iPad iPad Air RAM test: Safari Tabs

[Zerilos]

I managed to hit 12. Terribly optimised website, mind you. 154 HTTP requests for the home page to load, with an 8 second load time? Made me cry there for a little bro...not cool to show me that kind of garbage

Let me know if there's another website I can try

Sounds like the speed of your internet is the issue.

 

[Zerilos]

dont care. it only takes a second to reload tabs

Kind of my thoughts. Not sure how many people make a habit of running 10 websites in the background on their mobile device. I'm sure there are a few, but I don't know any. With a good LTE or WiFi signal, most pages can be loaded in 1 or 2 seconds.

 

[redmamoth]

I've just and done the same, you're right, 6 tabs and they start reloading. In all honesty I'd probably rarely hit even 6 tabs, but it's very disappointing and obvious that the thing is going to struggle with only 1Gb. This is the next iPad3 for me, what a waste. Oh, well, until next year....

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You use an iPad Air and instead of noticing the insanely incredible leap in speed and performance

That's just the problem, it really doesn't feel there is an insane leap when playing around with device.

 

[stephen1108]

I just opened up Chrome and it truly felt like night and day between this and my iPad Mini. That and the screen are enough to keep me sold!

 

[Zerilos]

Yes, this will happen with both iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina display, they WILL be RAM-starved much quicker. The 64-bit stuff will make the apps eat up 30% more memory, which means you have 1/3 of RAM capacity almost gone on the spot.

That's why some folks are upset that when Apple moved to 64-bit, they didn't double the RAM.

Where have you read that 64-bit makes apps 30% less memory efficient? I've read that 64-bit has a bandwidth that is about 1/3rd better than 32-bit, but that would only mean it can access memory faster, not that apps would require more RAM.

 

[Tyrion]

Indeed. I must have been born with a silver spoon to be able to splurge the $350 once a year that I spend after offsetting the cost by $500 with my previous iPad. The $350 I earned by working my butt off 60 hours a week to afford it. All so I can spend a few hours relaxing at home with a cool new iPad in those brief moments of heaven.

You know... a job? Which for all intent and purposes is specifically designed to cover the necessities. But at times can reward you with a little bit extra to fulfill your desire to splurge and get some enjoyment in life.

I totally get it buddy. If I worked at McDonald's making minimum wage I could only afford to get a brand new iPad model once every 2 years instead. Hard times BRO.

I'm happy the almighty invisible hand bestowed such privilege upon you. I shall humbly concede that you are more alpha than me and go spend a couple of hours hanging my head in shame because I cannot afford new iPads every couple of months. I am a bad consumer and should be chastised.

 

[Lambros]

Sounds like the speed of your internet is the issue.

I'm in Australia, so the response time alone is in the 300ms range. When you have so many requests, it starts to clock up. I guess they aren't using a CDN

As for the discussion with nemesis...initially I thought you were a troll, but you're taking this WAY too seriously. The man likes his benchmarks, let him live the way he wants to. He doesn't need to be "told" by Apple that the new iPad is faster, let him see through his own means of testing.

In his argument, I'm a web developer, and for my job I'd need several tabs open at the same time. Reloading web pages is a pain, but I deal with it...just not enough of a pain to write a thread about it. I see his argument though. Let the man be.

 

[stephen1108]

This is such a better experience than the iPad mini. I have two tabs open in Chrome, went to play Sonic 4, I'm in Tapatalk, dabbled in Tweetbot a bit and I have yet to lose my tabs in Chrome. I'm already a happy camper!

 

[Zerilos]

I'm in Australia, so the response time alone is in the 300ms range. When you have so many requests, it starts to clock up. I guess they aren't using a CDN

As for the discussion with nemesis...initially I thought you were a troll, but you're taking this WAY too seriously. The man likes his benchmarks, let him live the way he wants to. He doesn't need to be "told" by Apple that the new iPad is faster, let him see through his own means of testing.

In his argument, I'm a web developer, and for my job I'd need several tabs open at the same time. Reloading web pages is a pain, but I deal with it...just not enough of a pain to write a thread about it. I see his argument though. Let the man be.

I don’t know about Safari or IE (Since I don’t used them on my PC); however I do know that when using the Chrome browser on my AMD 3.7ghz septa core chip with 12 GBs of RAM, I typically have to refresh tabs when I return to them (there are exceptions such as when YouTube is running in the background or NetFlicks). The tabs will typically show exactly the same content that it did when I left the tab and I’ll have to click refresh to get an update (MacRumors for instance). Is there any difference between having to manually refresh a site and having Safari do that automatically when you return to the site?
Honestly, I’ll start to care about RAM if I start dealing with regular crashes and reboots…which I’ve very little of since uploading iOS 7.03 (none come to think of it).
As far as using an iPad for professional web-development, I’m certain that Cook would tell you “We have a device for that…but it’s not the iPad”. While the iPad has some productivity capabilities, the device was never intended as a replacement for a laptop or desktop.

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Hey guys,

I went to the apple store in Sydney and played around with the air a little.

I opened the same websites on both my ipad mini and the iPad air to see when both would start reloading tabs. It's pretty damn disappointing:
iPad mini: 11 or 10 tabs, not sure
iPad air: 6 tabs

I restarted both iPads prior to the test. This was one of the major annoyances for me on the mini and the iPad air seems to be FAR worse at this. I hope people who have already bought the air could post some information on RAM usage after restart and compare it to the iPad 4 and mini.

Having just got my Air about 90 minutes ago, I found that if I enable Background App Refresh I am able to keep at least 10 pages current (I stopped trying after 10 but I'm certain that at some point there is a limit). If Background App Refresh is not enabled, then my tabs reloaded everytime I return to them (even if I only have 2 tabs open).

So basically, recreating your results required me to turn off a feature. I know that on my iPhone 5 I've have had at least 15 active tabs open at a given time.

Personally I plan to keep BAR off to save battery life, as it only takes about 1 - 3 seconds to reload a web page on my 15MPS down WiFI connection.

 

[dcorban]

Anecdotal, but my new Air seems to be reloading far more frequently than my iPad 4. I have run nothing else on this other than safari. It was reloading after three tabs.

Yes, they do seem to reload faster, but the problem is critical when you are entering data into forms or typing a forum post. These are. Both situations where I frequently switch to another tag to copy or paste. Reloading is killer.

If this keeps up, I will seriously consider returning it and sticking with the 4.

 

[MikhailT]

Where have you read that 64-bit makes apps 30% less memory efficient? I've read that 64-bit has a bandwidth that is about 1/3rd better than 32-bit, but that would only mean it can access memory faster, not that apps would require more RAM.

It's not 30% less efficient because that's the nature of 64 bit apps, they'll require more memory to hold the 64-bit values. The fact that it is only 30% and not 100% is good news, it's optimized well on iOS.

If you want proof with solid evidence, here's the research done by reliable Anand: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/9

To find out I monitored total platform memory usage in a couple of scenarios. Before measuring I always manually quit all open apps and performed a hard reset on the device. Note that the data below is reporting both clean and dirty memory, so it’s possible that some of the memory space could be recovered in the event that another process needed it. I hoped to minimize the impact by always working on a cleanly reset platform and only testing one app at a time........


In general you’re looking at a 20 - 30% increase in memory footprint when dealing with an all 64-bit environment. At worst, the device’s total memory usage never exceeded 60% of what ships with the platform but these are admittedly fairly light use cases. With more apps open, including some doing work in the background, I do see relatively aggressive eviction of apps from memory. The most visible case is when Safari tabs have to be reloaded upon switching to them. Applications being evicted from memory don’t tend to be a huge problem since the A7 can reload them quickly.

 

[Zorn]

11 tabs? Hell, my Mini reloads with 2 tabs open if I've been surfing a while.

Ha this was my first thought.

 

[nemesis4670]

Wow what a surprise. Practically EVERY reply from someone who actually OWNS the iPad Air (now including myself) is saying that everything he said is total bull crap. Even people who are upgrading from the same iPad Mini he has are saying it's MUCH IMPROVED and you can open more tabs before refresh.

I'm using it now next to my iPad 4. Not only is it significantly faster, thinner, lighter, but I can open double the amount of tabs without it refreshing. I'm counting 12 tabs now and no refreshes yet. I tried switching to other apps and it kept my tabs intact. With background refresh on it allows me to add even more.

What's the excuse now? I thought the 64-bit eats more memory and so it's worse and would cause Safari to perform worse and reload sooner than even the iPad Mini?

Let me refresh everyone's memory... your words:

iPad mini: 11 or 10 tabs, not sure
iPad air: 6 tabs


Oh wait that was just your lame attempt to discourage people from upgrading because you can't afford to upgrade. Of course until you secretly buy one yourself months later and then have a huge parade for yourself in private. Even if it's the iPad Mini Retina it's the same A7 chip and according to you will have the same imaginary issue. Your "facts" were not even CLOSE... the iPad Mini barely retains 2-3 tabs and the iPad Air can break 15. Embarrassing.

I'm happy the almighty invisible hand bestowed such privilege upon you. I shall humbly concede that you are more alpha than me and go spend a couple of hours hanging my head in shame because I cannot afford new iPads every couple of months. I am a bad consumer and should be chastised.

First of all it's every 12 months. Second of all you need to learn how to decipher facetiousness. Thirdly, I've only owned the iPad 4 before this and the iPad Air is my second tablet. iPhone 4S was my first Apple smartphone and I upgraded to the iPhone 5. Wow I am so splurging right now!

My point was that even someone working at McDonald's could easily put money aside and save up for an iPad if that was the one thing they wanted that year. So this whole schtick where people who don't know how to save money try to guilt trip those who do is just sad. Get a job and learn some money management, and maybe you won't cry over a one time purchase bigger than a Happy Meal.

 

[scupking]

11 tabs? Hell, my Mini reloads with 2 tabs open if I've been surfing a while.

Same with my mini...

 

[randymac88]

My point was that even someone working at McDonald's could easily put money aside and save up for an iPad if that was the one thing they wanted that year. So this whole schtick where people who don't know how to save money try to guilt trip those who do is just sad. Get a job and learn some money management, and maybe you won't cry over a one time purchase bigger than a Happy Meal.

I was generally with you until you said that. You have no idea what people are dealing with in their own personal lives. It gets a lot more complicated when things like children, transportation, sustenance, and housing costs are trade-offs for satisfying a delusional addiction to "the latest and greatest" piece of technology, or whatever the hottest new game title happens to be.

Sorry bro, this ain't no game.

 

[Ipadfever]

Hey guys,

I went to the apple store in Sydney and played around with the air a little.

I opened the same websites on both my ipad mini and the iPad air to see when both would start reloading tabs. It's pretty damn disappointing:
iPad mini: 11 or 10 tabs, not sure
iPad air: 6 tabs

I restarted both iPads prior to the test. This was one of the major annoyances for me on the mini and the iPad air seems to be FAR worse at this. I hope people who have already bought the air could post some information on RAM usage after restart and compare it to the iPad 4 and mini.

They are coming out with a new one in march with finger print sensor and 2gb ram

 

[Tyrion]

First of all it's every 12 months. Second of all you need to learn how to decipher facetiousness. Thirdly, I've only owned the iPad 4 before this and the iPad Air is my second tablet. iPhone 4S was my first Apple smartphone and I upgraded to the iPhone 5. Wow I am so splurging right now!

My point was that even someone working at McDonald's could easily put money aside and save up for an iPad if that was the one thing they wanted that year. So this whole schtick where people who don't know how to save money try to guilt trip those who do is just sad. Get a job and learn some money management, and maybe you won't cry over a one time purchase bigger than a Happy Meal.

Check your privilege, Mr. straight white male.

 

[Altis]

I don't think it's a RAM issue as much as it's sloppy Safari/iOS 7 issues.

Let's assume iOS 7 consumes less than 500MB of RAM. How many safari tabs could you have with 500 MB? Probably more than 10-15.

Safari will refresh most of my tabs despite not needing to. This is one reason browsing battery life isn't great, and data usage will go up. Doesn't really enhance user experience.

iOS is made for a far too linear experience. You can't even reply to an iMessage without leaving your app and going to that one.

 

[nemesis4670]

I was generally with you until you said that. You have no idea what people are dealing with in their own personal lives. It gets a lot more complicated when things like children, transportation, sustenance, and housing costs are trade-offs for satisfying a delusional addiction to "the latest and greatest" piece of technology, or whatever the hottest new game title happens to be.

Sorry bro, this ain't no game.

...and with that same sentiment, you don't know anything about my personal life, if I make a lot or a little money, the bills I pay, or the point I'm making.

If you're sitting here on a MacRumors forum lurking in threads and participating in all these conversations, you are clearly someone who is invested into Apple gadgets or are interested in them. As much as me at the very least.

Somehow because I actually buy one instead of wasting my time talking about it when I'm not even buying it I have a delusional addiction? I have owned 4 Apple products in my entire life. The iPad Air was exactly my 4th device and I didn't even own a tablet before the iPad 4. I don't buy video games or movies either.

So again.. all these assumptions and all of them are off. At some point you have to realize assuming is probably a bad idea and that you can't judge people, even though you think your cynical brain is in tune with everything and everyone.

I have loads of bills to pay. The iPad is something I enjoy and makes me happy. It's a distraction from everyday problems... not a delusion. Live a little buddy... anyone who is sitting here surfing on a MacRumors thread clearly is in the gadget world and could afford to save up for an iPad.

You have 1st world problems... go over to Afghanistan and throw a rock and you'll find someone who hasn't even heard of the internet let alone an "iPad". Maybe that'll make you appreciate money and the small chances to buy something you want instead of NEED.

Check your privilege, Mr. straight white male.

As long as you check your tampon.... or is it your diaper? Either one.

 

[Tyrion]

Gotta say, I enjoy troll-sparring with you; most MR-members aren't that eloquent and acerbic.

Still gonna wait for another revision that handles tabbed browsing better. Seems like it'll take an iPad pro to deliver the kind of browsing experience I enjoyed on my Tibook ten years ago.

 

[Krevnik]

Thanks man, I'm so happy. I was really disappointed, but this is giving me hope. It's actually a lot better than the current mini.

Yeah, I'd expect the Air and Mini 2 to at least beat the original Mini when it only has 512MB RAM if RAM is the only factor. Double the memory, and even with overhead for 64-bit pointers/ints, it should at least be even in the absolute worst case…

The fact that the Air came out worse in your original test would be evidence that RAM isn't the only factor here.

 

[randymac88]

My point was that even someone working at McDonald's could easily put money aside and save up for an iPad if that was the one thing they wanted that year. So this whole schtick where people who don't know how to save money try to guilt trip those who do is just sad. Get a job and learn some money management, and maybe you won't cry over a one time purchase bigger than a Happy Meal.

I was generally with you until you said that. You have no idea what people are dealing with in their own personal lives. It gets a lot more complicated when things like children, transportation, sustenance, and housing costs are trade-offs for satisfying a delusional addiction to "the latest and greatest" piece of technology, or whatever the hottest new game title happens to be.

...and with that same sentiment, you don't know anything about my personal life, if I make a lot or a little money, the bills I pay, or the point I'm making[/
Sorry bro, this ain't no game.

Once again. I'm not talking about you or the purchase you are so desperately trying to justify. Rather, you made a blanket statement that even someone who works at McDonalds making minimum wage, if they learn how to save, can afford to buy a new iPad at least every other year, if not every year. I called you out on the fact that you don't know what is going on in people's lives, and your assumptions about how people can manage their financial situations is not grounded in reality and is foolish.

 

[DaveOP]

I'm getting a little frustrated. Safari already crashed 3 times, and have several error logs called low memory.plist. Worried that memory management is going to be rough. I only had 3 tabs open, and they were all forums. Didn't happen until 2-3 hours into using the tab.

 

[lewisd25]

I can have a maximum of 7 tabs open without an occurrence of a forced reload. Any additional tabs beyond the initial 7 that are opened are overflow, and hidden offscreen. If you select one of those tabs, those pages will reload... I'm quite happy with the performance so far.

 

[Lambros]

I don’t know about Safari or IE (Since I don’t used them on my PC); however I do know that when using the Chrome browser on my AMD 3.7ghz septa core chip with 12 GBs of RAM, I typically have to refresh tabs when I return to them (there are exceptions such as when YouTube is running in the background or NetFlicks). The tabs will typically show exactly the same content that it did when I left the tab and I’ll have to click refresh to get an update (MacRumors for instance). Is there any difference between having to manually refresh a site and having Safari do that automatically when you return to the site?
Honestly, I’ll start to care about RAM if I start dealing with regular crashes and reboots…which I’ve very little of since uploading iOS 7.03 (none come to think of it).
As far as using an iPad for professional web-development, I’m certain that Cook would tell you “We have a device for that…but it’s not the iPad”. While the iPad has some productivity capabilities, the device was never intended as a replacement for a laptop or desktop.

Agreed completely. But with the rise in mobile devices, I find myself needing to test web page performance in iPhone, iPad, Android. People will never code on an iPad...wouldn't be an efficient coding platform.