Xcode Confirms 2GB of RAM in iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, 4GB of RAM in iPad Pro

[JimmyHook]

If 32 would be against better judgement then why even offer 16?

It's called perceived value.

Scenario 1: They offer 32, 64, and 128. Most buyers who bought 64 last round would mentally justify 32 in their heads by saying things like "I'll just use the cloud or hook it up to my laptop and clean up photos". Even though they won't and they'll end up frustrated. Apple's consumer satisfaction rating drops, and they are notoriously protective of that.

Scenario 2: They offer 64 and 128 only. Apple will be hammered for "raising prices" even though really they just eliminated the lowest tier. Consumer sat drops.

Scenario 3: They offer 16, 64, 128. Perceived value says they'll see 64 as a value and 16s can be primarily used by enterprise consumers or those who only use it as a phone/message device. Consumer sat stays high.


Now pick the optimal one.

 

[C DM]

It's called perceived value.

Scenario 1: They offer 32, 64, and 128. Most buyers who bought 64 last round would mentally justify 32 in their heads by saying things like "I'll just use the cloud or hook it up to my laptop and clean up photos". Even though they won't and they'll end up frustrated. Apple's consumer satisfaction rating drops, and they are notoriously protective of that.

Scenario 2: They offer 64 and 128 only. Apple will be hammered for "raising prices" even though really they just eliminated the lowest tier. Consumer sat drops.

Scenario 3: They offer 16, 64, 128. Perceived value says they'll see 64 as a value and 16s can be primarily used by enterprise consumers or those who only use it as a phone/message device. Consumer sat stays high.


Now pick the optimal one.

The one that makes Apple more money.

 

[JimmyHook]

The one that makes Apple more money.

Yeah... 64 costs more money than a 16. Every phone manufacturer has tiered storage prices.

 

[JimmyHook]

I think it's hilarious that Samsung (whose marketers stalk this board for some reason) maxes out at 64 on their newest phones. No 128???? That is way more ridiculous than Apple's tiered prices. Samsung also charged more than Apple for their phones

 

[Designx]

Someday flash storage will approach the speed of ram and the need for a separate chip will disappear. I think Apple uses pretty fast flash memory so I think the OS was designed to scratchdisk to the flash. Without significantly faster flash, you'll always need more ram - especially in more advanced apps that fill that 1 gb such as Safari.

 

[JimmyHook]

Someday flash storage will approach the speed of ram and the need for a separate chip will disappear. I think Apple uses pretty fast flash memory so I think the OS was designed to scratchdisk to the flash. Without significantly faster flash, you'll always need more ram - especially in more advanced apps that fill that 1 gb such as Safari.

Agreed. I read a story about that recently... a newer flash module that is even faster than the fastest RAM. Still experimental and probably unstable, but promising.

 

[Piggie]

It really puzzles me why everyone here, who knows Apple understands this.

Apple SHOUT about specs when they have better ones.
They show you the new tech, explain it, show off numbers, rave about it on stage when it's good.

When any particular spec is poor in comparison to the competition they don't say a word about it.

It's so transparent they are doing this.

Easy example is the screen. Low res screen in comparison to competition in the past = they don't say a word about screen resolution.

Then, they create a higher resolution than the competition (when they did it years ago) they could not then shut up about talking about the specs and numbers to show it off.

This is not exactly rocket science folks.
You talk about your good points, and keep quiet about your bad points.
This is all Apple are doing.

 

[John Mcgregor]

Yeah... 64 costs more money than a 16. Every phone manufacturer has tiered storage prices.

Not many in the same price range have 16, 64 jump though.

 

[dogg]

Someday flash storage will approach the speed of ram and the need for a separate chip will disappear. I think Apple uses pretty fast flash memory so I think the OS was designed to scratchdisk to the flash. Without significantly faster flash, you'll always need more ram - especially in more advanced apps that fill that 1 gb such as Safari.

I wonder how far away we are from this point in reality?

 

[John Mcgregor]

I wonder how far away we are from this point in reality?

Far and lets not forget that anything stored in RAM is lost when you disconnect the power unlike the flash or regular HDD. If its going to happen it will whole other architecture.

 

[Aloft085]

It's called perceived value.

Scenario 1: They offer 32, 64, and 128. Most buyers who bought 64 last round would mentally justify 32 in their heads by saying things like "I'll just use the cloud or hook it up to my laptop and clean up photos". Even though they won't and they'll end up frustrated. Apple's consumer satisfaction rating drops, and they are notoriously protective of that.

Scenario 2: They offer 64 and 128 only. Apple will be hammered for "raising prices" even though really they just eliminated the lowest tier. Consumer sat drops.

Scenario 3: They offer 16, 64, 128. Perceived value says they'll see 64 as a value and 16s can be primarily used by enterprise consumers or those who only use it as a phone/message device. Consumer sat stays high.


Now pick the optimal one.

I don't know, man, my customer satisfaction has dropped due to Apple's unwillingness to upgrade the base storage from 16 GB, and I think that's true of many people. We're currently left with two options: 1) Buy a phone with too little storage, likely to leave you frustrated, or 2) Pay $100 more this generation than you ever have before. Given that cellphone prices seem to be on the decrease, I'm somewhat annoyed that I have to pony up an extra $100 for a measly few GB's. I don't need 64 GB, I only need 20-25 GB's or so. The 32 GB size would work just fine for me.

I think the real reason why 32 GB isn't the standard is due to the difficulty that would create for Apple in making three profitable tiers. The 64 GB upgrade would not longer be logical under those circumstances, so it would have to go straight to 128 GB or something.

 

[peterdevries]

Apple SHOUT about specs when they have better ones.
They show you the new tech, explain it, show off numbers, rave about it on stage when it's good.

There is a vast difference with the competition. Apple always focuses on functionality and use case first when they talk about specs:

• Apple about Retina screen: "look at how this double resolution screen can show much more of your content."
• Apple about Processor speed: "the new iPhone has a xxx processor. Look at how we can now play console quality games."

You get the picture. I only have to look out of my window to the advertisements on the bus stop to see how the competition does it:

• 3,4 MHZ octocore processor
• 4 Gb internal memory
• 3448x3765 screen
• Not an actual example, because this week it is Doutzen Kroes selling the Samsung Galaxy and specs are useless when you use Doutzen to sell your cellphones.

It is about context and usage. And Apple consistently is better at explaining what their specs actually DO than the competition is. They are even able to sell a thing such as Metal. Many people call it ******** marketing, but Apple is so successful as they are because they actually look at devices from a general consumer point of view. Samsung is getting better at it, but many of the rest still think that the general consumer (read: not us all here) doesn't understand even a tiny bit what the current best processor speed is and how 3GB of ram is better than 2. In addition the general consumer rarely differentiates cellphones on spec, but rather more on design.

 

[antonis]

Keep in mind, before the "wowz it took soon long" wave comes in, this 2GB of RAM is going outperform many/most of the 3GB+ devices out there. The amount of work they've done in memory compression (acquiring firms like anobit) and tuning the OS to the hardware is just staggering.

Well, yes but - performance aside - the 1gb ram was to blame for the constant and irritating safari tab reloads, all those years. So it indeed took so long.

 

[C DM]

Yeah... 64 costs more money than a 16. Every phone manufacturer has tiered storage prices.

But offering 16 with a jump to 64 makes 64 more appealing and gets more money.

 

[C DM]

It really puzzles me why everyone here, who knows Apple understands this.

Apple SHOUT about specs when they have better ones.
They show you the new tech, explain it, show off numbers, rave about it on stage when it's good.

When any particular spec is poor in comparison to the competition they don't say a word about it.

It's so transparent they are doing this.

Easy example is the screen. Low res screen in comparison to competition in the past = they don't say a word about screen resolution.

Then, they create a higher resolution than the competition (when they did it years ago) they could not then shut up about talking about the specs and numbers to show it off.

This is not exactly rocket science folks.
You talk about your good points, and keep quiet about your bad points.
This is all Apple are doing.

They talk about their screen numbers even now even though there are and have been better ones out there (at least by numbers). They talk about their camera numbers, even though there are and have been better ones out there. They never talked about actual CPU or RAM numbers in general though when it comes to their devices, good or bad.

 

[dgdosen]

I don't know, man, my customer satisfaction has dropped due to Apple's unwillingness to upgrade the base storage from 16 GB...

I'm with you - I think Apple has plenty of fans that are love their products and whom are willing to pay a premium. But then they skimp on the ram, screens, base storage or whatever - and it becomes a quality problem (sometimes real, sometimes perceived). If Apple had put a bit more robustness-love into the iPads, maybe they wouldn't have seen their sales drop so precipitously in the last year.

And for what? - what's the difference in cost to Apple for 1GB vs 2GB vs 4GB. I'd bet it's not much, and I'm sure it's not worth the ding in reputation Apple has taken in the past for what are some really great products.

 

[John Mcgregor]

I'm with you - I think Apple gladly has plenty of fans that are love their products and whom are willing to pay a premium. But then they skimp on the ram, screens, base storage or whatever - and it because a quality problem (sometimes real, sometimes perceived). If Apple had put a bit more robustness-love into the iPads, maybe they wouldn't have seen their sales drop so precipitously in the last year.

And for what? - what's the difference in cost to Apple for 1GB vs 2GB vs 4GB. I'd bet it's not much, and I'm sure it's not worth the ding in reputation Apple has taken in the past for what are some really great products.

That's what i dont understand. How can they create such good device and then cripple it like that. If you want to create it as perfect as you can its not what you do.

 

[one more]

More RAM is good, now just waiting for an iPad Air to get its share of updates.

 

[JustMadeThisNameUp]

The limitation of 1GB RAM is even more prominent on the 6 Plus due to the 1080P screen resolution + 3X & shrinking down to 1920 x 1080 process for the retina image assets.

I keep hearing about the downsizing/shrinking issue. If iOS is shrinking things down to the 6 Plus screen size is it not also shrinking down the iPhone 6 to 750p?

What's the issue exactly?

 

[peterdevries]

That's what i dont understand. How can they create such good device and then cripple it like that. If you want to create it as perfect as you can its not what you do.

I'm not defending 16 Gb as I think 32 Gb base would be awesome too. However many many many people do now know and care about 16 Gb, as it is totally sufficient for them. My own company and the company that I'm currently consulting at both have 16 Gb's as the iPhone corporate iPhone and that is a few thousand users already.

It is a simple cash cow for apple and many of their customers are fine with it. Still not defending this, but until that changes the 16 Gb will not go anywhere.

 

[SvenSvenson]

Why is Apple so secretive about RAM? It makes no sense to me. Everyone finds out anyway; they may as well just list it in the specs.

Because it doesn't really matter - if the machine performs acceptably then it doesn't matter if it has 640K of RAM or 16Gb. 4Gb of RAM with a bloated kernal that used 3.5Gb would be worse than having 2 Gb of RAM and a kernal that only used 512Mb.

 

[JustMadeThisNameUp]

Yeah... 64 costs more money than a 16. Every phone manufacturer has tiered storage prices.

If there's one thing I hate about the new iPhones coming out it's hearing the Android fanatics and others complain about the 16 gigs of storage. Yeah it's a problem but to hear some people talk Apple is the only one to do it. Most Android flagship phones start with 16 gigs storage. If Android upped the game then Apple would to.

 

[John Mcgregor]

I'm not defending 16 Gb as I think 32 Gb base would be awesome too. However many many many people do now know and care about 16 Gb, as it is totally sufficient for them. My own company and the company that I'm currently consulting at both have 16 Gb's as the iPhone corporate iPhone and that is a few thousand users already.

It is a simple cash cow for apple and many of their customers are fine with it. Still not defending this, but until that changes the 16 Gb will not go anywhere.

For corporate its perfectly fine, but lets just be realistic. People go around taking pictures and videos some knowing they have 16 GB and many not and when they run out of storage what happens?

 

[8378922]

I am glad Apple decided to give us 2 GB. That's been the only point that could have made me return the ordered iPhone (if it only had 1 GB).

 

[John Mcgregor]

If there's one thing I hate about the new iPhones coming out it's hearing the Android fanatics and others complain about the 16 gigs of storage. Yeah it's a problem but to hear some people talk Apple is the only one to do it. Most Android flagship phones start with 16 gigs storage. If Android upped the game then Apple would to.

Most android flagships in 2015? Any examples of most?

LG G4, HTC M9, Galaxy S6 and Lumia all star at 32 GB.