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iPad No perceivable performance difference between iPad 4 and Air.
- Thread starter klover
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On paper benchmarking vs. actual use are 2 different things in this case. Same could be said about iPhone 5s vs . iPhone 5.
No perceivable performance difference between iPad 4 and Air.
I'm aware of that but when the increases are so significant, I guess that I just expect that to translate into perceptible improvements. Of course, I'm now convinced that iOS 7 is the culprit.
I'd love to see iOS 6 running on one of these things...
I'm aware of that but when the increases are so significant, I guess that I just expect that to translate into perceptible improvements. Of course, I'm now convinced that iOS 7 is the culprit.
I'd love to see iOS 6 running on one of these things...
jonnyb098
macrumors 601
Not everyone is going to notice the slight stuttering issues. They aren't show stoppers but they are there. I test every iPad at best buy and even the air has the same exact stuttering when zooming into apps from multitasking, pinch to home screen, etc... It's just the hard proof that ios 7 isn't optimized on iPad yet. And hopefully will be. Because bragging about 64 bits is hilarious when there are still simple things that aren't even smooth. Even though ios 6 looks old now, it everything was smooth as butter on the latest devices.
No perceivable performance difference between iPad 4 and Air.
Agree with OP. The only issues that would persuade me to upgrade from my 4 are all these lags and stutters and from what I've seen in Apple Store today, they are EXACTLY the same on Air as on my 4.
That some people can't see these is good for them but it doesn't mean the issues aren't there. I have heard many iOS device users tell me their devices are smooth, when in fact they weren't. People have differently tuned perceptions.
EDIT: The Air also crashed and rebooted oN me TWICE in the Apple Store while monkeying with multitasking
, as it sometimes does on my 4 too.
Agree with OP. The only issues that would persuade me to upgrade from my 4 are all these lags and stutters and from what I've seen in Apple Store today, they are EXACTLY the same on Air as on my 4.
That some people can't see these is good for them but it doesn't mean the issues aren't there. I have heard many iOS device users tell me their devices are smooth, when in fact they weren't. People have differently tuned perceptions.
EDIT: The Air also crashed and rebooted oN me TWICE in the Apple Store while monkeying with multitasking
, as it sometimes does on my 4 too.
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Experience with iOS devices has taught me that you don't see the benefit straight away, let alone in the first 6 months of a new device life cycle. Developers won't have pushed every drop of performance out of the A6X yet never mind the A7, so what you have right now is potential and longevity.
Also, the "bugs" are down to iOS 7. All devices have those same "bugs" you mention. Here's hoping for 7.1.
barefeats
macrumors 65816
ZBoater
macrumors G3
The point is to help others understand whether the problems are specific to just a few systems or whether they are common on all systems.
I upgraded from the three to the air and I find the speed increase to be awesome. I read a lot of PDF documents. On the iPad three I often had to wait many seconds as each new page would render. On the iPad air, page rendering is almost instantaneous. Love it.
s2mikey
Suspended
Your comments play right into the "it depends on the user and what you are doing" arguments. It really does. I bet a casual gamer or website surfer would find my iPad 2 just as good as even an iPad Air. OTOH, a power gamer or heavy user may find that the Air blows away the 3rd/4th gen units and he iPad 2 would be unusable for them.
slffl
macrumors 65816
It's funny how people start doing comparisons when they are still restoring from their iCloud backups. My ipad Air is smooth as butter.
Nope. Fresh setup from box. No icloud, crash reporting, location awareness, or Siri activated. Running as lean and clean as possible.
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Increasingly, as evidenced by posts here and in new threads on this site, others are witnessing the exact same thing; little or no improvement in UI speed, animations, etc. It is just as legitimate an observation as anything else on this site. Some expected a smoother, faster UI experience and are not seeing it at this point in time.
Beyond that, the irony of your post certainly isn't lost on me. At least to the extent that it was intended.
I do not have one of the horses in this race, the 4th gen.
If I had one, size and weight would not be my first consideration for an upgrade. And I would not concern myself with perceivable performance difference since I am not a power user anyway and the 4 would probably be good enough.
So no upgrade necessary for me personally within that scenario but I have a Mini. 😀
If I had one, size and weight would not be my first consideration for an upgrade. And I would not concern myself with perceivable performance difference since I am not a power user anyway and the 4 would probably be good enough.
So no upgrade necessary for me personally within that scenario but I have a Mini. 😀
tarasis
macrumors 6502a
Im playing real racing 3 on my ipad 4 and i didnt see anything different on ipad air so im keeping up my 4
johnmacward
macrumors 6502
I completely agree Klover and they were my first thoughts too, double the CPU and GPU and this kind of laggy performance.
I put a thread up on support.apple.com and I was berated for even mentioning the idea of a slow iPad Air. Restore and reset we're the only things that came back. I've done them and still no difference. (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5679610?tstart=0)
I'm pretty disappointed. Ironically my lesser powered iPhone 5 performs better all in all.
I really hope it's an iOS 7 thing because I don't want to get into a fight with an Apple representative over expected and perceived performance.
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johnmacward
macrumors 6502
This I agree with, I downloaded Geekbench 3 and got the exact same wonderful results as them however UI responsiveness and overall OS speed is still poor to me. This is a case where the benchmarks are theoretical and not based in other realities.
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I'm extremely glad to hear WilliamG. Hope 7.1 comes sooner rather than later.
I have an iPad 4 and an iPad Air. I love the Air because of the new weight and size and except for occasional Safari crashes I have had not performance issues. However, I really can't see any difference in speed between the two at this time. I'm not a gamer so maybe this is where the difference can be noticed.
johnmacward
macrumors 6502
Where I'm seeing the problems:
- 5 finger gesture to go back to home screen and move between apps.
Can your try this and is it smooth to you? As the gesture begins its fine but as it completes there are graphical anomalies and stuttering. Moving between apps is delayed and feels "fragile" in that you've got to do it very carefully, that's the only way to put it.
- On home screen swipe down to search.
This is never smooth, there is always a stutter and the keyboard always delays in being displayed. After the first attempt it seems to perform little better. It's not a long delay but it's way too long for a flagship device. You might expect this on an iPhone 4, not the Air. Do you see this behaviour?
- Calendar app is sluggish.
As soon as you go into the Calendar app, scrolling through an event details is sluggish - the smoothness that might be in other apps is not here. The keyboard again appears slowly and stutters as it appears. Swipe up Control Centre from the bottom and you'll see it appear with a stutter as if the system is grinding more than usual.
- Home screen swiping
When you hit the home button back to the home screen, after the animation finishes and settles you try to swipe to the next page and nothing happens, you really have to wait 1 to 1.5 seconds for it to be ready. This doesn't bother a new user to iOS as they will probably move around slowly at first but an experienced user finds this a drag. This you can see on iPhone and iPad.
- App readiness
The same problem above you can somewhat see in apps. Enter an app and after it appears try to start doing something with it. It's not ready yet for another second or so. This disappoints compared to readiness of iOS 6.
- Keyboard performance
Why is the keyboards performance so poor, typing can often seem delayed - you can often hear this in the audio click feedback being behind what you are typing. Choosing the symbols or numbers results in another delay as if they're not loaded into memory already. Splitting the keyboard often results in it sitting somewhere strange on the screen and this is often a slow process for it to settle again. When you select text in an app the keyboard is quite delayed in appearing as if that part of the the system went to sleep.
There are many others on top of the above. All in all I feel I have to slow myself down for the iPad Air and iOS 7 and that's a really disappointing thing to say considering its CPU and GPU performance has doubled, and it's the fastest mobile device Apple have ever released. The hopeful fact is the code is far from optimised and those who have been lucky to get 7.1 betas early have seen the improvements. It would be better all in all if the iPad Air was released working well however rather than leading to a few months of disappointment for its buyers.
So based on one, single application, which was made when the iPad 4 was the latest generation available and was optimized for multi-generations AND multiple operating systems, you have a perfect understanding to make an accurate judgment call? And what exactly did you mean by "see anything different?" Were you expecting to see all new textures, particle affects, 30 frames per second boost? Because, if that's the case, I didn't see any difference either. In that case, I should've just stuck with my Nexus 7. At least based on my experience with a single application, as well.
I understand the need to justify a purchase or in this case to justify NOT making a purchase, but saying there's no perceivable difference and base it off of a single application isn't that useful.
