Apple's New iPad Air Equipped With 4GB RAM

[joshwithachance]

I was hoping for 6GB but I had a feeling it was going to be 4.

 

[MistrSynistr]

This will release October 13th at the end of the iPhone event "The New iPad Air will be available on the Apple Store..blah blah" Cook will say at the end.

 

[Slippery Gimp]

I did wonder what the $100/£100 price increase was for 🙂

 

[ghanwani]

The speed is too much for me. Looking forward to the iPad Zen with a slow processor that emphasizes stillness.

 

[rjp1]

I don't want Apple to always try to have the latest hardware and best specs, but come on. 4GB is just embarrassing in 2020. It is frustrating if you use multiple apps.

Their cheapness is legendary, but they are priced and marketed as a premium brand.

 

[mr_jomo]

I did wonder what the $100/£100 price increase was for 🙂

$50/£50 additional EBIT pr. unit 🥳

 

[Nismo73]

The new air is very impressive, but the problem with it remains price/storage. Unless you’re ok with 64 GB, the Air gets very close in price to the Pro, which still has a number of advantages (including the RAM, as mentioned here).

With every Apple product, it seems they want you to go back and forth with which one to get, and then ultimately you pick the more expensive one b/c it probably made you believe it was a better deal.

 

[Mescagnus]

There's a mistake in the article:

"...plus it has the all-display design with Touch ID Home button, a first for Apple."

Should be Touch ID Power button. That's a first for Apple!

 

[jclo]

I don't agree with this. Why would they announce the Air before the iPhone, if they didn't plan on making it available for sale before the iPhone? If the invites for the October iPhone "event" go out this week, with the event being next week, then I think these will launch this week or no later than next Friday.

Because the Apple Watch event wouldn't have been enough without the iPad Air. My guess is they included what was ready, but plan to hold iPad Air until Oct 13 and announce pre-orders/availability with the iPhone launch. Releasing after the event lets them share A14 iPhone gains (and the A14 is a significant chip) without it being spoiled by benchmarks of newly released iPad Air models, though that happened anyway.

That's not concrete though, and we could be wrong and the iPad Air will come out earlier. Launch could also be this week because there was chatter on Twitter about retailers receiving marketing info.

 

[bodonnell202]

I think different people would answer that differently. If you always (or almost always) use your iPad where you have fast wifi, then it matters less, that’s for sure. But even still, on board storage is faster than wifi access to iCloud storage. Some people are going to be satisfied with the speed/accessibility of iCloud storage and others are not.

My air 3 is 256 GB, and I really like it because literally everything I could want to access fits on my iPad with room to spare. So I just don’t even have to think about storage space anymore. I also do the 200 GB iCloud plan, so I *could* do a 64 GB iPad. But it would mean managing the storage in a way that would feel like a big step back.

People definitely have different use cases. I hardly store anything on my iPhone or iPad, so once 64 GB became the baseline that was more than enough for me (admittedly I have 128 GB on both my current iPhone and iPad, but could easily live with 64 GB, especially on my iPad).

 

[Whathappened]

I don't want Apple to always try to have the latest hardware and best specs, but come on. 4GB is just embarrassing in 2020. It is frustrating if you use multiple apps.

Their cheapness is legendary, but they are priced and marketed as a premium brand.

ok then go and buy from that other premium brand that really is a premium brand with their truly premium devices.
Oh wait...

 

[Laptopdog78]

Can someone please explain the Geekbench scores? When I got my iPhone 8plus a few years ago I downloaded Geekbench to check it out. I have still got the 8plus so I ran the test again to see what it was like against the upcoming iPad Air 4! The single core is in the four thousands and the multi core is in the ten thousands. Have they changed how the results work?

 

[itsmilo]

does the onboard storage matter much if you use iCloud?

i use my old iPhone 6S as a secondary device and it’s somehow full even though I have iCloud and iCloud Photo Library enabled. I had to deactivate the Photo Library now to be able to update an app because storage was so low and i only have 4 3rd party apps installed. It’s crazy how times change. To think there used to be a device with less than 16GB

 

[bodonnell202]

Can someone please explain the Geekbench scores? When I got my iPhone 8plus a few years ago I downloaded Geekbench to check it out. I have still got the 8plus so I ran the test again to see what it was like against the upcoming iPad Air 4! The single core is in the four thousands and the multi core is in the ten thousands. Have they changed how the results work?

You probably ran Geekbench 4. They changed the way scoring works with Geekbench 5 and Geekbench 5 scores aren't comparable with earlier versions.

Edit: just checked Geekbench browser and the 8 Plus scores 918 single core and 2050 multi-core in Geekbench 5.

 

[Lunariz-]

The component cost a RAM for Apple is probably a couple bucks at most yet they're always are so stingy with it like it's unobtainium or something.

Why should you put in more RAM which will consume more power in the process? Sure more RAM is generally good for multitasking etc, but you have an optimized OS which runs well on even 2GB and 1GB RAM.

 

[Romeo_Nightfall]

Hoping iPhone gets 6MB.

Nope

 

[m4mario]

The worrying thing here is, the new iPad Air points to a price increase for the next iPad Pro.

 

[Frantisekj]

The new air is very impressive, but the problem with it remains price/storage. Unless you’re ok with 64 GB, the Air gets very close in price to the Pro, which still has a number of advantages (including the RAM, as mentioned here).

I had bad feelings that new iPad Pro will get more features but also higher price considering little price difference with Air now.

Now I see that i am not alone who guess that

 

[cupcakes2000]

does the onboard storage matter much if you use iCloud?

This depends also on what you’re using your iPad for. Plenty of pro apps, like luma fusion, for example, can’t operate from an external source in the same manner as a traditional computer. You need to import the clips into the app. For this more onboard storage is better.

I don't want Apple to always try to have the latest hardware and best specs, but come on. 4GB is just embarrassing in 2020. It is frustrating if you use multiple apps.

Their cheapness is legendary, but they are priced and marketed as a premium brand.

Dunno about embarrassing... seems a bit of a statement that.
My 2018 iPad Pro has 4 gb, I’d like morebecause I use it as a computer and for high end image editing and video creation. More ram is always better. For general app usage and multitasking though, the 4gb seems to do fine contrary to what you’re implying.

 

[Veinticinco]

The new air is very impressive, but the problem with it remains price/storage. Unless you’re ok with 64 GB, the Air gets very close in price to the Pro, which still has a number of advantages (including the RAM, as mentioned here).

Bingo. Made exactly the same point at the reveal last month. That badly thought-out cheapskatery has converted what was initially an instant buy, into a pause for thought.

God knows why the haven't offered a 128GB version for 600-something. That's the sweet spot.

 

[jprmercado]

The component cost a RAM for Apple is probably a couple bucks at most yet they're always are so stingy with it like it's unobtainium or something.

Apple has historically been conservative with RAM. I guess it’s like how they’re conservative with battery capacities too.

They would rather optimize than maximize, if that makes sense.

 

[827538]

The component cost a RAM for Apple is probably a couple bucks at most yet they're always are so stingy with it like it's unobtainium or something.

RAM costs fluctuate quite a lot, usually as NAND goes down in cost RAM goes up as the same factories pivot between making the two based on supply and demand. It'll still be relatively cheap but think of how much RAM Apple buys now take that cost and x1.3 and you can see a small increase in RAM can amount to a lot of money. We consumers look at things very differently vs a huge company operating at a massive scale. Plus if that increase in RAM doesn't offer any perceptible increase in performance then it's wasted money from Apple's perspective.

Not saying I don't want more RAM but there's some pretty important economic reasons they include the amount they do, especially with iOS or iPadOS is so memory efficient.

 

[Duncan-UK]

The new air is very impressive, but the problem with it remains price/storage. Unless you’re ok with 64 GB, the Air gets very close in price to the Pro, which still has a number of advantages (including the RAM, as mentioned here).

Agreed - but this is how Apple operate - make it so the version you really want is priced close enough to the next model up that you think - well actually I may as well go for the better model - hey presto you went in to spend £600 and came out spending closer to £1,000.
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RAM costs fluctuate quite a lot, usually as NAND goes down in cost RAM goes up as the same factories pivot between making the two based on supply and demand. It'll still be relatively cheap but think of how much RAM Apple buys now take that cost and x1.3 and you can see a small increase in RAM can amount to a lot of money. We consumers look at things very differently vs a huge company operating at a massive scale. Plus if that increase in RAM doesn't offer any perceptible increase in performance then it's wasted money from Apple's perspective.

Not saying I don't want more RAM but there's some pretty important economic reasons they include the amount they do, especially with iOS or iPadOS is so memory efficient.

That's a neat spin on fundamental meanness by Apple.

 

[QCassidy352]

People definitely have different use cases. I hardly store anything on my iPhone or iPad, so once 64 GB became the baseline that was more than enough for me (admittedly I have 128 GB on both my current iPhone and iPad, but could easily live with 64 GB, especially on my iPad).

If 64 GB works for you, the new Air is extremely compelling (and would be my choice in the current lineup).

I had bad feelings that new iPad Pro will get more features but also higher price considering little price difference with Air now.

Now I see that i am not alone who guess that

The Air's pricing definitely suggests the Pro's price will creep up again next year.

Bingo. Made exactly the same point at the reveal last month. That badly thought-out cheapskatery has converted what was initially an instant buy, into a pause for thought.

God knows why the haven't offered a 128GB version for 600-something. That's the sweet spot.

Agreed - 128 GB for $650 would be the sweet spot. The current pricing either forces you into not quite enough storage (for a decent number of users) or a price that's just a little too close to the Pro.

 

[Laptopdog78]

You probably ran Geekbench 4. They changed the way scoring works with Geekbench 5 and Geekbench 5 scores aren't comparable with earlier versions.

Edit: just checked Geekbench browser and the 8 Plus scores 918 single core and 2050 multi-core in Geekbench 5.

Thank You for your answer, that now makes more sense...and yes I was using Geekbench 4