iPad Whose in....no 2 GB RAM, no iPad

[Supertaff]

I am just waiting for the guy who tells me that i don't need 1gb of ram

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its not about apps not running.. its about multitasking and having more than 2 or 3 apps open without launching them again and again.. What is so hard to except?

Hi Motawa,

First if you use the word accept, correctly spell it and try not to be so aggressive in your responses. I'm here for a conversation and not an argument. Thanks.

Regarding your multi tasking comment, yes you require memory to keep a number of apps open together, but OS's like iOS, OS X, Windows, Android etc operate on a page swapping policy of always bringing code into and out of memory.

I'm sure you're aware there are many types of memory in modern devices, you have the on-chip memory that is the close storage to the A8 chips. for the A8 chip this is set at L1: 64 KB instruction + 64 KB data, L2: 1 MB, L3: 4 MB, but I'm sure you were fully aware of that.

You then have the memory that most people refer to, and for the current iPads that is 1GB based on x-ray analysis as I still don't think apple have released this formally (i know you want 2GB, but why not 3Gb or 4GB, you'll be able to have many more apps multi tasking ). It doesn't matter what memory you have, bad coding, large gfx renders etc, will always need to page in and out of memory.

You even then have the Solid State memory, 16GB, 32GB 64GB, 128GB to which most apps will be carrying out their in memory paging, this requires good quality coding to ensure that this takes place and is a mix of the iOS and also the apps coding itself.

Memory, memory controllers, connectivity, bandwidth and numerous other items make differences as well, but then we're really getting geeky.

Ok, so now thats' a bit clearer, I hope, memory isn't the be all and end all, and the correct memory in the correct place being used in the correct manner is better than just throwing more in.

It's the same problem where people say why don't we have a quad core processor or oct core processor and we had for a number of years these arguments where people said add more cores, but all of the software and OS's only had the ability to single thread and didn't use any of the extra cores and therefore were useless.

To end this, I'm not against more memory, higher processor speed, more cores, more storage, bigger screens, more pixels, BUT and this is the BIG BUT, if you have badly written software then no matter how much of all of the above you get, you will still get bad performance. I include iOS in here as well which seems to have got more bloated over the years.

I'm a coder/designer/IT architect for now 33 years, and have probably written millions of lines (ok, maybe a little exaggeration) over these years using in excess of 20 different programming languages languages(form assembly in Hex, to COBOL, to modern day JAVA/C#), on many different chipsets. I've managed development teams around the world, and my experience in that time is that bad software is bad software, don't always blame the hardware. Giving more processing power, more memory and more storage has for many years allowed people to write bad software and get away with it as the technology has got them out of a hole by getting faster and faster.

Taff Out

 

[thedeejay]

I just think it's Safari not lack of RAM. When I run Chrome on iOS there's no problem.

 

[Aluminum213]

Hi Penguin,

When you discuss Page Reloads there, are you discussing in the sense of Safari and reloading pages/tabs or in developer terms regarding paging of memory in/out of use from solid state storage?

If the first, then if Apple can't sort out reloading of pages in web within 1GB then that is a software problem maybe in the caching area of Mobile safari rather than lack of memory and 2GB is unlikely to help solve this problem. Apple probably need to go back to how their written their javascript parsing engines.

Taff

People keep saying this BS of it being a software issue, then explain the constant app refreshing when one jumps from app to app

All the software optimization in the world isn't going mask having a pathetic 1GB RAM

 

[Supertaff]

People keep saying this BS of it being a software issue, then explain the constant app refreshing when one jumps from app to app

All the software optimization in the world isn't going mask having a pathetic 1GB RAM

and throwing more ram in isn't going to sort out the problem either if all the app does is just fully commit to the extra 1GB, e.g Real Racing 3, vastly bigger than 2GB so if you load this up then this will just consume the 2GB whereas it consumer the 1GB now. Many other apps are like this and I'm not picking on RR3 particularly. Apps normally use however much RAM is made available to them.

It is the responsibility of the underlying OS to manage the RAM usage for each app and ensure that there is enough memory to ensure a smoother transfer between one app and the other. This also includes the correct saving of state of apps, ensuring the internal memory caches are reloaded, see note above about internal (L1, L2 and L3) and external memory.

Again to re-iterate, I'm not against more RAM, but it is not Nirvana.

Taff

 

[Whoakapi]

I'm a coder/designer/IT architect for now 33 years, and have probably written millions of lines (ok, maybe a little exaggeration) over these years using in excess of 20 different programming languages languages(form assembly in Hex, to COBOL, to modern day JAVA/C#), on many different chipsets. I've managed development teams around the world, and my experience in that time is that bad software is bad software, don't always blame the hardware. Giving more processing power, more memory and more storage has for many years allowed people to write bad software and get away with it as the technology has got them out of a hole by getting faster and faster.

It's a good argument that software shouldn't be written poorly.

At the same time Apple has had plenty of time to fix the RAM issues on Air. But as it seems, it's just not possible. If there was a solution to the continuous reloading apps and tabs, it probably would have been implemented by now.

 

[pocketpenguin]

Hi Penguin,

When you discuss Page Reloads there, are you discussing in the sense of Safari and reloading pages/tabs or in developer terms regarding paging of memory in/out of use from solid state storage?

I'm talking about Safari page reloads. As far as I know iOS doesn't page RAM out to solid state storage, like other modern OS's. Though, I think it would be nice if it did.

If the first, then if Apple can't sort out reloading of pages in web within 1GB then that is a software problem maybe in the caching area of Mobile safari rather than lack of memory and 2GB is unlikely to help solve this problem. Apple probably need to go back to how their written their javascript parsing engines.

Taff

I agree it could be a software problem, and that apple could fix it by rewriting their web processing engine. But that hasn't happened in several versions of the base OS. So, I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps it can be solved with additional hardware RAM.

If apple isn't going to innovate in even the smallest of ways (by adding more RAM) then there really isn't much point in me buying their products until they do. So, to keep in line with the thread topic I will take my money elsewhere and not buy a new ipad.

 

[Q-Dog]

I really don't care.

Adding more RAM isn't innovative ... it's just an incremental change. And using that incremental change as a selling point is how Apple's competitors typically grab attention, but it doesn't make their devices run any better.

 

[zhenya]

I don't really care how Apple solves it, but if the iPad is to move into the category of a productivity device, it needs to be optimized to keep your state available from any active program without refreshing when you switch apps, and without any waiting. The iPad is actually getting quite close to a lite computer replacement, but multi-tasking of all sorts is hindered by this behavior. I happen to believe that this is more a fundamental design decision in iOS rather than strictly the amount of RAM.

RAM doesn't affect battery life. It affects the costs for producing the device. RAM is not a feature that creates more value unless all the competitors were known for including too little RAM in their tablets.

RAM absolutely affects battery life as it is consuming its full power at all times unless the device is fully powered off. While the device is in use, its contribution is very small, however in standby it is quite large. One of the great things about the iPad is that I only have to charge it about once a week, due in large part to the fantastic standby time. I'll take more RAM, but only to the point that it doesn't affect that usage pattern.

 

[Supertaff]

Adding more RAM isn't innovative ... it's just an incremental change. And using that incremental change as a selling point is how Apple's competitors typically grab attention, but it doesn't make their devices run any better.

Agree, and it was one of Steve Jobs first brilliant presentations where he really brought the iPod to life, he stopped talking about GB's of storage that us geeks like to hear and told us how many albums we could have in our pocket which really sold it to the other (non geek) customers.

 

[smallcoffee]

I'm in the no 2GB Ram-no iPad boat. I was considering purchasing an iPad for the first time for myself since I don't really need a full blown laptop and thought it would be an excellent time to buy, right at the refresh. But without 2GB of ram, may as well wait until next year or something.

 

[Ev0d3vil]

This is why Apple never talks about it. In theory we should be able to trust Apple to include whatever is necessary for smooth performance. RAM doesn't affect battery life. It affects the costs for producing the device. RAM is not a feature that creates more value unless all the competitors were known for including too little RAM in their tablets.

In practice, the Air showed us that we couldn't trust Apple to include sufficient RAM for the device. Air runs worse than the iPad 4 with multiple tabs open. Heck, it runs worse than the infamous iPad 3, too.

The air ran worse than the 4??

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

The air ran worse than the 4??

Correct, there iPad 4 has 1GB of RAM and runs 32bit software where as the Air has 1GB of RAM and runs 64bit software. 64 bit software has around a 30% with apps increase in RAM footprint when compared to 32bit so the iPad Air running 64bit apps is like a iPad 4 with 700MB of RAM.

 

[cperchard]

Why not just buy and iPad 1 and wait a few seconds for apps to refresh? Why not just put up with the crashing? It really kills any sort of multitasking a user is doing when they have to wait for an app to refresh due to it being forced out of memory due to 1GB of RAM. I have even experienced crashing on an iPad Air due to this (Xcode can also display that it is in fact RAM that is the problem). Even if these moments are so rare, you are not being to get many OS updates until it's discontinued (i.e no more security updates) and the reloading and crashing is only going to get worse.

You enjoy your iPad Air with 1GB of RAM though, if you are happy with it that is what matters. We are different though, we demand and expect better so there is no need to go all 'boo hoo'ing' on us just because our views are different.

What could you possibly benefit from not having to wait 2 or 3 seconds for something to load? Would you get much more done in that time? I thought we were talking about safari having to refresh when you change tabs........if so then that problem is miniscule to say the least. If you are browsing, then what is the need to do anything else at the same time?

Jesus the iPad is not supposed to be a professional multitasking device for pro web designers or whatever.....it is supposed to be fun.....if you need to multitask within milliseconds then get a professional bit of kit like a mac pro or something!

Surely the ease of use is the most important thing for a device like an iPad.....it is already quick enough, so i just need it to be half as light which will make it such an amazing device.

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

What could you possibly benefit from not having to wait 2 or 3 seconds for something to load? Would you get much more done in that time? I thought we were talking about safari having to refresh when you change tabs........if so then that problem is miniscule to say the least. If you are browsing, then what is the need to do anything else at the same time?

Jesus the iPad is not supposed to be a professional multitasking device for pro web designers or whatever.....it is supposed to be fun.....if you need to multitask within milliseconds then get a professional bit of kit like a mac pro or something!

Surely the ease of use is the most important thing for a device like an iPad.....it is already quick enough, so i just need it to be half as light which will make it such an amazing device.

Refreshing a site also means refreshing it's contents, i.e if you have been writing up on a blog are writing a review for example, it will be lost. Apps can also be forced out of RAM with just a few on the iPad Air. I hope you enjoy your iPad Air just as much as you enjoy it now when it gets discontinued due to the bottleneck of the RAM, even though the CPU and GPU are more than capable.

 

[spacemnspiff]

Hi Motawa,

First if you use the word accept, correctly spell it and try not to be so aggressive in your responses. I'm here for a conversation and not an argument. Thanks.

Regarding your multi tasking comment, yes you require memory to keep a number of apps open together, but OS's like iOS, OS X, Windows, Android etc operate on a page swapping policy of always bringing code into and out of memory.

I'm sure you're aware there are many types of memory in modern devices, you have the on-chip memory that is the close storage to the A8 chips. for the A8 chip this is set at L1: 64 KB instruction + 64 KB data, L2: 1 MB, L3: 4 MB, but I'm sure you were fully aware of that.

You then have the memory that most people refer to, and for the current iPads that is 1GB based on x-ray analysis as I still don't think apple have released this formally (i know you want 2GB, but why not 3Gb or 4GB, you'll be able to have many more apps multi tasking ). It doesn't matter what memory you have, bad coding, large gfx renders etc, will always need to page in and out of memory.

You even then have the Solid State memory, 16GB, 32GB 64GB, 128GB to which most apps will be carrying out their in memory paging, this requires good quality coding to ensure that this takes place and is a mix of the iOS and also the apps coding itself.

Memory, memory controllers, connectivity, bandwidth and numerous other items make differences as well, but then we're really getting geeky.

Ok, so now thats' a bit clearer, I hope, memory isn't the be all and end all, and the correct memory in the correct place being used in the correct manner is better than just throwing more in.

It's the same problem where people say why don't we have a quad core processor or oct core processor and we had for a number of years these arguments where people said add more cores, but all of the software and OS's only had the ability to single thread and didn't use any of the extra cores and therefore were useless.

To end this, I'm not against more memory, higher processor speed, more cores, more storage, bigger screens, more pixels, BUT and this is the BIG BUT, if you have badly written software then no matter how much of all of the above you get, you will still get bad performance. I include iOS in here as well which seems to have got more bloated over the years.

I'm a coder/designer/IT architect for now 33 years, and have probably written millions of lines (ok, maybe a little exaggeration) over these years using in excess of 20 different programming languages languages(form assembly in Hex, to COBOL, to modern day JAVA/C#), on many different chipsets. I've managed development teams around the world, and my experience in that time is that bad software is bad software, don't always blame the hardware. Giving more processing power, more memory and more storage has for many years allowed people to write bad software and get away with it as the technology has got them out of a hole by getting faster and faster.

Taff Out

Great response, I haven't run into a response like this before. So kudos.

I now am waiting for the counter response indicating that RAM after all the process of elimination is the real issue. Any takers?

 

[braddick]

Having more ram vs better/more efficient iOS is like wanting better sneakers yet not playing basketball very well.

 

[go ipad]

Just sold my iPad Air for upcoming new iPad. But no 2GB RAM, then I am willing to skip.

I will live without it for a year until next year for new release.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

After playing with the Surface I don't see another iPad upgrade in my future.

Same here. I bought a Lenovo Lynx about a year ago, and one thing I like is that I can have several tabs open without reloading. The limited, lousy selection of Windows apps isn't an issue because as my iPad 1 got older, more and more apps required iOS 6 or later, so that weaned me off of the app concept altogether.

 

[Milese3]

Interesting topic. Yes, I agree.

Recently I purchased an iPhone 6 Plus; selling my iPhone 5 and iPad mini.

But, If Apple announces an iPad Air with 2GB of RAM, I would definitely consider buying an iPad Air (second generation).

However, I'd like to see the RAM utilised. For instance: Split-screen multi-tasking .

There have also been rumours of a x3 resolution iPad. I'd love to see that too.

If Apple does all of this, I think I'll return to iPad...

 

[Mildredop]

Whose in....no 2 GB RAM, no iPad

*Who's in?

 

[smallcoffee]

Same here. I bought a Lenovo Lynx about a year ago, and one thing I like is that I can have several tabs open without reloading. The limited, lousy selection of Windows apps isn't an issue because as my iPad 1 got older, more and more apps required iOS 6 or later, so that weaned me off of the app concept altogether.

If you want a Windows laptop or device, the Surface is top tier. I would buy it over pretty much any Windows laptop. Just depends on your needs.

 

[pocketpenguin]

What could you possibly benefit from not having to wait 2 or 3 seconds for something to load? Would you get much more done in that time? I thought we were talking about safari having to refresh when you change tabs........if so then that problem is miniscule to say the least. If you are browsing, then what is the need to do anything else at the same time?
...

When talking about safari reloads...it is not just a matter of waiting for a page reload. There are a few sites that I visit like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and my local newspaper that place a limit on the number of page views per week/month etc. it is very annoying to see your number of page views decrease every time you switch tabs in the browser. For example, when I look at news.google.com and load an article in a "new tab" then go back to read it later, the page reloads and now I have "viewed" the article twice. My local paper is especially bad at this.

Also, some sites, like this one, will reload while composing a new post if you tab away, say to make sure you are quoting someone correctly. When I compose a post here, I always copy and paste my post into the notes app before doing anything else. It keeps me from getting angry when I come back to my post.

Some people do only one thing at a time, others multi-task on their iPads. Both are valid uses. If the ipad were capable of true multi-tasking either with more RAM or better memory management (or both), then both types of people would be satisfied.

The multi-tab/multi app reloading issues aren't just a bunch of people being whiners. It is all about usability, and the current iOS and iPad aren't all that usable for everyone. If apple wants to stay at the forefront, then it needs to "innovate" and "think different" about hardware specs and memory management in the OS.

Since we already have seen that iOS 8 hasn't improved the whole set of memory management issues, we must therefore hope that more RAM will help instead, that's why I won't be buying a new ipad unless it has more RAM. I don't see the need to spend my money on Touch ID and a slightly thinner device. My Air is fast enough on iOS 7.x and the case I put on it already makes it many mm thicker.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

If you want a Windows laptop or device, the Surface is top tier. I would buy it over pretty much any Windows laptop. Just depends on your needs.

I took a chance on the Lynx because a refurb was deeply discounted (~$200) and had killer specs. No complaints. I've heard lots of good things about S2, but I think the Lynx will fill my needs for at least two more years.

 

[richard371]

Don't the leaks confirm 2gb ram and A8X?

 

[pocketpenguin]

Don't the leaks confirm 2gb ram and A8X?

If I recall correctly, the numbers on the chip indicate 2 gig of RAM based on other previous chips, but also the chip picture is a little blury. No one has had their hands on the new ipad and leaked it to the press...So, there is still some doubt.