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iPad Does the RAM really limit you on a daily basis?
- Thread starter Kadin
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In my exprience, iOS prioritizes any tabs you have open with data entered into them. I have never had a tab reload when I had entered information (assuming I didn't restart the iPad/kill Safari/something equally stupid).
I haven't been able to pin point that the source of all the observations that people have with iPad is due to 1GB ram. Between cache, ram and shared memory how does a user know ram is the culprit. And it could most likely be the software or the os.
How can one claim that ram is the problem with safari reloading tabs, do we know that safari inherently is designed to do or not do this?
How can one claim that ram is the problem with safari reloading tabs, do we know that safari inherently is designed to do or not do this?
Not ime on the Air unfortunately. As I've said in another thread, after some switching between Safari/Alien Blue/Downcast/Mail, the Air (now returned) sometimes struggled to hold ONE tab in memory - I'd have a single tab open, open new one, switch to new tab, write partial post, go back to original tab briefly -> forced reload -> then back to my second tab -> forced reload = data loss. My iPad 3 handles such behaviour better.
Very disappointing.
Decided to upgrade my old mba this year instead, typing this on my new 15" rmbp with a tonne of tabs and no concern for them vanishing. May buy a 16gb LTE rMini at some point, hate to say it but I fear this years iPad will age very badly, very quickly for anything more than the most casual of usage. Crushing disappointment as, ram aside, they're otherwise spectacular.
The lack of ram truly boggles my mind given how Apple are positioning the iPad more and more as a productivity device. I find it hilarious how much the iPad 3 is disparaged for it's limitations, yet actually performs better at multitasking than the Air. Given a choice between the two, the Air absolutely decimates the 3 in a million regards but, for all the 3's comparative slowness/weight, I found the Air more irritating to use than my old 3. Hohum.
That said, my 5S behaves much better in this regard so there's a chance there's room for improvement via optimisation.
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For your average user, the RAM doesn't limit what you can do really. You'll just notice the occasional reload of a Safari tab or a slight amount of lag when launching an app which isn't really a huge issue. To power users, the 1GB of RAM, will keep coming up as an issue due to constantly reloading Safari tabs, flipping back and forth between apps lag, and just waiting for content to populate to some of those apps since it's a forced refresh. We are also seeing a lot of apps still in 32 bit mode right now which also causes some hiccups.
I consider myself an average user. During the day, I use my tablet about 99% of the time for Safari and Mail. And I rarely have more than about 6 tabs open. For Safari to keep CRASHING every few hours (and sometimes more than once an hour) is absolutely crazy.
Agreed, it shouldn't keep crashing.
What particularly tells you it's not due to bugs in the application or iOS?
I'd argue that isn't power users usage, that's average user usage. Flipping between iBooks/Kindle, Mail, Safari, and some kind of music/podcast player is probably average use. All of this with zero consideration to closing apps - not that that should necessarily matter, in most case apps don't need to be closed, but still.
I consider iPad power usage (of which I'm not one) to be extensive use of Pages, Numbers, iMovie, iPhoto etc.
That said, I strongly suspect a Safari memory leak as others have said, it does seem to degrade the longer you use it on the Air.
I have no issues with switching between apps with 4-5 tabs open and multiple apps open in background. If i only have safari up and running, safari start reloading after about 5 tabs. But this is only an issue when I am looking for it. In daily use, it does not affect me. I had tons of tabs open on my 4 and it was frequently reloading them and i never cared.
very key point here... Many (most) people here know enough to care.
Does the average user though? I suspect not really, especially if their apps pick up where they left off even if reloading.
Because my iPad Air running iOS 7.0.3 has a diagnostic log that is full to the brim with crash logs. And this is my iPhone 5 running iOS 7.0.3 which gets a far greater workout with regards to app usage:
Attachments
I don't follow... How does this tell you anything about the source of the crashes since it's different hardware, different firmware (IPSW), and different apps (or different portions of universal apps)?
I think Mazda 3s is showing that the iPhone 5 which runs more apps doesn't have the low memory/crash logs, unlike the iPad. this is strange since they are both 1GB RAM
i have 3 tabs open and it refreshes every time i switch from one to another. my mini wasnt this bad
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like i went to write something here, opened a tab to make sure i got the name right, came back and had to start the post over- forgot the name again, went to the other tab and it refreshed so i had to find the paragraph again, got the name, went back to the post and surprise surprise what id already written was wiped clean again.
seriously???
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like i went to write something here, opened a tab to make sure i got the name right, came back and had to start the post over- forgot the name again, went to the other tab and it refreshed so i had to find the paragraph again, got the name, went back to the post and surprise surprise what id already written was wiped clean again.
seriously???
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But only one of those has a 64 bit processor. The ram may be sufficient for a 32 bit system, but not a 64?
my iPad 3 has none of these issues. Have 6 tabs open right now. It has never crashed. Running 7.0.3 on it.
I think the Air hardware was bumped up for the sake of bumping it up and doesn't seem fully fought through yet. Might be better to wait for the Pro version in March or the firmware update which sounds like it is inevitable.
To the casual one browser tab user of an iPad who only surfs and occasionally does one thing once in a while, it is probably not being noticed and they don't see the frequent crashes as a nuisance. That is also Apple's target market and largest user base.
I think the Air hardware was bumped up for the sake of bumping it up and doesn't seem fully fought through yet. Might be better to wait for the Pro version in March or the firmware update which sounds like it is inevitable.
To the casual one browser tab user of an iPad who only surfs and occasionally does one thing once in a while, it is probably not being noticed and they don't see the frequent crashes as a nuisance. That is also Apple's target market and largest user base.
I don't think this is a RAM thing, it's the way safari on iOS works isn't it..
There is no swap file in iOS. There are indications it uses compressed RAM in the logs. The flash is WAY slower than the RAM; we don't want a swap file.
I'm switching back to Mercury browser because of the reloading going on in Safari. I can quit the program or restart, and it's livable for a few hours, but sooner or later it's reloading every tab every time, even with only 2-4 tabs open.
Right now I've got six tabs open in Mercury, air playing an Amazon video, have my Evernote open, twitter, etc. no reloading.
I do miss the edge back gesture though. Much easier for one hands use.
Right now I've got six tabs open in Mercury, air playing an Amazon video, have my Evernote open, twitter, etc. no reloading.
I do miss the edge back gesture though. Much easier for one hands use.
My point is that it seems to me people are taking a correlative situation and deciding they know the root cause... without any real evidence of causation.
So, figuring there's something I missed, I'm asking for the actual evidence that the reason for the problems is solely because the Air is equipped with 1GB RAM and that the cause is not possibly something else such as memory leaks, bugs, etc.
Or is really just conjecture and nobody has real evidence of the root cause for the problems?
app could leak memory under iOS7, I talked to devs writing to iOS and they confirmed needs in rewriting/patching most to run under iOS7. Page, script or applet could do the same. I could open lot of Safari tabs on Air, never count how many, but as soon as I touch certain pages it crashes.