Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

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

chrmjenkins said:
512MB is the likely number. I challenge anyone who claims 1GB is necessary to provide an actual usage scenario where it would be necessary. Everyone saw the hands-on demo, the effects in photobooth were flying. The machine was incredibly responsive.
Click to expand...

I agree. That thing screams. BUT, with that said, I do hope that it doesn't have to reload Safari tabs like the last one did. I find it extremely annoying that after opening 2 or 3 other tabs my first tab has to reload.
 
foodle said:
So in engineering there are these things called trade-offs ... :rolleyes:

They could have put more RAM in, but the question is what is the cost for what benefit. More RAM means more board space, more cost, and more power (shorter battery life). If that extra RAM is only useful in rare circumstances for a few users, it might not be the right thing to do.
Click to expand...

Don't mention engineering if you don't know what the hell you are talking about.
 
It's a fact that on iPad the first page load in Safari is very fast.
So, it's true that in this way the current RAM levels do not detract from _a_ "snappy" experience.

But, it's also a fact that after about 3-5 page loads, Safari has to reload previously visited pages.
Depending on the user and usage pattern, this may or may not detract from the overall experience. In my opinion, it certainly does. So, I welcome any increase in RAM that iPad 2 has, and I strongly object to any suggestion that I do so only because I'm purely interested in technical specifications.

The same phenomenon is also true of course if you substitute number of page loads in Safari with number of apps you are switching between, etc. It doesn't take a ridiculous number of apps (Mail, Music, Safari will do it) before the switching process can get bogged down. Again, some people will notice it and care more than others, but to pretend that this effect does not exist is simply not true.

This specific deficiency is also completely linked to the amount of RAM (with a very minor component of speed of RAM), and no amount of processor/graphics power can compensate.

None of this is rocket science of course. The same has always been true of "normal" computers since the first implementations of virtual memory.
 
One Ohm said:
Why do you need more RAM? It has up to 64GB on Flash Memory. Flash Memory is the new RAM.
Click to expand...

Wow, this statement is just so wrong it's painful ...

Flash has much lower write endurance than DRAM (10^5 vs 10^15), much longer access latency, much larger access size, etc. etc.
 
quizdogg said:
Like it or not, these android tablets, with their multiple gigs of ram, will get spanked by the iPad 2.
Click to expand...

That just brought an amazing image to my head; Steve Jobs, with the Android logo guy over his lap, spanking him with an iPad in hand. Someone has to photoshop this.
 
How can you even compare Android tablets RAM against the iPad's RAM? They are running two different operating systems and handles RAM very differently, it's pointless waste of time.
 
foodle said:
So in engineering there are these things called trade-offs ... :rolleyes:

They could have put more RAM in, but the question is what is the cost for what benefit. More RAM means more board space, more cost, and more power (shorter battery life). If that extra RAM is only useful in rare circumstances for a few users, it might not be the right thing to do.
Click to expand...

Well said. But if your iPad 2 is going to support newer and cooler OSes and apps over the years, you're probably going to be pretty annoyed when the average app you buy in mid 2012 (after iPad 3 comes out) runs like mud.

Apple should have spent the $15 and doubled the memory.
 
1GB RAM is today's standard and Apple come short of that, as with the display. It's really getting pathetic now.

I will only upgrade to an iPad 3 if:

- retina display (with Super AMOLED preferably)

- Quad core CPU and GPU

- 1-2GB of ram

- HD FaceTime cam (back facing camera useless for me)
 
rovex said:
1GB RAM is today's standard and Apple come short of that, as with the display. It's really getting pathetic now.

I will only upgrade to an iPad 3 if:

- retina display (with Super AMOLED preferably)

- Quad core CPU and GPU

- 1-2GB of ram

- HD FaceTime cam (back facing camera useless for me)
Click to expand...

As with the display? Show me any other tablet that has a Retina PPI?
 
Full of Wimp said:
SHAMEFUL it is not 1GB

Is Apple wanting Android Tablets to roll over them? In 1 year, 1GB and 2GB will be STANDARD. :mad:
Click to expand...

I think the function is above an arbitrary number. You sound like the sort of person that would judge the speed of processors merely on the Hz.
 
BC2009 said:
Apple does not hide the specs because they are less than competitors. Sometimes their specs are better than competitors and sometimes they are not. What they don't want to do is get caught in a war of specs, because when you do that its like saying your product is a commodity that can be compared to these others based on specifications. Apple lost that fight when they were using the PowerPC chip years ago in Macs -- when they started using RISC chips the general public did not understand that a RISC chip could do more per clock cycle than a CISC chip. All the public new was that PC's had "faster" processors because they were clocked higher (more Mhz or Ghz). Nobody looked at number of instructions per second or any sort of benchmark (except for the folks like us on this forum).

If Apple reduced their products to numbers then so would their audience. They are trying to sell a complete product experience and trying to keep their potential customers focused on that as well. There are many things in the product experience you cannot quantify in specs. And invariably another product will come out that beats you on some spec or several of them, even it fails in less tangible areas or in measurable areas that a customer won't realize until after using it for a month. Additionally, new products with higher technical specs may make some of your would-be customers hold off till the next version even if they don't buy the competing product.

This is a brilliant marketing strategy that Apple uses. The folks like us will always find out the real specs, but the general public will buy it based on how it makes them feel when using it. Apple is betting that the feel of their device will out-class all the competition -- and they are often right about that.

Personally, I would like a full 1GB on the iPad-2 because my usage patterns tend to require it. Some apps I use like LogMeIn require a large amount of memory to virtualize high-resolution remote displays. I'm sure iMovie is going to require quite a bit of RAM as well since it is probably one of the biggest RAM users on my iMac. These kind of apps do much better with more memory.
Click to expand...

I guess the problem with your argument is that they often do, in fact, publish specs when those specs are comparable or better than the competition. Otherwise they wouldn't be publishing the fact that the iPad2 runs on a dual-core 1GHz CPU.
 
If is 2x as fast and has 9x's graphics then who cares if 256mb, 512mb, or 1GB makes it run? I'd say 17 million tablets later that Apple knows what it's doing. I guess some people won't be happy no matter what Apple does. Go buy a Xoom then and quit the crying here.
 
ericinboston said:
Well said. But if your iPad 2 is going to support newer and cooler OSes and apps over the years, you're probably going to be pretty annoyed when the average app you buy in mid 2012 (after iPad 3 comes out) runs like mud.
Click to expand...

Yes, which is why you buy an iPad 3, 4, 5, etc. This is the same reason iPhone 5 will not have LTE/4G. The tech is not ripe and Apple's MO is to not deploy until it is sure it can do a good job. Look at the Android phones that have LTE/4G now like the HTC EVO or Thunderbolt (if it ever comes out). Horrible battery life. So sure, Apple could make a LTE/4G phone today. They surely have prototypes, but they can't get the UX they want with that tech today. They'll wait a generation for lower power wireless chipsets to be available. Similarly they won't over provision the RAM in today's iPad for apps that are two years away. If they did, they couldn't meet their price/power/formfactor targets.
 
IndyGopher said:
My assumption was the the iPad 2 had at least as much RAM as the iPhone 4, because the new iOS iMovie will run on an iPhone 4 or iPad 2, but not on an original iPad. I suppose it might require the better graphics of the iPad 2 instead, but I had just assumed it was because the new iPad had more RAM. Guess we will know when they ship and someone tears one down.
Click to expand...
Nah, iMovie runs on the fourth-generation iPod touch, which has 256MB RAM. Memory is not the issue.
 
foodle said:
Wow, this statement is just so wrong it's painful ...

Flash has much lower write endurance than DRAM (10^5 vs 10^15), much longer access latency, much larger access size, etc. etc.
Click to expand...

Yet with iOS multitasking, his statement isn't is wrong as you make it out to be.
 
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 was hoping for a gig. But I'll trade speed over size any time, so this is ddr2 opposed to the iPad 1 with DDR? What did the iPhone 4 have? What does the xoom have?
 
dadoftwogirls said:
If is 2x as fast and has 9x's graphics then who cares if 256mb, 512mb, or 1GB makes it run? I'd say 17 million tablets later that Apple knows what it's doing. I guess some people won't be happy no matter what Apple does. Go buy a Xoom then and quit the crying here.
Click to expand...

I want to see bench marks. Apple has always thrown around the numbers but they never really back it up with real world analysis. I think 512 will be fine but it would have been nice to put a gig in. What that does is makes your 600 dollar investment last longer.
 
fishmoose said:
As with the display? Show me any other tablet that has a Retina PPI?
Click to expand...

The xoom released before the iPad 2 and has a higher resolution. And many more tablets will be released with a higher resolution than both in the next year. Apple have also gained a reputation of being the best when it comes to screen tech and now with the IPad 2 it's not the case. Don't fool yourself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back