Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Dude, but why? iOS and the hardware are so in tuned with each other that they can utilize the minimum amount of RAM and feel "silky smooth". My 6 runs great even with it's 1GB of RAM.

I believe he is not talking about today's situation - but longer term viability. Devices with 1GB RAM will "age" faster with future OS's and apps being built for 2GB RAM.
 
Well, I can only speak for myself really. I'm holding on to my iPad 4 because the screen is absolutely perfect and I use it as a stationary secondary monitor/system alongside with my custom built overclocked Windows gaming PC. I find the speed of the iPad 4 to be plenty fine and weight is a non-issue since it's stationary. The only thing that really impacts my experience in a negative way is the lack of RAM. That's why I'm hoping the Air 2 will come with 2GB. If not, then the Surface Pro 3 would be a nice companion for my specific use, which I admit, is not quite how most people use their iPads. Then I'd be able to get the full PC experience without turning on my desktop PC which idles at 140w and can't go to sleep because that makes the overclock unstable. But it's a more expensive solution than getting an Air 2. For the honest to God lean back on the couch and use the device as an actual tablet, I have the iPad mini w/retina display and where that is concerned, 1GB is OK for time being.

You have the same type of setup as I do. I also have a PC Gaming Rig that I've built (Haswell) that I love using with my Dell U2713H display (gorgeous matte display) along with my iPad 4 kind of stationary to watch videos on my desk. But I do use my iPad 4 every where and take it to work as well and at times my wrist gets a bit tired from its hefty weight.

I bought a 13" rMBP and after a few days returned it because I actually started missing my iPad! I never realized that the iPad had completely replaced my laptop usage. Now I'm just eager to upgrade my iPad 4 for a lighter model. I would LOVE either a iPad Air or a iPad Mini and if the iPad Mini gets the same upgrade as the Air 2, I think I might go the Mini route this time.
 
Now we have reason to buy new iPads, to get the experience we wish we had on the iPhone 6 plus.
 
Does anyone truly care about this type of spec anymore? Maybe it's just because of my usage patterns, but I don't see any evidence of a memory deficiency in my iPad Air or iPhone 6. I just have a hard time getting a boner over a spec bump that translates to paper far more than it does to real-world usage.
 
I doubt it and I say it based on the history of this forum. I don't recall too many praising the iPhone 4, the iPad 2, the Phone 5 or the iPad 3 for doubling the RAM from the previous generation.

Relative to herd flip flops, there should be little argument that there was plenty of bashing against screens bigger than 3.5" and then 4" before the herd believed Apple was going there. Then, when Apple did go there, the herd shifted right with them. Has Apple really been called out even with the 6? No, just a split of my iPhone is better than your iPhone because mine is bigger/smaller. What happened to 4" being perfection and everything bigger than that was "abominations", "99% don't want", etc? And I'm still to see any specially-made pants with bigger pockets in stores... or millions of men carry man purses because they can't fit the abomination in their pockets.

There were passionate arguments in support of Apple leaving the iSight camera out of an iPad 1 that largely evaporated into "shut up and take my money" when iPad 2 launched with FaceTime the standout hook. A camera made no sense when an iPad didn't have one but was the primary reason to upgrade when it was added.

There were passionate arguments about "720p being good enough" before Apple endorsed 1080p with :apple:TV3. Prior, 1080p was a "gimmick", "no one could see the difference", "99%...", "the chart", "until the whole internet is able to stream 1080p", etc. Then, Apple goes there and nobody was faulting Apple for embracing the "gimmick". What happened to "the chart"? Did the whole internet get upgraded?

Over and over. This is just another round of the same. 2GB RAM in iDevices don't make sense today because Apple iDevices don't have 2GB RAM today. Per this rumor, in a few days Apple might roll out iDevices with 2GB RAM. If 2GB doesn't make sense today, it shouldn't make sense in a few days. But we know how that will play out.... the same way it always plays out.
 
What a waste of money... iPad's don't need more than 1GB because of how god-like iOS is with it's memory management.

/sarcasm
 
Relative to herd flip flops, there should be little argument that there was plenty of bashing against screens bigger than 3.5" and then 4" before the herd believed Apple was going there. Then, when Apple did go there, the herd shifted right with them. Has Apple really been called out even with the 6? No, just a split of my iPhone is better than your iPhone because mine is bigger/smaller. What happened to 4" being perfection and everything bigger than that was "abominations", "99% don't want", etc? And I'm still to see any specially-made pants with bigger pockets in stores... or millions of men carry man purses because they can't fit the abomination in their pockets.

There were passionate arguments in support of Apple leaving the iSight camera out of an iPad 1 that largely evaporated into "shut up and take my money" when iPad 2 launched with FaceTime the standout hook. A camera made no sense when an iPad didn't have one but was the primary reason to upgrade when it was added.

There were passionate arguments about "720p being good enough" before Apple endorsed 1080p with :apple:TV3. Prior, 1080p was a "gimmick", "no one could see the difference", "99%...", "the chart", "until the whole internet is able to stream 1080p", etc. Then, Apple goes there and nobody was faulting Apple for embracing the "gimmick". What happened to "the chart"? Did the whole internet get upgraded?

Over and over. This is just another round of the same. 2GB RAM in iDevices don't make sense today because Apple iDevices don't have 2GB RAM today. Per this rumor, in a few days Apple might roll out iDevices with 2GB RAM. If 2GB doesn't make sense today, it shouldn't make sense in a few days. But we know how that will play out.... the same way it always plays out.

when you spend a lot of time reading about people complaining about (or defending) things on niche tech discussion sites, you're gonna think those complaints or defenses are ubiquitous. not only are commenters on any given tech site not a good representation of normal computer/phone/tablet users, they're often times not even a good representation of the type of computer/phone/tablet users who tend to discuss such things online - on sites most people are completely unaware of.
 
Does anyone truly care about this type of spec anymore? Maybe it's just because of my usage patterns, but I don't see any evidence of a memory deficiency in my iPad Air or iPhone 6. I just have a hard time getting a boner over a spec bump that translates to paper far more than it does to real-world usage.

Multitask your favorite apps (have them opened so they are readily accessible) and then have a small selection of tabs opened in Safari. Do your Safari tabs reload because you don't have enough RAM? If you are mobile, each reload eats cellular bandwidth that is capped for some. If you are very mobile, do you want to burn cellular bandwidth toward/through your cap that way?

If you are always on wifi or if you don't have to pay (or worry much about paying) for cellular data burn, then the short delay while pages reload (or while other apps re-load their data) may not be a big deal to you. For others, it's an issue... one perceived to be most readily solved by building in more RAM so that such multitasking has the free RAM space to work well.

These iDevices are billed as multitasking. Multitasking needs CPU horsepower AND sufficient RAM. Apple seems to have no issues improving the A processors every year. But RAM has largely been locked at small sizes. Competitor products have been out for years with more RAM at cheaper prices. So it's not really a cost thing. It's just a design choice. Like "thinner" over battery life. Like "flatter" in the interface. Etc.

If you could talk to anyone who could very objectively talk to this point, the nearly universal rule is "more RAM is better" in any computing device. The lack of objectivity with the "Apple is always right" crowd is what yields arguments against that nearly universal rule with these particular computing devices.

The thing is that as soon as Apple does add RAM, these arguments against more RAM will evaporate. The people making the arguments will not call Apple stupid for putting more RAM into new iDevices. Instead, it'll be as if such arguments were never made. 2GB is wrong now because Apple doesn't have 2GB in iPads. If a few days from now Apple announces 2GB in new iPads, it won't be wrong then; instead, "we" will gush praise and "shut up and take my money".
 
Perhaps in your simplistic world.
….

I'm a supposed to laugh? the article was talking about mobile ram and that apple is using 25% of it. How much of the smartphone market is apple? A good amount based ons sales, that article is saying they might need to move from reg ram to mobile ram to supply more demand for another product that pays well... is basic economics and need for more supply not due to real physical shortcomings in supply; if anything it would drive the price down due to more product.

RAM consumes more, but if you have more memory than you need, the excess is using a lot less energy than memory you are actually utilizing. Then you have disk swapping, and you would know that adding RAM appropriate to the workload likely to reduce overall energy usage.

BTW this is a big item an iPad not an iPhone.

You keep on believing what you want on your "in deep" which is really superficial and simplistic views though ;)
 
Relative to herd flip flops, there should be little argument that there was plenty of bashing against screens bigger than 3.5" and then 4" before the herd believed Apple was going there.

That's a good example actually. Because now that Apple has moved to the new screen sizes, there's not much talk about the screen size anymore, it's all about the RAM and the bendgate.

Those who complain about the RAM will mostly find another thing to complain about. RAM is merely the latest issue, just like the light leak of the iPad 2 panel, the antenna gate of the iPhone 4, etc, etc. Those were discussed far more than any herd praising the new amount of RAM.

Over and over. This is just another round of the same. 2GB RAM in iDevices don't make sense today because Apple iDevices don't have 2GB RAM today. Per this rumor, in a few days Apple might roll out iDevices with 2GB RAM. If 2GB doesn't make sense today, it shouldn't make sense in a few days. But we know how that will play out.... the same way it always plays out.

It actually makes a lot of sense if Apple is giving the new iPad an exclusive feature for a side-by-side app mode.

If you could talk to anyone who could very objectively talk to this point, the nearly universal rule is "more RAM is better" in any computing device. The lack of objectivity with the "Apple is always right" crowd is what yields arguments against that nearly universal rule with these particular computing devices.

Sure and there's a lot of justifying Apple's action as expected since it's an Apple forum. I think the RAM issue is valid and legitimate for many, but at the same time, I'm not sure if it's any different from previous issues that were debated hotly here. It's just the latest item in many contentious issues.
 
I wonder if it's directly related to the rumored side-by-side mode, and if Apple will strictly limit the RAM usage per app just as before. Safari is an Apple app so it's feasible they could allow it to have more RAM usage.

I've thought that before too, but didn't think about the ramifications of having two apps running at the same time needing to keep within a certain constraint. That makes things more interesting for sure. How does a developer test their already extremely RAM limited app when you throw other potential apps into the mix?

I think what might happen is that a developer would have to enable their app for multitasking. First of all they would have to adjust the layout anyway, unless Apple can work some magic, all apps out of the gate shouldn't be able to work in multitasking. Perhaps they could also adjust other things on the fly, such as resource usage. When in full screen mode, the app can take advantage of all the RAM, but when in split-screen they have to cut it back. So, for instance, if you're using an image editing app on one side it might limit the size of the file you can work with while multitasking. I think that would be the best compromise. Developers who wish to enable multitasking for their app would need to test against the two conditions to ensure stable operation.

Like I've said before, the vast majority of apps run fine on 1GB. It's the more intensive stuff that requires more RAM. Stuff like RAW image editing, video editing, and browsing Safari when it loses tabs or has an error on a big site and the page reloads (happens to me on The Verge on my iPhone 6 Plus). But most intensive apps (aside from Safari) don't really need a split screen view. A reference image while drawing would be helpful, but then you're cutting your canvas in half (one of the reasons I think the bigger iPad Pro is definitely coming). Office type productivity apps are most useful to have open side by side, and fortunately usually use less RAM. A college kid might want to run Word or Pages next to Safari while researching a paper. That shouldn't be too difficult to pull off.
 
I've thought that before too, but didn't think about the ramifications of having two apps running at the same time needing to keep within a certain constraint.

811588a5_1235047312790.jpeg


Live studio ostrich aside, at least with “extra” RAM, I suspect a design that allows resources to be allocated into the additional 1GB, so there’s core RAM target that retains backwards compatibility, and a cache/scratch memory area for storing user data, extra tabs, additional level data, etc. It improves the experience with 2GB devices, but doesn’t limits using the same apps on a 1GB device.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the split screen feature limited to 2GB devices (if not from a technical reason, purely from a sales/marketing positioning of the new devices).
 
Last edited:
Multitask your favorite apps (have them opened so they are readily accessible) and then have a small selection of tabs opened in Safari. Do your Safari tabs reload because you don't have enough RAM? If you are mobile, each reload eats cellular bandwidth that is capped for some. If you are very mobile, do you want to burn cellular bandwidth toward/through your cap that way?

First of all, yes, it would be nice if Apple included more RAM in iOS devices.

But for my personal usage, Safari reloading tabs doesn't matter. I probably don't want to see the same content that I already read anyways, so I'd be refreshing anyways if Safari wasn't doing it for me.
 
So, it has higher resolution AND a higher performance. How is that not an improvement? What do you currently consider slow in the iPhone 6? Does any App or function not perform fast enough?

My understanding is that that with 64bit OS and 64bit apps becoming more common and increasing RAM demand by 30%-40%, at some point in the near future that 1gb on board will start choking.

Which means that Apple will either have to place constraints on the next couple of iterations of iOS to accommodate the 1gb of RAM on the iPhone 6 and older iPads, or it will simply make features unavailable on these devices. The paltry 500mb of RAM was the main reason iOS lacked multitasking years after Android users had it.

Either way, the iPhone 6 should have had 2gb on board. I paid almost $900 for my 6 Plus, I'd be p!ssed if I got reduced functionality in iOS 9.
 
Last edited:
In my own use of Safari, it's not "seeing content again that I've already read", it's a need to flip back and forth between web pages. Probably nobody needs to retain web pages in RAM that they've already fully read. But I suspect there are plenty of people who use tabs to flip back and forth between web pages. I perceive THAT is the point of tabbed browsing.

For example, right this minute I've got a couple of client websites opened in tabs while also bouncing back & forth to this MacRumors thread. On a Mac, no problem. If I was on an iDevice, the new content just posted in this thread would be "unread" content, so a page reload would almost certainly be required. That would be a manual reload, necessary whether I had 1GB or 2GB. However, if I need to switch over to a client's website and then back again to make this post, the typical scenario will be that the client's website was already kicked out of RAM (so it has to reload) and then this page will need to reload when I come back to it too (new content added or not).
 
Last edited:
Man Apple is really milking ram and hd.
These should be 4gb. Especially now that we are living in a 64bit portable world filled w simplistic memory hogging designs.

Right on. And if the split screen multitasking is for real, then 2GB doesn't really get us anywhere. 4GB RAM minimum, with 64GB NAND minimum on the 6+ and iPads.

I wish that rich f ck whining for Apple to buy back stock would have demanded a meeting with Cook to tell him to stop going cheap on RAM and NAND. Besides harming the user experience, it gives Android devices a sales hook. Stingy RAM and NAND loses sales.
 
Right on. And if the split screen multitasking is for real, then 2GB doesn't really get us anywhere. 4GB RAM minimum, with 64GB NAND minimum on the 6+ and iPads.

I wish that rich f ck whining for Apple to buy back stock would have demanded a meeting with Cook to tell him to stop going cheap on RAM and NAND. Besides harming the user experience, it gives Android devices a sales hook. Stingy RAM and NAND loses sales.

Since 90% of the whinning is done by 3-4 people, just like you, on this stie, I think they know that it is not a big issue... Androids phones are god damn dogs no matter how much memory they have and that's why Apple is not worried when for 90% of its users, it is not an issue.
 
I returned my iPad Air last year exactly because of this issue.. could not live with the constant reloading of tabs in safari.

Now, a year later, I'm used to living with just my MacBook and iPhone so I'm already over the idea of an iPad.. too late, apple!
 
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the split screen feature limited to 2GB devices (if not from a technical reason, purely from a sales/marketing positioning of the new devices).

Oh definitely. It's even likely.

Yeah, I wrote that out, realized what I wrote, backspaced, and then wrote it again because ostrich.
 
RAM isn't about benchmarks and how fast a phone can play a game or apply a complex filter on a picture, CPU is. The iPhone CPU is, and we all know that (honest Android users included), very fast and efficient. That's not the point.


RAM is about multitasking and the iPhone would benefit from having more memory. More RAM = less app/tabs reloads and more efficient multitasking. In the end, it also helps battery life (less read/writes to flush/reload apps in memory conserves battery).

More RAM, going to 2GB of RAM means noticeably less standby time for the iPhone's unless they move to a even smaller manufacturing node then 20nm, which obviously eventually they are, but if they did put 2 GB of RAM in the 6 and 6 Plus, they wouldn't get their crazy standby times Apple states they do
 
So you must believe the chicken came before the egg, right?

But seriously, I love how you just completely ignore what the iPhone 4, 5 and 6 brought to the table. So you see, it really is a chicken/egg argument.

Yeah being in the normal cycle aka 4-5-6 is much better than the S version cycle. I rather have a new design etc than some slight improvements. However Touch ID on the 5S was big and made me buy it rather than waiting 1 year more to get the upgrade from my phone provider.
All my friends complain about not getting a 6 till next year since they are in the S upgrade cycle, and I'm rocking my 6 already :D
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.