iPad 2 to Match iPhone 4's 512 MB of RAM?

[Coarseman]

engineering excellence.

This is what 911 Turbo is all about.

Buying a Boxter (or Co..ster) as we call it in Europe is like buying 13" MBP over 17" just because 17" won't fit in your backpack

Anyway,each to his own I guess, all the best with whatever choice you make (Cayman S)

 

[sniffies]

I guess iPhone 5 will be getting 1 GB of RAM this summer.

What baffles me is why iPad (seemingly more powerful device) always has to be behind iPhone (seemingly less powerful device). Why???

 

[jealousguy86]

so i guess best buy will be carrying the ipad 2 on march 11 as well according to apple insider.

anyone plan on going there to pick it up that day? i was thinking about going to one and scoping it out but if it's a huge line i don't want to wait. i'll just order it that day i think.

 

[firewood]

What baffles me is why iPad (seemingly more powerful device) always has to be behind iPhone (seemingly less powerful device). Why???

The iPad got the A4 before the iPhone 4. And the iPad 2 will get the dual-core A5 before any new iPhone this summer.

They probably only package only 1X memory chip in the early months of production until they make sure they know how to keep the multi-die package yields up high enough. Then they try 2X.

So that's what the iPad gets for being ahead, not behind.

 

[Mr7of7]

Is the fact that it does not have 1 GB of RAM a good reason not to purchase the device?

That's nuts. 1 GB is just a number. Maybe the combination of Apple's processor and the RAM they are using work more efficiently than a competitor's combination of processor and RAM of the same "number" next to "GB RAM."

Years ago, Wintel always had a faster spec'd machines when compared to the Power PC. Were they REALLY faster? Did it make them "better" machines?

All that matters is how the machine works for your purposes.

I agree, would you rather have a kick-butt processor with 4g of ram hung up on the blue screen of death, or an average speed machine that just works with its software? I switched from windows a couple years ago (pre 2010) and I admit, windows has some very nice software written for it, but the pleasure of using a fast machine that never crashes or hangs is pure heaven.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Someone said an android tablet will dominate? Come on man. Only in two ways will it dominate. First in returns and second in viruses.

 

[MattInOz]

more like close to 20 years. back in '92, our Mac LCII had 100mb HD and that was probably average. 2 years later in '94 2Gig HDs were the new hip thing

Oops... your right I missed out a computer or two in my counting.

 

[lPHONE]

Nobody's rushing to the store to buy a Zoom.

 

[jealousguy86]

Nobody's rushing to the store to buy a Zoom.

the (Xoom) sold out in many best buys on its first day actually. jus' sayin'

 

[Yaboze]

I find it ridiculous that we have to wait until some repair company has to dismantle the darn thing next Friday, over a week past it's announcement, to find out how much RAM it has and what megapixel the cameras are....



People have a right to know what they are buying.

 

[seedster2]

I'm not sure why this is a big deal. If it's snappy and performs great, does it matter?

What's the big deal?

It's a big deal because my iPad bogs down in safari with multiple tabs open and trying to multitask. Empty iDevices tend to look zippy in the demos, but in real world mine slows down quite a bit.

Why is this such a secret? I don't get why Apple is being so weird about this.....

Because the competition has better numbers. as much as posters here will tell you it doesnt matter, to the average consumers they do comparison shop. If numbers didnt matter in marketing Apple wouldnt use them when it was convenient.

Well, with more RAM they might not have to watch their Safari "tabs" reload each time they switch to another tab. They might not encounter as many application crashes. They might not endure a gradual slowdown while using their device for a prolonged period of time, as more and more application API's are running in the background.

Yeah, those are just a few things that even the most average iPad user would notice with more RAM. And they're not covered by "up to twice as fast" and "up to nine times better graphics performance".

Ummm, because "up to twice as fast" does not mean that your Safari tabs won't require page reloads every time you switch between them? "Up to twice as fast" doesn't mean your memory-heavy apps won't crash randomly. "Up to twice as fast" doesn't even guarantee that things won't slow down during prolonged use of multiple apps.

exactly

If they aren't touting it, it's not going to be great. It would have to be at least 512mb, which will be low after a few more iOS updates I reckon.

Well they certainly want to force obsolescence and encourage to upgrade

I guess you either 100% fully support Apple or your a Heretic.

Yeah there no longer appears to be any middle ground in this forum any more

 

[Markisss88]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

I agree with you but I wouldn't expect anything more than 512

 

[ChrisA]

SHAMEFUL it is not 1GB

My guess is that Apple wants to avoid uninformed consumers from focusing on meaningless numbers. See the above.

What really matters is the average speed of access. In a system with two levels of cache, RAM and Flash the average speed of access is the sum of the products of the speed of each type of storage time the probability that the item is in that type of storage. In such a system doubling the RAM (almost) doubles the probability. But we can't know the answer without a lot more data. And if this is designed to a fixed cost what is the fasted for the given budget. They moved to a faster type of RAM and who knows about the cache.

So, unless you are an engineer working on this you don't need to care about RAM size as an end user all you care about is the access time.

To the person who posted above would you be happy if to get you 1GB RAM the reduced the L2 cache size?

 

[xIGmanIx]

Another refreshed iPod touch. Until apple segments the os in the phone and tablet space it doesn't matter the specs it won't be a beast. They need to step up the software in my mind. If you haven't tried homeycomb you don't know what your missing

Nobody's rushing to the store to buy a Zoom.

No one is rushing out to buy the iPhone on verizon like all the "experts" here claimed

 

[Blacklabel34]

Guess we just have to wait until someone breaks one down.....now it's the waiting game.

Would be a disappointment if it still has 256

Hopefully 512 at the minimum, I'll keep my fingers crossed. In the mean time I'm very happy with my iPad now and will wait until iPad3 regardless of the memory situation with iPad2.

It does make one think though. Apple claims they don't want people to be distracted but if you improve something it's worth mentioning. Maybe it still does have the 256 since they refuse to comment. Hopefully not thought.

 

[LeoCastillo]

Numbers...

Memory on the iPad 2 (rumored): 512MB
Memory on Android (Honeycomb) tablets: 1024MB

Apps designed for iPad: 65,000
Apps designed for Honeycomb: 100

Depends on where you stand on the fence, one set of numbers is more important the the other

Leo

 

[foodle]

No one is rushing out to buy the iPhone on verizon like all the "experts" here claimed

Pshaw! Yeah, all it did was break Verizon's record for first day sales ... how pathetic.

 

[binklewis]

If Apple REALLY saddled the iPad2 with 256MB RAM AGAIN then SJ is certifiably insane. I'm sorry to say, but you have to be a complete MORON to drop $500+ for a device that doesn't allow you to open more than 2 tabs in Safari.

Please stop with the falsehoods. I'm replying from safari on my iPad 1 and I have THREE tabs open, usually 5-7. What you wrote is nonsense and patently false.

 

[0997853]

It's not only about numbers, it's more like induced obsolescence. By putting less RAM, when iPad 3 will appear with 1GB RAM you will say "WoW! 1GB RAM, that is what I needed in the first place," you'll sell the iPad 2 and get the new iPad 3. You're iPad 2 will be an old machine, while iPad 1, without a dual/core processore will work much like my iPhone 3G on iOS 4, and that because of the induced obsolescence in the software. Another example is the CPU on Macbook Air's CPU - you are already buying a two years and a half old technology.

Apple was more about things that were still good over time, now in one year everything is obsolete, except Mac Pro, perhaps...

 

[littyboy]

It's not only about numbers, it's more like induced obsolescence. By putting less RAM, when iPad 3 will appear with 1GB RAM you will say "WoW! 1GB RAM, that is what I needed in the first place," you'll sell the iPad 2 and get the new iPad 3. You're iPad 2 will be an old machine, while iPad 1, without a dual/core processore will work much like my iPhone 3G on iOS 4, and that because of the induced obsolescence in the software. Another example is the CPU on Macbook Air's CPU - you are already buying a two years and a half old technology.

Apple was more about things that were still good over time, now in one year everything is obsolete, except Mac Pro, perhaps...

I totally agree with you. The mac pro is up to date, but who wants to drop 3k on the tower....

i also hate it when apple reuses the same tech that they used a year ago. Even though this ipad "may" have 512mb... the A5 has been out since the iphone 4 ... they should at least pass it by now....But knowing apple, its either reusing the 256mb or 512mb...

But I do want to mention... HOW DARE STEVE JOBS FOR SAYING THEY HAVE POSSIBLY MORE ACCOUNTS THAN AMAZON
Last time I checked. little kids can make accounts on itunes etc and on amazon they CANNOT... how can you even compare them two....

 

[oTaRu]

Is the Ram usage in an iPad similar to a normal computer? If not, then 1gb Ram is extremely overkill... Am I right to say that?

 

[marksman]

It's not only about numbers, it's more like induced obsolescence. By putting less RAM, when iPad 3 will appear with 1GB RAM you will say "WoW! 1GB RAM, that is what I needed in the first place," you'll sell the iPad 2 and get the new iPad 3. You're iPad 2 will be an old machine, while iPad 1, without a dual/core processore will work much like my iPhone 3G on iOS 4, and that because of the induced obsolescence in the software. Another example is the CPU on Macbook Air's CPU - you are already buying a two years and a half old technology.

Apple was more about things that were still good over time, now in one year everything is obsolete, except Mac Pro, perhaps...

It is also about making money. Increasing the cost of these devices without significant benefit can cost Apple a lot of money. Say they had a memory upgrade and for discussion sake it cost them $2. If they make and sell 2 million of them in the product's life-cycle, they have spent $40 million dollars. The question is at various memory points if they can get the kind of performance out of the device they want and be happy with it, while also making money. it is a balancing act...

Apple does an excellent job in that area, but that is also why they never talk about how much ram their mobile devices have because it is not relevant for most people. Too many people have this desktop mindset where you just have to get as much money as financially possible at all times. That is more of a "feature" of desktop oses and not of computers in general. Look around at most computing devices today, and they all use as much memory as they need to do the job they are designed to do. From gaming consoles, dvrs, routers, mobile devices etc etc.

For most uses extra memory has massive diminishing returns, and is why hardware manufacturers try to find the sweet spot when they design something, because putting too much memory in a device is literally just burning money.

So not going with 1 gig instead of 512 megs for example, might be worth 40 million dollars or more to Apple. You know why Apple has 60 billion in the bank? Because they have made 1500 similar decisions. It all adds up.

 

[Bootstrap Bill]

It's a iPad. I check mail, surf the web, and play basic apps. Who cares how much memory it has as long as it works?

More RAM means the potential for better apps. Some people might want to do more than surf the web and play basic apps.

It also means better multitasking.

This is important.

 

[iansilv]

I don't give a crap how much ram it has. My iPad rules.

And what's this? Gizmodo is making some B.S. off-the-cuff claim to generate page views? That site has seriously tanked as of late... they need to get their act together and try to pull off some semblance of legitimate, classy journalism...

 

[twcbc]

But that's the point -- lower memory has proven to be a worse user experience.

For example the reason that iPhone 3G is such a dog on iOS4 is *because* it is very starved on memory. The iPhone 3GS experience is slightly better on iOS4, but even in that case mine was using pretty much all the RAM right after a fresh reboot, so any form of multi-tasking would necessarily have to dip into swap and page out/in.

So, yeah, RAM *does* matter and it *does* have a correlated effect on the user experience -- especially for multi-tasking purposes.

iOS 4 came out 2 years after the 3G was released. Of course the hardware is going to be outdated. What a silly statement.

256mb ram won't improve performance of 3G for sure, but overall user experience will be much better than it is now. As a 3g user, I suffered a lot from lacking memory of 3G. Everytime close a memory hog app, like maps, or BBC, I have to wait iOS to free memory.

As a customer of Apple, I would love to have more ram. So that I can use my 3G within an acceptable level for longer period .

Fanboi will have no problem following Apple's cycle, buying product every year. But saying ram is not important is nonesense. Sure, iphone 4 will run with 256mb ram. But ask yourself, will you buy a iphone4 with 256mb ram?