iPad iPad Air RAM test: Safari Tabs

[ZBoater]

Mike Ash also mentioned it here: http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html



Mike's one of the most respected developers (even by Apple) when it comes to development and technical analysis.

Ok, let me quote.

"The increased pointer size comes with a substantial downside: otherwise-identical programs will use more memory, perhaps a lot more, when running on a 64-bit CPU. Pointers have to be stored in memory as well, and each pointer takes twice the amount of memory. Pointers are really common in most programs, so that can make a substantial difference. Increased memory usage can put more pressure on caches, causing reduced performance.

In short: 64-bit can increase performance for certain types of code, and makes certain programming techniques, like memory mapped files, more viable. However, it can also decrease performance due to increased memory usage."

How do we get from THIS to "the iPad Air is crippled with 1GB of RAM?"

 

[zhenya]

Ok, I'm confused.



iOS 7 hasn't been out that long. To blame issues on lack of RAM instead of a glitchy iOS seems odd. But whatever. I still have to find a reliable source of information for this supposed "RAM crisis" due to 64 bit outside the Anandtech article. Can someone PLEASE point me in the right direction? I would hate to think all this 64 bit "RAM is not enough" concern is because of this one review?

Help me out here.

The point is that those routines were not interrupted when the ipad 4 changed from ios6 to iOS7, but when I got the Air. I'm not completely convinced it won't be improved via software, just reporting my experience so far.

 

[ChiTownChe]

"the iPad Air is crippled with 1GB of RAM?"

Because for me and many others, it is.

The things I do on my iPad Mini (and 4) I cannot do on my new iPad Air. Safari crashes due to low memory. Constantly.

With all due respect to Anandtech, my money is on the Apple design team. They think 1GB is enough, and so far my iPad experience is A+

My $885.96 is not gambled away so lightly. 1 GB is apparently not enough and my iPad Air experience has been an F-.

 

[Kimcha]

Ok, I'm confused.



iOS 7 hasn't been out that long. To blame issues on lack of RAM instead of a glitchy iOS seems odd. But whatever. I still have to find a reliable source of information for this supposed "RAM crisis" due to 64 bit outside the Anandtech article. Can someone PLEASE point me in the right direction? I would hate to think all this 64 bit "RAM is not enough" concern is because of this one review?

Help me out here.

How about Apple themselves:

Because of improvements in 64-bit processors, 64-bit apps have the potential to perform faster than 32-bit apps. At the same time, the 64-bit runtime increases the size of pointers and some scalar data, resulting in a larger memory footprint for your app. A larger memory footprint results in increased pressure on processor caches and virtual memory and can adversely affect performance. When developing a 64-bit app, it is critical to profile and optimize your app’s memory usage.

From the 64Bit transitioning guide: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/RevisionHistory.html

 

[ZBoater]

How about Apple themselves:

From the 64Bit transitioning guide: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/RevisionHistory.html

That's the same thing as the article above. To go from that to saying the iPad Air is "crippled" is an exaggeration.

----------

Because for me and many others, it is.

The things I do on my iPad Mini (and 4) I cannot do on my new iPad Air. Safari crashes due to low memory. Constantly.

If restoring it doesn't do it for you, you may want to consider exchanging it. For many MORE others, the iPad Air is working just fine.

 

[Kimcha]

That's the same thing as the article above. To go from that to saying the iPad Air is "crippled" is an exaggeration.

I don't know who has said the iPad is crippled. I certainly didn't. The iPad has always been a great device (Except the first one, which WAS crippled). It has been strong in some areas and weak in others.

Unfortunately it is very weak in tabbed browsing. This is not a problem for many, but for some like me it certainly is.

When I use my laptop I like to pre-load my tabs. I go to eBay scroll screw the whole page of listnings, command-click all the auctions that interest me, click on next page and then switch through all the tabs I have opened to read the details. WHen I am done I go back to the first tab and start over.

It's a fantastic workflow for me, which hasnt been possible on the iPad. I was hoping it would be on the new iPads, but unfortunately it isn't.

I have bought the iPad Air btw to see what it's like myself, which I will probably exchange for the retina mini. I have had the same experience as many:
- Low memory Safari crashes
- Tab reloading

But at the same time I think it is an awesome device. The edges are JUST right. Big enough for me to rest my thumbs unlike the iPad Mini's. The screen is amazing. As I asuspected I havent noticed much of the speed increase, since that has never been a problem for me.

It is really sad Apple decided not to increase the RAM. It would have made the iPad truly perfect. Right now it's just ok for me.

 

[ZBoater]

I don't know who has said the iPad is crippled.

You must have missed all the threads on the subject...

 

[Kimcha]

You must have missed all the threads on the subject...

Well maybe it's a huge issue for these people and it's in fact crippled for them. Everyone's needs are different. We can talk about this all day long. Whether you feel strongly about tabs or not, i think we all can agree the iPad experience would have been significantly better with 2gb of ram. Apple did indeed **** it up.

 

[deeddawg]

i think we all can agree the iPad experience would have been significantly better with 2gb of ram. Apple did indeed **** it up.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what the root cause actually turns out to be.

If it's buggy code in the 64bit libraries (or equivalent in iOS world) or a memory leak, then throwing more RAM at the problem either has no effect or merely masks the problem by delaying the inevitable.

Sure, we can all agree that 64bit apps can use more memory (the actual amount seems to depend on various factors), and we can all agree that some people are experiencing issues that they didn't face before.

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that all would be flowers and puppies "if only apple had put in 2GB of RAM" but I've yet to see anyone present true evidence that it is solely due to the quantity of RAM and not due to other factors mentioned. There are multiple factors that can cause low memory crashes.

Just curious - anyone do a controlled test between a 5s and an Air to see if they show substantially similar behavior?

 

[ZBoater]

Well maybe it's a huge issue for these people and it's in fact crippled for them. Everyone's needs are different. We can talk about this all day long. Whether you feel strongly about tabs or not, i think we all can agree the iPad experience would have been significantly better with 2gb of ram. Apple did indeed **** it up.

No, we cannot all agree.

These are iPads, not Windows PCs. I can open multiple tabs in Safari with no issues. Whether my experience is due to a hardware or iOS issue, I don't think we can ALL agree with that statement.

Beyond the issue of exaggeration (in using the word "crippled"), the question is whether the iPad can function with 1GB of RAM or not. From all I can see and read, the answer is a resounding YES. All the independent reviews align on this point. Would it be "better" with 2GB? Yes. It would have also been "better" with 512GB storage. It doesn't mean it's "crippled" with 16GB of storage. Hyberbole confuses newbs and makes them think the iPad is somehow "broken". It isn't.

 

[AppleRobert]

Sorry but I do not see every Air bought being returned because of RAM, not even 1%. So how did Apple F_I_U?

 

[MoodyM]

I can crash Safari on my iPad Air with a Low Memory log entry on cue by simply visiting this page:

http://9to5mac.com/2013/11/08/a-week-with-the-ipad-air-in-three-words-believe-the-hype/

Or by going to Twitter, find someone with loads of tweets (I used Kobe Bryant), keep scrolling down and click Load More Tweets, repeat, eventually Safari will crash.

Neither of which happens on my iPad 2 running same iOS version...

 

[s2mikey]

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that all would be flowers and puppies "if only apple had put in 2GB of RAM" but I've yet to see anyone present true evidence that it is solely due to the quantity of RAM and not due to other factors mentioned. There are multiple factors that can cause low memory crashes.

Totally agree. I've been saying this for a while now. There are numerous apps and games that probably use way more RAM than safari yet no one is complaining about any of them. It's safari and browsing in general and that's pretty much it. Think of the high end games out there that surely need more RAM than a browser..... Not a peep.

There is NO tangible evidence that the RAM quantity is the culprit. If anything, there is more data supporting and iOS7 / Safari optimization problem than anything else.

Still waiting for that factual data regarding the quantity if the RAM being the lone issue here.

 

[Ries]

Totally agree. I've been saying this for a while now. There are numerous apps and games that probably use way more RAM than safari yet no one is complaining about any of them. It's safari and browsing in general and that's pretty much it. Think of the high end games out there that surely need more RAM than a browser..... Not a peep.

There is NO tangible evidence that the RAM quantity is the culprit. If anything, there is more data supporting and iOS7 / Safari optimization problem than anything else.

Still waiting for that factual data regarding the quantity if the RAM being the lone issue here.

Go look at the low memory reports. You can see that there aren't even loaded many programs. You can see free memory and what each process uses. its counted in number of pages, a page is 4096 bytes. Safari used 400MB when it got killed and there was 16MB free. And thats after memory compression.

 

[007p]

I can crash Safari on my iPad Air with a Low Memory log entry on cue by simply visiting this page:

http://9to5mac.com/2013/11/08/a-week-with-the-ipad-air-in-three-words-believe-the-hype/

Or by going to Twitter, find someone with loads of tweets (I used Kobe Bryant), keep scrolling down and click Load More Tweets, repeat, eventually Safari will crash.

Neither of which happens on my iPad 2 running same iOS version...

So its not a RAM issue, iPad 2 has less RAM than the iPad air even with the so called 'reduction'.

Its 64-bit safari that's got an issue....

 

[alex2792]

I can't believe the number of delusional fanboys that defend Apple selling a $500 tablet with 1gb of ram. Nokia Lumia 525 that costs $100 off contract comes with that much memory! Meanwhile my Surface 2 and Dell Venue Pro 8 handle 10+ tabs without reloading. Oh, and the Dell was had for $220 with tax the day after black Friday.

 

[srkmish]

I can't believe the number of delusional fanboys that defend Apple selling a $500 tablet with 1gb of ram. Nokia Lumia 525 that costs $100 off contract comes with that much memory! Meanwhile my Surface 2 and Dell Venue Pro 8 handle 10+ tabs without reloading. Oh, and the Dell was had for $220 with tax the day after black Friday.

+1 . Really sad to see ipads performing worse than 100$ phones in terms of web browsing. But i feel apple will 'fix' it in next iteration by giving required amount of ram ( The way they 'fixed' the display of mini by giving it retina screen).

 

[alex2792]

+1 . Really sad to see ipads performing worse than 100$ phones in terms of web browsing. But i feel apple will 'fix' it in next iteration by giving required amount of ram ( The way;-) they 'fixed' the display of mini by giving it retina screen).

Will it be a free update like OS X Mavericks? ;-)

 

[peteo]

I can crash Safari on my iPad Air with a Low Memory log entry on cue by simply visiting this page:

http://9to5mac.com/2013/11/08/a-week-with-the-ipad-air-in-three-words-believe-the-hype/

Or by going to Twitter, find someone with loads of tweets (I used Kobe Bryant), keep scrolling down and click Load More Tweets, repeat, eventually Safari will crash.

Neither of which happens on my iPad 2 running same iOS version...

Thanks for the link to that page. When I load it and scroll to the bottom, it crashes safari on my iPad mini first gen. Since iOS 7 I'm noticing way more crashes on safari on my mini and iPhone 5S. I really think the issue is with safari, maybe a memory leak, or some thing else. Hopefully enough crash logs are being reported to apple and they will fix the issue.

 

[Count Blah]

So its not a RAM issue, iPad 2 has less RAM than the iPad air even with the so called 'reduction'.

Its 64-bit safari that's got an issue....

iOS 7 safari has a issue, since lots of people are saying(myself included), that older hardware that have been upgraded to ios7, blow up a ton more with safari than thy ever did under ios5/6

Only having 1gig of ram(less effective ram than the ipad3&4, thanks to the switch to 64bit), is also an issue. Fanboi's gladly accept less, but doesn't mean we all have to gladly do so.

 

[alex2792]

iOS 7 safari has a issue, since lots of people are saying(myself included), that older hardware that have been upgraded to ios7, blow up a ton more with safari than thy ever did under ios5/6

Only having 1gig of ram(less effective ram than the ipad3&4, thanks to the switch to 64bit), is also an issue. Fanboi's gladly accept less, but doesn't mean we all have to gladly do so.

Seriously! I'm 100% sure that some Apple fans would pay $1000 and camp out for a week even if the iPad had 64Kb of RAM.

 

[3587]

Went from an iPad 4 to the iPad Air.

Noticed the tabs are constantly reloading.

Noticed the screen feels cheaper and is less touch sensitive.

Safari crashes an awful lot.

Hopefully two of the three are software issues. Sucks.

 

[pocketpenguin]

It's not just safari. The Mercury browser has memory issues as well. If they both use the same rendering engine, then that could be to blame. I've turned on low memory warnings on Mercury and get them all the time, sometimes with as few as three tabs open.

Regardless, having two gig of RAM would help delay the inevitable, and possibly make the issue moot. I've been a computer programmer for 25+ years and can say without hesitation that programs that are memory constrained can be much more buggy than those that are not. It is a common mistake for programmers not to check that a malloc call fails. Having headroom can mask bad programming and make a program more stable, whether it has true memory leaks or not.

I wish my air had 2 gig of RAM. I believe it would make the air more stable and lead to a better user experience with or without safari bugs.

My ipad 3 has memory issues with multiple tabs refreshing, etc. as well. It still runs iOS 6. It doesn't crash, but the refreshing is very annoying. Again, I think 2 gig wouldn't hurt this device either.

Regarding increased pointer sizes, I don't see how that could be a real issue. Consider this, if you request a 1k chunk of memory in a 32 bit OS, it will consume 1024 bytes plus 4 bytes for the pointer to the chunk. In a 64 bit OS, it takes 1024 bytes plus 8 bytes for the pointer. That's 1028 bytes for 32bit and 1032 for a 64bit OS. Hardly a deal breaker. Even if the memory management scheme is more complex than my simple example, the overhead of 64 bit pointers on a memory request is generally trivial compared to the size of the request itself.

I think the apple guy lost something in translation from tech to non-tech in his explanation.

 

[deeddawg]

lost something in translation from tech to non-tech in his explanation.

You have a gift for understatement...

 

[MikhailT]

Went from an iPad 4 to the iPad Air.

Noticed the tabs are constantly reloading.

Noticed the screen feels cheaper and is less touch sensitive.

Safari crashes an awful lot.

Hopefully two of the three are software issues. Sucks.

The screen feels cheaper because it is much thinner than the previous screens but it's still sturdy to use and is still confirmed as a high-quality IPS screen. They didn't go cheaper on it, they just reduced the width of it along with other changes, like less backlighting LEDs as the panel itself can be brighter on its own.

I haven't notice any differences in sensitivity with the touches. Any specific reasons you think it is less sensitive?

As for the tab reloading, the main question is, is this a major memory leak in the 64-bit Safari on iPad Air or the memory is just not enough for 64-bit Safari with multiple tabs.

So far, we're not hearing any reports that iOS 7.1 have any improvements on this issue. So, it's not good news. Hopefully, a new beta will be out soon.