They never revealed the amount of RAM of any iPad.
Where? Did you really read the same review I did?
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All iPads How much RAM is on iPad Air and iPad mini w/ Retina?
- Thread starter whtrbt7
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They never revealed the amount of RAM of any iPad.
Where? Did you really read the same review I did?
The amount of memory should not be a concern to the consumer IMO. The only real difference right now is to professional users needing a little more cache to get stuff done. For me, I wish I could keep some content automatically downloaded to the device from let's say an app like flipboard. While it currently saves only the RSS without images, I kind of want a mobile magazine/digest so I can read information on the go even without an online connection. I've also lost some changes made to photos in iPhoto for iOS several times which gets a little annoying when trying to publish photos.
Looks like I won't be upgrading from my iPad 2 in hurry.
The sad fact is, only 0.000001% of people will chose not to upgrade because of the RAM, the average uninformed consumer will be like "ooohhh, it's so thin and light... i'll take 2!". That's why apple keep getting away with it, year after year.
The sad fact is, only 0.000001% of people will chose not to upgrade because of the RAM, the average uninformed consumer will be like "ooohhh, it's so thin and light... i'll take 2!". That's why apple keep getting away with it, year after year.
Where? Did you really read the same review I did?
I think you've read a wrong review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/4
Look at the GPU section. The iPad 4 wipes the floor with the Air in Triangle Throughput (onscreen & offscreen).
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Because Apple never really participates in fighting the "spec war." They focus on overall user experience. I don't think the average consumer understands that their web pages are refreshing because they ran out of random access memory.
Erm.. and iPad Air wipes the floor with the 4 on real world usage tests (t-rex, egypt, ice storm..).
That is only two iterations of the same benchmark and they remark that while it does seem like a regression, they have yet to see where it would have an impact because greater gains are achieved elsewhere. The Air bests the 4 in every other GPU benchmark apart from the physics test and they believe that is actually an anomaly with the test.
You neglected the important metric at the very top of the page:
iPad 4 (68.1 GFLOPS) v iPad Air (115.2 GFLOPS)
It's a game. You put one triangle through another, like Trapezoid Toss or Rectangle Wrangle.
Why the **** we discussing this!
Ram was important way long before apple existed. Not now.
http://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormram
Ram was important way long before apple existed. Not now.
http://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormram
I'm getting one to share with my wife because I sold my iPad 2 last week so we don't have a tablet. It's fine for her use but I want something more substantial. We had already planned on getting two but now we will just share again for another year.
You had an iPad 2. What makes you think the new iPads aren't substantial enough for your demanding needs?
Not really, Windows 8 is fine for most people. I have several Windows machines, from under-powered AMD E2 CPU to Atom Tablet to the latest Haswell i7 SLI gaming laptop and all of them work well. Sometimes the AMD and the Tablet pause for a brief moment but certainly no more so than the iPad Mini or the 2011 MacBook Pro. Microsoft is not dead. They are terrible at marketing.
If they'd stop focusing on iPad users and work on moving existing Windows users with really old PCs to their newer offerings they might sell a ton of machines. They also need to stop focusing only on the high end tablet market. Sell a Microsoft branded Atom tablet for $300-$400 with full Windows 8 and let people know it can replace that old Pentium or Celeron PC with a small lightweight tablet.
Cheers,
I agree. Given the CPU improvements with Bay Trail, I think a low end Windows 8 Pro tablet would be a better option for Microsoft than continuing to push the ARM-based Surface RT. If Asus can sell a Transformer T100 with keyboard dock for $350, Microsoft can certainly afford to release something similar specially when they were able to just write off the first Surface for a $1 billion loss.
Editing RAW photographs in Adobe Lightroom for iPad (in development), as well as making drawings and paintings using Adobe's new Mighty Pen (tiny nub, pressure/tilt sensitive Bluetooth 4.0 LE, built by Adonit) which is launching in the first half of 2014. I want to use my iPad to make artsomething that I couldn't do *well* on my iPad 2 so I gave up and stopped using it for anything beyond web browsing and some games. The iPad 2 had limited layers and canvas sizes. The 1GB devices don't do a whole lot better in this regard. I'm hoping that Adobe can squeeze Lightroom into 1GB of RAM, but considering that Apple will likely require apps to be compiled to 64-bits at some point (if they already aren't?), Lightroom will have to do everything within 700-800MB (20-30% less) on 64-bit. So at most, when you subtract out iOS 7 (300MB) Lightroom has 400MB effectively to work with. If the iPad Air had 2GB they would have 1.1GB after 30% and 300MB, or almost three times as much! I'm starting to get the feeling that Lightroom, which they initially showed off in May, hasn't had any more news come out because Adobe is waiting for the hardware to catch up. I want to use my iPad for content creation. That is clearly the direction it is headed. It just kills me that it's so close but hampered by lack of RAM.
For instance, while writing this thread on my iPhone 5 (1GB RAM) I switched to another tab to reference something, and when I came back everything I had written was gone as the page reloaded. Isn't that great? We clearly don't need more RAM for normal use. Clearly! Just accept the same RAM generation after generation. If 1GB is good enough for early 2012 then certainly it will be fine for summer 2014 when these are still being sold. Let's also keep 1GB for 2015 and 2016. Apps and websites aren't likely to ever become more demanding. Maybe we should just stick with 512MB like in the iPad 2, which is also being sold. I mean, that thing runs iOS 7 so well! I would just have to wait a few seconds between keystrokes for it to catch up on my iPad 2. Not a big deal or anything. Who doesn't love lag anyway? I loved it so much that I sold it on Craigslist without even having another tablet to replace it because it became practically useless to me. I even felt bad about selling it to the guy. But Apple does it every day!
I'm by no means saying that another tablet is better than the Air, I'm just saying that I think Apple is missing a real opportunity to take tablets to the next level with higher-end creative and productivity apps. Perhaps that's where the iPad Pro comes in, and perhaps I'm the customer they have in mind: A creative professional who wants powerful apps on the go and is willing to pay more for it. I just wish I had some assurance that such a product is actually coming. I think they could do it now, but are perhaps waiting to finish developing their own pro apps such as Aperture and Logic for iPad Pro. Or maybe a dumbed down Final Cut, though something like that would surely require at least a USB 3.0 port. Perhaps they're working on Thunderbolt for iOS? Just one Thunderbolt port to provide a world of possible expansion on the iPad Pro. Though that's probably pushing it this early in the game.
TL
R: I want to be able to do my graphic design, RAW photo editing and drawing on my iPad without extreme limitation.Macduke, I agree with your logic for the most part. I think Apple is holding back the RAM because that ends up being the first choke point to warrant an upgrade to a newer model a couple years later.
In any case, I'd sooner eat a tin can than try to use LR on an iPad. It might be okay for just having some fun, but where the final results are important, a mouse, keyboard, file structure, multitasking, and desktop power can't be substituted for an iPad (in Lightroom).
In any case, I'd sooner eat a tin can than try to use LR on an iPad. It might be okay for just having some fun, but where the final results are important, a mouse, keyboard, file structure, multitasking, and desktop power can't be substituted for an iPad (in Lightroom).
ipad 2 did increase the ram actually, ipad 2 had 512mb of ram. ipad 1 had 256mb of ram.
Then ipad 3 doubled agsin to 1GB.
Its only the 4th and 5th (Air) that have stagnated.
Editing RAW photographs in Adobe Lightroom for iPad (in development), as well as making drawings and paintings using Adobe's new Mighty Pen (tiny nub, pressure/tilt sensitive Bluetooth 4.0 LE, built by Adonit) which is launching in the first half of 2014. I want to use my iPad to make artsomething that I couldn't do *well* on my iPad 2 so I gave up and stopped using it for anything beyond web browsing and some games. The iPad 2 had limited layers and canvas sizes. The 1GB devices don't do a whole lot better in this regard. I'm hoping that Adobe can squeeze Lightroom into 1GB of RAM, but considering that Apple will likely require apps to be compiled to 64-bits at some point (if they already aren't?), Lightroom will have to do everything within 700-800MB (20-30% less) on 64-bit. So at most, when you subtract out iOS 7 (300MB) Lightroom has 400MB effectively to work with. If the iPad Air had 2GB they would have 1.1GB after 30% and 300MB, or almost three times as much! I'm starting to get the feeling that Lightroom, which they initially showed off in May, hasn't had any more news come out because Adobe is waiting for the hardware to catch up. I want to use my iPad for content creation. That is clearly the direction it is headed. It just kills me that it's so close but hampered by lack of RAM.
For instance, while writing this thread on my iPhone 5 (1GB RAM) I switched to another tab to reference something, and when I came back everything I had written was gone as the page reloaded. Isn't that great? We clearly don't need more RAM for normal use. Clearly! Just accept the same RAM generation after generation. If 1GB is good enough for early 2012 then certainly it will be fine for summer 2014 when these are still being sold. Let's also keep 1GB for 2015 and 2016. Apps and websites aren't likely to ever become more demanding. Maybe we should just stick with 512MB like in the iPad 2, which is also being sold. I mean, that thing runs iOS 7 so well! I would just have to wait a few seconds between keystrokes for it to catch up on my iPad 2. Not a big deal or anything. Who doesn't love lag anyway? I loved it so much that I sold it on Craigslist without even having another tablet to replace it because it became practically useless to me. I even felt bad about selling it to the guy. But Apple does it every day!
I'm by no means saying that another tablet is better than the Air, I'm just saying that I think Apple is missing a real opportunity to take tablets to the next level with higher-end creative and productivity apps. Perhaps that's where the iPad Pro comes in, and perhaps I'm the customer they have in mind: A creative professional who wants powerful apps on the go and is willing to pay more for it. I just wish I had some assurance that such a product is actually coming. I think they could do it now, but are perhaps waiting to finish developing their own pro apps such as Aperture and Logic for iPad Pro. Or maybe a dumbed down Final Cut, though something like that would surely require at least a USB 3.0 port. Perhaps they're working on Thunderbolt for iOS? Just one Thunderbolt port to provide a world of possible expansion on the iPad Pro. Though that's probably pushing it this early in the game.
TL
I completely agree with you on the professional use front. The whole point for us is to replace x86 with ARM and be able to work with LR or Aperture on iOS without constant issues with RAM, crashes, or missing changes. For normal tablet use 1GB of RAM is adequate for iOS7. I think it's good that we are pushing towards that direction. I think our current tech isn't up to standard yet and that's primarily what's keeping iPads and ARM tablets down right now.
32GB and 2GB RAM standard next year for sure. No way you could get away with less than that in late 2014. Maybe 16GB on a cheaper mini, but everything else will start at 32GB. Flash memory is already getting to be really cheap.
I'm kind of glad that Android tablets are starting to catch up to iPads in sales. Even though they're mostly crap, they'll hopefully light a fire under Apple to stay competitive. I'll take 1GB iOS over 2GB Android any day because it's more optimized. But 2GB iPad would just blow the doors off.
I guess I'm just feeling sad because I see a day where I can carry a little iPad Mini with me that lets me do many of the tasks that I do on my rMBP while out and about, saving me tons of time. Then I can pull in that same content when I get home on my Mac, and if it needs it, do whatever remaining tasks that can only be done on a Mac such as polishing things up and making backups and prints. A miniature Lightroom would be the coolest thing in the world to me. I feel like I would actually have time to edit photos that way. When I'm editing photos I sometimes need to bring them into Photoshop to fix things up even more. But I could do 80-90% of my photo work on an iPad. The remaining touchups, tweaking and print preparation could happen on the Mac.
I have such a backlog of stuff to edit. It's a nightmare! I actually have hope for Lightroom as I went back and looked at the sneak peak given last May. Apparently they take in lower-res previews and adjust the raw metadata which can sync back to your Mac. That way you can have your entire LR catalog with you. I assume new photos you take and save on iPad would also import low-res previews and just save the RAW metadata back along with the files for syncing to Lightroom when you get home. This could potentially get around low-memory issues.
I think I'll get a 64GB Mini Retina for now and that will do me well for the next year. Then my wife can take full custody and I'll get a 128GB LTE of whatever the newest is then. It's the best compromise I can think of without spending too much as we had already planned on getting two. And hopefully with a 32GB base I'll spend less on that 128GB.
This what Apple is banking on, case and point.
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I like how you are basing your opinion on an assumption. What if you were wrong? Not saying you are but can you prove it? No. So it's unclear and there fore not worth dwelling on.
I think you'll find the Air is just a fine device to use, and you'll end up with on anyway.
This is all relative of course, as I have crashlogs for apps on my ipad mini that specific state memory, or the lack there of, was the cause. This is with only the app in question open after a hard reboot. Some of us are already pushing our ipads to the limit!