Are iOS 7 & the A7 processor stable?

[C DM]

Fair enough. I think that all Android devices are rubbish because they have 2GB of RAM and use more battery because of the RAM, and they need the ram because of the fat ass inefficient way the OS works I would never buy one I vote with my wallet etc etc.

I haven't spent a lot of time with any particular android device, I have no metrics to backup my argument but it must be a valid argument going on your statement, no?

Ah, yes, overly coy statements, part of the same dismissive tactic when there's no argument to be made.

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Not owning using the device doesn't disqualify someone from having an opinion. It disqualifies them from having an informed opinion.

My issue with ios 7 is battery life not instability, except as noted in prior posts. There are always those who will have issues on a computing device, it's the nature of the beast.

To read this forum and conclude the 5s has wholesale issues with ios 7.0.4 is way off base and inaccurate.

Of course I think the 5s should be bigger, have more working ram, wireless charging, fm radio built in, but I'm not Apple and voted with my dollars that the status quo is okay with me.

An informed opinion carries more weight than an uninformed opinion, even if I don't agree with the informed opinion.

Sorry, but to say that an iPhone could definitely benefit from more RAM even without owning one is far from having an uninformed opinion or an opinion that shouldn't carry much weight.

 

[irnchriz]

whoops

 

[I7guy]

We'll I could say the battery life in the 5s is not good enough for me and therefore I'm voting with my wallet. Or the 5s doesn't have a quad core processor and therefore I'm voting with my wallet. These are a far cry from uninformed opinions. However it's not reality.

Apple made design choices, and in reality how much more memory could prevent certain errors is unknown. How much faster with a quad core processor the 5s could be and still have meaningful battery life is unknown. You could play what if, which is what is going on here.

 

[C DM]

I just made the point that you can spout any old piss on a forum and it doesn't require validation. There is no case for any prospective buyer of any device to read someones uninformed concerns and use those as positives or negatives for buying a device. In fact they carry no more weight than the BS points I made ref android. Android devices are fine and in some cases excellent and can do a myriad of things that iOS powered devices cannot do.

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Rather than being efficient with code throw more resources at it... what is this windows???

Well, that one actually made me laugh. Thanks for the joke.

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whoops

Oh oh.

 

[C DM]

We'll I could say the battery life in the 5s is not good enough for me and therefore I'm voting with my wallet. Or the 5s doesn't have a quad core processor and therefore I'm voting with my wallet. These are a far cry from uninformed opinions. However it's not reality.

Apple made design choices, and in reality how much more memory could prevent certain errors is unknown. How much faster with a quad core processor the 5s could be and still have meaningful battery life is unknown. You could play what if, which is what is going on here.

That's all good and great, but there isn't a good reason to put someone down (and without any real basis too) as pretty much not having an ability to provide a valid opinion just to make that statement, right?

 

[I7guy]

That's all good and great, but there isn't a good reason to put someone down (and without any real basis too) as pretty much not having an ability to provide a valid opinion just to make that statement, right?

I probably should have made the distinction about a useful opinion. Reading these fora and coming to the conclusion IOS 7 is terrible maybe a semi informed opinion but not very useful.

I have no problem in a discussion of opinions as long as there are no ad-hominem attacks. So putting down a semi-informed but not too useful opinion is fair game as far as I am concerned.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Apple made design choices, and in reality how much more memory could prevent certain errors is unknown.

I'd say 2GB would result in FAR less Safari crashes on Retina iPads. Also, Safari would be keep a lot more open pages in the background. The reason for this is, as I've explained above, the enormous memory used when even comparatively simple Web pages are loaded (I'll really measure them properly when I have some time now under iOS7 - I've only did this back in the iOS4 days.).

Also, for programmers, it'd be easier to write apps for 2GB of RAM - for example, no forced memory releases would be needed that often.

 

[I7guy]

I'd say 2GB would result in FAR less Safari crashes on Retina iPads. Also, Safari would be keep a lot more open pages in the background. The reason for this is, as I've explained above, the enormous memory used when even comparatively simple Web pages are loaded (I'll really measure them properly when I have some time now under iOS7 - I've only did this back in the iOS4 days.).

Also, for programmers, it'd be easier to write apps for 2GB of RAM - for example, no forced memory releases would be needed that often.

While I can't argue more memory is nevera always better, my home system has 24 gig, in reality it would be much easier to write code in a 4 or 8gb environment than a 2gb environment.

Also, why can't they use the phone flash as a paging drive?

If in fact on the Ipad Air the crashes are due to low memory due to the large screen buffer required and Apple made a design mistake...then shame on them.

If however, it is some other type of coding issue and it can be fixed...I am sure they will do it.

I'm doing my part, I opted in to the "customer improvement program."

 

[zone23]

I hate to be "that guy" but I haven't had any issues on my iPhone 5S or my iPad Air. Of course I have never opened 30+ tabs in Safari either. I don't push the device till it crashes and then go look it crashed... just saying.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Also, why can't they use the phone flash as a paging drive?

1, speed
2, iOS doesn't support paging virtual memory at all (it's a simple, mobile OS, after all); that is, Safari could only use the storage with its own pager / cacher implemen (if it existed).

If in fact on the Ipad Air the crashes are due to low memory due to the large screen buffer required and Apple made a design mistake...then shame on them.

It wasn't a true mistake as it has long been known 1GB RAM is simply insufficient with memory-hungry components like UIWebView around (also see my posts at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1684098/ , starting with #228). I'd call this either planned obsolescence or trying to make a strong contrast between all current iPads and the rumored, 12", hopefully Wacom pen- and true windowed multitasking-capable iPad Pro. If the latter has windowed multitasking (as do so many high-end Android tablet - and all Windows tablets), then, it surely will have more RAM. Otherwise, it'd be practically useless.

 

[Ledgem]

The iPhone 5S should already have had 2 GB, but Apple is too greedy to spend the $10 or so that it would cost to go from 1->2GB. It's called planned obsolescence as well.

I suspect Apple doesn't publish specifications partly for this reason. I went from an iPhone 4S to a 5S, and an iPad Mini to a retina iPad Mini. For those who don't keep track but are reading with interest, that's a dual jump from two 32-bit A5 systems with 512 MB RAM to two 64-bit A7 systems with 1 GB of RAM. Given all of this discourse about RAM, one might be led to believe that the A5's would offer better performance. The A7's are not only faster, but I find that applications aren't reloading as often when I multitask.

Would 2 GB offer even better performance? Yeah, probably. But why stop there? 4 GB would be even better than 2 GB. 8 GB would be better than 4 GB. Do you see how ridiculous this is? Many Android phones now have 2 GB of RAM, yet they have worse performance than iOS devices.

Also, for programmers, it'd be easier to write apps for 2GB of RAM - for example, no forced memory releases would be needed that often.

People justify this idea that more RAM was required because there are a few logs indicating "low memory" for crashes. That could just as well indicate a programming problem, which is something that more RAM would hide but not fix. Hardware isn't a good solution to sloppy coding.

Is it easier for code for fewer resource constraints? I'm sure it is, but the user experience won't necessarily be better for it. Forget 2 GB of RAM, a lazy coder could squander 4 GB just as easily.

 

[I7guy]

^^^^ this exactly. Sloppy coding is no excuse.

 

[kaiseryeahhh]

iOS 7.1 beta 2 is more and more stable in ipad air.

 

[SenorDD]

7.0.3 is more stable than 7.0.4. Don't upgrade until 7.1 if you get one running 7.0.3

 

[Menneisyys2]

People justify this idea that more RAM was required because there are a few logs indicating "low memory" for crashes. That could just as well indicate a programming problem, which is something that more RAM would hide but not fix. Hardware isn't a good solution to sloppy coding.

Is it easier for code for fewer resource constraints? I'm sure it is, but the user experience won't necessarily be better for it. Forget 2 GB of RAM, a lazy coder could squander 4 GB just as easily.

You're partly right. If one, as a programmer, knows his app may easily crash on low-RAM devices, he'll spend more time on properly designing and debugging the engine. I've done this a lot, well before the ARC times. I've written a mapping app with a full pathfinder module. Making it run on a 128 Mbyte device like the iPhone 3G required a LOT of planning (immediate release calls etc.) and profiling.

HOWEVER, there are a lot of cases when you need as much RAM as possible to do a given task. For example, the absolutely excellent SnappyCam ( https://itunes.apple.com/app/snappycam-pro-fast-camera/id463688713?mt=8 ) stores images into RAM. On an iPhone 5 with 1GB of RAM, that's around 100 full-res frames. As soon as the RAM is exhausted, the app must fall back to writing those images to the storage, which heavily reduces the framerate from around 20 fps (iPhone 5, full res, iOS7) to around 2-3 fps.

With 2GB RAM, the app would be able to record at least two times more images at the nominal speed.

And, of course, the question of UIWebView. As I've explained in the other thread, there are components in iOS that are themselves "sloppy"; most importantly, UIWebView. They will crash your entire app if you try to load a page in them - and, before loading, you can't have the slightest idea whether it'll crash your app or not as you in no way can know how much real RAM a particular Web page will need.

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Many Android phones now have 2 GB of RAM, yet they have worse performance than iOS devices.

Not necessarily. Ever tried Web browsing on, say, the Nexus7.2? The browser will NOT crash and will NOT kill background tabs, even if you open 8-10 tabs. Unlike Safari on iOS - again, because of the absolutely memory -hungry and badly-written UIWebView.

 

[khha4113]

Sorry wrong post

 

[richardbb85]

I hate to be "that guy" but I haven't had any issues on my iPhone 5S or my iPad Air. Of course I have never opened 30+ tabs in Safari either. I don't push the device till it crashes and then go look it crashed... just saying.

it doesn't take 30 tabs to crash, my air crashed on 1 tab, screen rotate, n few other random occasion.

 

[macrem]

I've been using an iPad Air for about a week now quite a lot and Safari crashed once, that's it. Otherwise it's been smooth and stable. Instead of restoring settings from my old iPad, I set it up as a new device. I would not hesitate to buy it again, it's an awesome tablet and will only get better with 7.1+

 

[Menneisyys2]

People justify this idea that more RAM was required because there are a few logs indicating "low memory" for crashes. That could just as well indicate a programming problem, which is something that more RAM would hide but not fix. Hardware isn't a good solution to sloppy coding.

BTW, I've just posted a VERY long benchmark on the RAM needs of Safari / UIWebView at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18502038/

The results do show I was right about the RAM issue - that is, that larger (but still pretty common) Web pages can in no time entirely exhaust the entire free RAM on Retina iPads (even 690 Mbytes!), even if you do reset before loading them and don't load anything else.

 

[C DM]

BTW, I've just posted a VERY long benchmark on the RAM needs of Safari / UIWebView at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18502038/

The results do show I was right about the RAM issue - that is, that larger (but still pretty common) Web pages can in no time entirely exhaust the entire free RAM on Retina iPads (even 690 Mbytes!), even if you do reset before loading them and don't load anything else.

Unfortunately people will still attack this with some random talking points just because, like they ganged up on someone earlier in the thread for no real reason and then spent another page defending that irrational attack.

 

[I7guy]

Unfortunately people will still attack this with some random talking points just because, like they ganged up on someone earlier in the thread for no real reason and then spent another page defending that irrational attack.

No matter how you slice it the job of a software engineer is to make the software work with the hardware. If apple software engineers didnt do their jobs then shame on them.

 

[C DM]

No matter how you slice it the job of a software engineer is to make the software work with the hardware. If apple software engineers didnt do their jobs then shame on them.

There's a balance to be had in any good or even decent system--it's not all (or even mostly) about one or the other. Striving for the right balance is the job, not squeezing everything out if one or the other to get to that point (because clearly sooner than later there's nothing more to squeeze and it's just a wasteful endeavor on many levels to even get to that point).

 

[I7guy]

There's a balance to be had in any good or even decent system--it's not all (or even mostly) about one or the other. Striving for the right balance is the job, not squeezing everything out if one or the other to get to that point (because clearly sooner than later there's nothing more to squeeze and it's just a wasteful endeavor on many levels to even get to that point).

I clearly dont have the qualifications to second guess apples design decisions. Yeah, it sounds great, 8 gb working set, considering a 64 bit architecture can access almost unlmited memory. They should build some paging into IOS.

But only they(apple) know why they designed it. It still is the software engineers job to make the software work properly within the hardware constraints.

 

[Menneisyys2]

If apple software engineers didnt do their jobs then shame on them.

This is certainly a software issue (of course, adding another 1GB of RAM would render the problem far less apparent but the software would still be buggy underneath). Safari could have been made crash-free with some additional memory checks:

- during loading (in my tests, all iDevices except the non-Retina iPad 2 and the small res-screen but large-memory iPhone 5. As explained above, both are considerably less memory-hungry because of the much fewer pixels still backed up by a lot of RAM than in, say, Retina iPads.)

- during scrolling, which, because of the slowish memory deallocation (freeing / release), also easily crashes iDevices. For example, the above-mentioned iPad 2 / iPhone 5 also very easily crashes if you scroll around too fast or you've already run something before loading the web page, making the available memory less. This, of course, would have introduced some pauses in scrolling but, of course, occasional pauses during scrolling would have been still far better than the current, immediate crashing.

All in all, Apple could have fixed all these crash problems by using some not-very-hard-to-implement code. Dunno why they haven't done it.

 

[I7guy]

This is certainly a software issue (of course, adding another 1GB of RAM would render the problem far less apparent but the software would still be buggy underneath). Safari could have been made crash-free with some additional memory checks:

- during loading (in my tests, all iDevices except the non-Retina iPad 2 and the small res-screen but large-memory iPhone 5. As explained above, both are considerably less memory-hungry because of the much fewer pixels still backed up by a lot of RAM than in, say, Retina iPads.)

- during scrolling, which, because of the slowish memory deallocation (freeing / release), also easily crashes iDevices. For example, the above-mentioned iPad 2 / iPhone 5 also very easily crashes if you scroll around too fast or you've already run something before loading the web page, making the available memory less. This, of course, would have introduced some pauses in scrolling but, of course, occasional pauses during scrolling would have been still far better than the current, immediate crashing.

All in all, Apple could have fixed all these crash problems by using some not-very-hard-to-implement code. Dunno why they haven't done it.

I agree your assessment is very probable. Under ios6, safari crashed with impunity on my ipad. Ios 7 virtually never. Its "virtually" certain that apple made updates to the underlying code as safari is more stable for me.