 5's battery died on them after half(!) a year, necessitating a full device exchange. Yes, the latter did happen to me too, as has been well-documented in the JB section (where I'm present as a well-known dev) by me - and in some other threads by other MR forum members.
 
Wait! I thought 1GB is more than sufficient and there would be no point in having 2GB of RAM in any iDevice! (At least Apple fanboys state this...)

RAM bottlenecks refer to bandwidth and latency reaching RAM, not quantity of RAM.

[EDIT: Apparently not in this case. That was MacRumors' term, not Anand's. Anand was talking about the lack of memory capacity likely being a problem with as-yet-unreleased heavy-use apps before the CPU's raw power is, which seems likely]

That said, I would not be one to claim less RAM is better or even that 1GB RAM is ideal in a phone, but I do say there are tradeoffs to having more RAM on a device. Most of those tradeoffs revolve around battery life.
 
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RAM bottlenecks refer to bandwidth and latency reaching RAM, not quantity of RAM.

I'm afraid you're wrong. A citation from the original article:

"The other problem I see is that although Cyclone is incredibly forward looking, it launched in devices with only 1GB of RAM. It's very likely that you'll run into memory limits before you hit CPU performance limits if you plan on keeping your device for a long time."


That is, it's the (meager, particularly in 64-bit devices) size of the RAM that is the bottleneck, and not the speed of it.

That said, I would not be one to claim less RAM is better or even that 1GB RAM is ideal in a phone, but I do say there are tradeoffs to having more RAM on a device. Most of those tradeoffs revolve around battery life.

In a phone, maybe - the exact figures are unknown (albeit I really don't think they'd be over, say, 15%). In an iPad with a much larger battery? No way. Apple could have included 2GB of RAM in current iPads without any adverse effect on the battery life.
 
What games can fully take advantage of the A7 processor when most of them are simple games full of IAP crap? :( A game doesn't need cutting edge graphics to show the "Buy 100 diamonds just for $99.99!" buttons...
 
Would the new chip be powerful enough to "transform" from an iPhone and when you get to say work/school? You dock it into a monitor, mouse and keyboard and run OS X?
 
Me too - this is what I've referred to in https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18946428/ , asking "GeneralChang" to explain me why all competitors have 2+GB of RAM in their devices. (My answer was, of course, Apple's greed, particularly WRT the large-battery iPads, where one can't even state there would be any significant battery life hit by including 2GB of RAM.)



Exactly. This is why I've continuously been pointing out that I'm comparing iOS to Windows Phone (most notably, the 2GB Nokia 1020) and not Android WRT battery usage.

Nevertheless, while iOS is indeed very well optimized (along with WP, naturally; and as opposed to Android), there are some sore points. For example, UWebView's (and, consequently, Safari's) huuuuuge memory usage. While 7.1 has indeed been brought us some improvements, Web pages still take up far too much memory under iOS.

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Well, tell the same to the owners of these iPhone 3GS'es (all shots, except for the bottom-most, are made by me):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33448355@N07/sets/72157633931601917/

(notice the "nicely" swollen, 2.5-year-old batteries - legendary Apple "quality"...)

And tell the same to people whose iPhone 5's battery died on them after half(!) a year, necessitating a full device exchange. Yes, the latter did happen to me too, as has been well-documented in the JB section (where I'm present as a well-known dev) by me - and in some other threads by other MR forum members.

my Galaxy Note 3 has 3 GB of RAM, but half of it is wasted on bloatware running in the background. and even then a lot of apps run a process in the background for no reason except well maybe android is real multitasking so they have to show off. like my time warner cable app taking up 80MB for no reason

1GB us is not enough for an A7, but a 1GB iOS device is faster in normal use compared to a 3GB RAM android phone. IOS has outperformed similar android devices of the same generation for years
 
What games can fully take advantage of the A7 processor when most of them are simple games full of IAP crap? :( A game doesn't need cutting edge graphics to show the "Buy 100 diamonds just for $99.99!" buttons...

Pure speed-wise, XCOM: Enemy unknown surely. Albeit that app is purely 32-bit, armv7 only; that is, it's not a fat binary with anything never than "simple" armv7 (iPad1/2/3, iPhone3GS/4/4S, iPt3/4/5). That is, it doesn't contain native 64-bit code. With the latter, it may have been even faster.

The game runs at under-30 fps on the iPad 2/3. No such problem on the Air or rMini. That is, the title does make use of the higher efficiency of the A7 (albeit not at 64-bit).
 
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my Galaxy Note 3 has 3 GB of RAM, but half of it is wasted on bloatware running in the background. and even then a lot of apps run a process in the background for no reason except well maybe android is real multitasking so they have to show off. like my time warner cable app taking up 80MB for no reason

1GB us is not enough for an A7, but a 1GB iOS device is faster in normal use compared to a 3GB RAM android phone. IOS has outperformed similar android devices of the same generation for years

But it helps people with lower than average self confidence. You know their phone has more RAM. More GHz. Huge screen. And "huger" screen.:D
 
my Galaxy Note 3 has 3 GB of RAM, but half of it is wasted on bloatware running in the background. and even then a lot of apps run a process in the background for no reason except well maybe android is real multitasking so they have to show off. like my time warner cable app taking up 80MB for no reason

1GB us is not enough for an A7, but a 1GB iOS device is faster in normal use compared to a 3GB RAM android phone. IOS has outperformed similar android devices of the same generation for years

In all my posts in this thread, I avoided comparing iOS to Android but compared to WP8 instead, for exactly the same reason (efficiency).

Nevertheless, the question is still valid: why on earth couldn't Apple put 2GB in the new iPads? The problem is acute on iPads than on iPhones for the following reasons:

- iPads, because of the much higher-res screen, use far larger screen buffers, which would necessitate far more RAM to render the same content as on the iPhone. This is particularly visible when you compare the memory usage of UIWebView after loading a given page on the iPhone and the iPad.

- as iPads have much larger batteries, the increased battery usage of the additional 1GB RAM would be a non-issue. Assuming it'd cause a sizable battery life hit on the small-battery iPhone, of course.
 
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