iPadOS 16 Lets Apps Use Storage as Virtual RAM on M1 iPads

[singularity0993]

Never understood this type of comment.

Your "Pro" device does and will still do what you thought it was doing, you were never promised anything forward.

You based your decision on what it did for you not what it might do in the future (as nobody could guess), your 2 year old device wont suddenly stop being pro or doing it's work.

You are missing on features from the new OS, features you didn't have before, but the HW you have is still as good and as zippy on the new OS.

Bottom line, ALWAYS buy stuff for what they are capable the day you buy them, never buy things hoping they will do more in the future.

Let us admit that long-term support is indeed a feature of Apple products. Imagine your new iPhone getting no iOS updates — yes, it still does what is advertised, but are they worth their price?

If I wanted to buy stuff for what they are capable the day I buy them, I would have gone for Android. Those devices are superior in capabilities, but quickly loses value and support over time. I bought Apple products partly because I know they’ll be future proof and supported for a long time — at least for 2 years — at least this was the case with almost all previous products. Now Apple showed us how quickly they have become in abandoning their products, so you’re right. I might as well turn to Android.

 

[virginblue4]

From apple site:
Available on iPad Air (4th generation) with a minimum of 256GB storage, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th generation) and iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation).

So also ipad with 128gb will feature 16gb memory swap. Just the 64gb version is not allowed.

Could you provide a link to the page where it says this? I believe you, I just can’t find it myself. Thank you.

 

[Ashbash75]

Are we beyond the lifespan of storage being seriously affected by the extra reads and writes?

No but then you’ll just replace the device

 

[EF1799]

Could you provide a link to the page where it says this? I believe you, I just can’t find it myself. Thank you.

It’s not a problem, here you can find the page. The copied expression is on the 19th note,

OS - iPadOS 26

iPadOS 26 delivers a fresh design, an intuitive, new windowing system, and a more helpful Apple Intelligence, so you can flow through work and play.

www.apple.com

 

[yabeweb]

Let us admit that long-term support is indeed a feature of Apple products. Imagine your new iPhone getting no iOS updates — yes, it still does what is advertised, but are they worth their price?

If I wanted to buy stuff for what they are capable the day I buy them, I would have gone for Android. Those devices are superior in capabilities, but quickly loses value and support over time. I bought Apple products partly because I know they’ll be future proof and supported for a long time — at least for 2 years — at least this was the case with almost all previous products. Now Apple showed us how quickly they have become in abandoning their products, so you’re right. I might as well turn to Android.

Well I would agree if iOS 16 was not at all compatible with your iPad, but it is compatible.

You are missing some feature not the entire os or the security aspect of it.

People bought the iPhone 4, when iPhone 4s came out iPhone 4 user could not use Siri.... it has always been like it, the new model always get more feature than the previews one.

You can almost bet that M2 will get features that M1 won't at some point.

People that bought the 2020 pro knew very well they were getting a 2 years old (well 4 now) CPU with more cores.

 

[aevan]

Because RAM and virtual memory on flash storage are the same thing

I doubt you would see a big performance difference on an iPad, if how M1 uses swap on MacBooks is any indication.

 

[phpmaven]

I had all those iPads and iPhones and they were great when released. And well reviewed. None of them "sucked" as far as I remembered, until they got a few years old and were no longer up to the task of the current software. Which is basically every product (though the OS/hardware requirements moved more quickly in general back then).

Saying "never buy the first gen iphone/ipad/mac" is mostly meaningless- at this point, any iPad, iPhone, Mac, etc is both a first generation of something, and a second, third, etc etc etc generation of something else. In 2 years people will be complaining about the current 13" iPad Pro missing some feature and "you should've skipped it" because it was the "first generation" product with a mini LCD display, or it had the "first generation" M1 chip. Your advice is basically to never buy anything, something better might be released later

Ya, it always cracks me up when people say “never buy the first generation”

If we all followed that rule, we wouldn’t have any devices at all. Plus we would miss out on some great tech.

 

[yabeweb]

Deleted

 

[dalestrauss]

If VM on the iPad Pro is like the M1 MacBook Air then you need to watch the Max Tech comparison of 8gb and 16gb M1 MacBooks on Youtube - it was stunning how close the performance of the 8gb and 16gb M1 MacBooks were - it could add a lot of life to the M1 iPad Pro 8gb models as well...

 

[0924487]

Does this mean my 2TB iPad won't use Virtual RAM since it already has 16gb... If that's true, then I want my money back as it's not fair the lower specs get something I don't have! 🤣🤣🤣

I think it’s 16GB per app. So the OS will consume extra and multi app can take advantage of that 16GB physical RAM

 

[0924487]

If VM on the iPad Pro is like the M1 MacBook Air then you need to watch the Max Tech comparison of 8gb and 16gb M1 MacBooks on Youtube - it was stunning how close the performance of the 8gb and 16gb M1 MacBooks were - it could add a lot of life to the M1 iPad Pro 8gb models as well...

But iPad Flash storage is not the same as Mac SSD. They are much slower.

 

[Ashbash75]

Ya, it always cracks me up when people say “never buy the first generation”

If we all followed that rule, we wouldn’t have any devices at all. Plus we would miss out on some great tech.

Yeah and now M2 is silly money 🤣

 

[singularity0993]

Well I would agree if iOS 16 was not at all compatible with your iPad, but it is compatible.

You are missing some feature not the entire os or the security aspect of it.

People bought the iPhone 4, when iPhone 4s came out iPhone 4 user could not use Siri.... it has always been like it, the new model always get more feature than the previews one.

You can almost bet that M2 will get features that M1 won't at some point.

People that bought the 2020 pro knew very well they were getting a 2 years old (well 4 now) CPU with more cores.

The fact that iOS 16 is compatible isn’t enough. In fact, there is hardly any significant upgrade besides Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 (unless you count the Weather app). It doesn‘t feel very much different from missing the entire os.

I’m totally fine with Apple limiting features that require the new hardware, like LiDAR for RoomPlan, to new devices.
But if you’re telling me that Stage Manager isn’t available on a CPU that can power a full macOS (A12Z in Dev Kit), then this is planned obsolescence. And I don’t think planned obsolescence should happen to a 2-yr-old Pro device.

 

[yabeweb]

The fact that iOS 16 is compatible isn’t enough. In fact, there is hardly any significant upgrade besides Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 (unless you count the Weather app). It doesn‘t feel very much different from missing the entire os.

I’m totally fine with Apple limiting features that require the new hardware, like LiDAR for RoomPlan, to new devices.
But if you’re telling me that Stage Manager isn’t available on a CPU that can power a full macOS (A12Z in Dev Kit), then this is planned obsolescence. And I don’t think planned obsolescence should happen to a 2-yr-old Pro device.

Dev kit had 16 go of ram, 2020 iPad only had 6.

So there is a limiting factor, you should be fine with it ( your words ).

M1 chip are build so they can use storage as ram as well the A12Z is not build that way.

So amount of ram and CPU design ( not power) are the limiting factor.

 

[rui no onna]

Are we beyond the lifespan of storage being seriously affected by the extra reads and writes?

Well, how long are you expecting the SSD to last?

Yes, SSDs have limited P/E cycles but the amount of writes typically generated by the average user is unlikely to kill them within their expected lifespan.

At 3,000 P/E cycles and 3x write amplification:

 

[rui no onna]

But iPad Flash storage is not the same as Mac SSD. They are much slower.

No, not really. The SSD controller is built into the M1 and I’m guessing they use the same NAND flash chips for volume discounts.


2021 iPad Pro 12.9 1TB

 

[Mousse]

From a financial POV this is a smart move by Apple, since solid state drives have a finite number of read/write. Since you can't expand the storage via microSD, you'll have to upgrade sooner, rather than later. Win for Apple. Win for developers since they can continue to be lazy, writing bloated/resource hungry apps. *Cough* Chrome *cough* Who needs to tighten/streamline code when Apple just open up more resources to exploit?
This is a big loss for fans of small, quick as a hiccup apps that does one thing and does it well. Gone are the days when a programmer could/would write a multi-threaded, multi-user, multi-tasking OS (Eunuchs🙃) that could run on an 8086 with 640K RAM.

Well, I'm gonna read the requirements more strictly now to make sure any app I get won't thrash my storage.

 

[Ashbash75]

From a financial POV this is a smart move by Apple, since solid state drives have a finite number of read/write. Since you can't expand the storage via microSD, you'll have to upgrade sooner, rather than later. Win for Apple. Win for developers since they can continue to be lazy, writing bloated/resource hungry apps. *Cough* Chrome *cough* Who needs to tighten/streamline code when Apple just open up more resources to exploit?
This is a big loss for fans of small, quick as a hiccup apps that does one thing and does it well. Gone are the days when a programmer could/would write a multi-threaded, multi-user, multi-tasking OS (Eunuchs🙃) that could run on an 8086 with 640K RAM.

Well, I'm gonna read the requirements more strictly now to make sure any app I get won't thrash my storage.

Who needs storage, the future is the cloud (skynet) and the ipad will just end up being a dumb terminal 🤣🤣

 

[biffuz]

Nice to see how this "computer replacement" is getting in 2022 a feature that was in almost every "real" computer since the early 90s (and if you had the money, even a decade earlier).

 

[Orange Bat]

The iPad Pro is such a weird beast at this point. Unless there is a specific need for an iPad, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy one and to get the MacBook Air instead.

 

[wigby]

So you only use YouTube and Facebook? Then it’s not for basic users like you, it’s for people who use more demanding iPad apps.

I think you missed their point. There are no pro apps on an iPad Pro like FCP. That's what I'm waiting for too. Otherwise, it's just a lot of horsepower with nowhere to go.

 

[rui no onna]

The iPad Pro is such a weird beast at this point. Unless there is a specific need for an iPad, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy one and to get the MacBook Air instead.

For most of my acquaintances, it’s not an either/or situation. They have both laptop/desktop and an iPad.

 

[macduke]

I've been wanting this since the first iPad. If they had done this back then, we wouldn't have apps close out in the background all the time. Better late than never I suppose.

So my M1 iPad effectively has 32GB of RAM now. Nice. I wonder why they limited it to 16GB though? Seems like they could cap it at larger amounts, especially for devices like mine that are 1TB. Maybe it's for wear leveling across the SSD? They can maybe rotate that 16GB block through the SSD so no one section gets too many read/writes and fails. Swapping can be intensive on a drive. But then again macOS does it all the freaking time and Apple still sells computers with only 256GB of SSD so who knows.

Hopefully we can see this increased even more in the future. For now this will be great for professional apps. I can see a lot more developers porting their Mac apps over now, especially when you consider they run the same hardware.

 

[mi7chy]

Hope Apple doesn't use this as an excuse to skimp on physical DRAM.

 

[_Spinn_]

Finally starting to unleash the M1 on iPads!