Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
On what basis are people saying 256mb isn't enough? We're talking about apps *designed* for the iPad. There is no sense in measuring 256mb on the iPad against anything else, save for another iPad, or the *next* iPad.
I just did some quick and dirty tests. Safari on the iPad and 3GS the the same settings, iPod playing same playlist and Safari opened to same 4 pages the iPhone has about 60MB opened between inactive and free, while the iPad only had 20MB. Unless Apple has found a way to reduce the overhead I'm sure common multitasking is feasible on the iPad.
I still haven't restarted each to see starting levels but it appears that the iPad uses a lot more RAM. Remember, the 3GS is also running the cellular services.
I'm not even sure what you are trying to say with this first sentence. As to the OS IPhone is more or less UNIX with a lot of the utility functions missing. Obviously Apple has gone in a different direction when they borrowed the core of Mac OS/X here but the fact remains you have a multitasking OS without a pageing system. That is no virtual memory, so real RAM is very important. More importantly iPhone OS is still growing in size and version 4.0 is due in very short order.
I'm not sure why you bring up the new processor as that has very little if anything to do with this issue. Apple could have used the current iPhones processor and the response would be the same. With out RAM a processor is pretty useless.
Quote:
What validated evidence do you have that more is needed?
Validated? What year is this? Seriously the relationship between RAM and computer capability has been known for years. You question is seriously sounding like trolling.
In any event the easy question to ask here is this: have you used an iPhone? Apps are being hit with performance problems or failures all the time due to the lack of RAM. On iPad your RAM demands only go up due to the larger higher pixel count screen.
Quote:
And why just another 256?
That is a good question! In a nut shell because it is feasable technology wise and would more than double RAM available to applications. Don't forget that a good portion of that initial 256MB will never be available to user apps. Some will go to the video function, some to the kernel and some to mandatory background processes. Right now developers are reporting less than 200MB of RAM actually available to programs. This is a step backwards not forwards.
Beyound that an additional 256MB makes apps possible that aren't currently without putting to much of a demand on the hardware. It should be enough to address regressive behaviour seen in many current iPhone apps. Finally more RAM makes life easier for developers thus leading to fewer bugs. Not too that the RAM issue only gets worst if multitasking becomes real. For that matter finding RAM to generate images for printing, if that becomes real, could be an issue for some programs. The list could become very long if you put thought into it.
I just did some quick and dirty tests. Safari on the iPad and 3GS the the same settings, iPod playing same playlist and Safari opened to same 4 pages the iPhone has about 60MB opened between inactive and free, while the iPad only had 20MB. Unless Apple has found a way to reduce the overhead I'm sure common multitasking is feasible on the iPad.
I still haven't restarted each to see starting levels but it appears that the iPad uses a lot more RAM. Remember, the 3GS is also running the cellular services.
Think about the screen size to start with. The video buffer has to be bigger right of the bat. The new programs often have more and bigger controls compared to their iPhone counterparts. Just taking the demands of the screen into account should be a big clue here that RAM is important on iPad.
This doesn't even address user apps where everything is bigger due again to the larger screen.
I think the A4 is really Just a repackaged Samsung Hummingbird processor.
There is a rumour that Apple has just bought another ARM chip design company - Intrinsity.
Intrinsity apparently designed the Hummingbird for Samsung. The A4 is manufactured by Samsung.
The Hummingbird is the chip that will be powering Samsung's new smart phones, the i9000 S Galaxy and the S8500 Wave, except the Hummingbird in these phones actually has 512mb of RAM.
Perhaps Apple's contribution to the A4 was to ask Samsung to drop half the RAM from the Hummingbird so they could put their logo on it and pretend it was a custom designed processor.
When it gets cold in my house I can turn up the central heating. However, I can also choose to improve the isolation of my house.
And exactly how do you propose to accomplish that? Move your house to North Dakota? "Fibberglas" batting? I imagine there'll never be a contextual content checker to provide us with the necessary "insulation" from inappropriate word choices.
Just to add to this comment. After being purchased, it's techincally the owner's property. They did, after all, trade $X amount of dollars for it. If they want to rip it apart and see what's inside, there's no law stopping them from doing that. Apple already got its money from the purchase.
Indeed.
Companies buy competitors products for that purpose all the time. There's certainly nothing illegal in taking it apart.
That's what patents are for; to prevent someone from duplicating your work, even though they know how it works.
Refined OS and new processor. What validated evidence do you have that more is needed? And why just another 256?
Validated evidence? That's something that not needed. It's simply a matter of fitting all the required parts of a program and its resources into the RAM. The more programs running at once, and the larger they are, the more RAM is needed. If you read the articles written about this, you'll see the 128 is considered to be too low, and that phones that have tried with 128 are slow. 256 is considered to be much better, but tight.
It's very likely that the average iPad app will be larger than the average iPhone app. It's also likely that people would be more interested in this feature on the iPad more so than on the iPhone. That would be especially true if Apple allowed more than one app on the desktop at once. Then we have multiple windows to deal with as well. We don't know what, if anything Apple is going to do with multitasking beyond what they already have.
In addition, if we want to get more sophisticated programs such as photo editing apps and the like, more RAM is needed. A photo editing app needs a lot of RAM. If you've got several others running at the same time, you can run into memory limits, unless Apple has worked out a way to use virtual memory for overflow.
I recall that at the WWDC it was explained that RAM/multitasking was not the issue. Multitasking/battery life was.
Because RAM is easy to add. More wouldn't take up more room. It just costs a bit more, and is likely why Apple is sticking to 256 right now, assuming the reports are correct.
But RAM can slow multitasking. If not enough is present, then things will slow down.
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
On what basis are people saying 256mb isn't enough? We're talking about apps *designed* for the iPad. There is no sense in measuring 256mb on the iPad against anything else, save for another iPad, or the *next* iPad.
That's the problem. It certainly IS enough, but 512 wouldn't be hard to put in and would open more possibilities for many apps, especially games.
I'm not saying "LOL IPAD HAZ LESS MEMORY THEN MY NEXUS APPLE SUXXXXX", nor that that'll kill it, but it would have been nicer for everyone if it DID have more memory.
Because RAM is easy to add. More wouldn't take up more room. It just costs a bit more, and is likely why Apple is sticking to 256 right now, assuming the reports are correct.
But RAM can slow multitasking. If not enough is present, then things will slow down.
Think about the screen size to start with. The video buffer has to be bigger right of the bat. The new programs often have more and bigger controls compared to their iPhone counterparts. Just taking the demands of the screen into account should be a big clue here that RAM is important on iPad.
This doesn't even address user apps where everything is bigger due again to the larger screen.
¿Que? Is that a rhetorical question, because i didn't say the iPad does use less, I just didn't know how much more it used until I ran some tests.
Anyway, after checking the stats immediately after 3 restarts I obtained the following mean average...
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
On what basis are people saying 256mb isn't enough? We're talking about apps *designed* for the iPad. There is no sense in measuring 256mb on the iPad against anything else, save for another iPad, or the *next* iPad.
I questioned it because, first of all, there has been an assumption that Apple would double the amount of RAM in the new iPhone, and so should have doubled it in the iPad.
More RAM is always better. Many times, years ago, my Mac would put a message on the screen when I was doing heavy editing, that I needed to close windows, or programs because I didn't have enough RAM for the System to accomplish its tasks. OS X has eliminated that concern. But if not enough RAM is onboard, programs do slow down, as the OS swaps between the HDD and RAM.
People here might remember why we're moving to 64 bits. Not because it's faster, because it isn't. It's because we can get more RAM.
I've got 16GB in my Mac Pro, and soon I will move to 32 GB because some editing with large images slows down because of the limit.
Look how Apple continually raises the limits on the amount of RAM their machines use. Even an iMac can now take 16GB RAM.
There's a lot of things an iPad can do, but RAM limitations may prevent some of it. If Apple thinks 256 MB is enough, then I hope they're correct.
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
Yes it does, but as my memory stats indicate there is no additional RAM to enable multitasking sufficiently without optimizing the OS to use the RAM more intelligently. Perhaps that is what they did or perhaps v4.0 won't have multitasking at all as it does seem to be only a niche of Apple's consumer base that even cares about it. It's certainly worth discussing, that's for sure.
Yeah, the hopes were for 512. IF the 4.0 ver. has third party multitasking, I would suppose Apple thinks 256 can squeeze it in.
Sadly typical for Apple. Give the lowest hardware spec they can get away with at a premium price. Then again with a 17.00 core processor 256mb of ram is expected.
Sadly typical for Apple. Give the lowest hardware spec they can get away with at a premium price. Then again with a 17.00 core processor 256mb of ram is expected.
Most companies do that as well. Apple does seem to get more out of their hardware than other companies. Look at how poorly the Palm phones do with the same HW as the 3GS.
Most companies do that as well. Apple does seem to get more out of their hardware than other companies. Look at how poorly the Palm phones do with the same HW as the 3GS.
Well the Nexus One which is suppose to be the fastest smartphone right now has 512mb and I believe something like 576mb for the HD version. One the iPhone adds multi-tasking its going to be hard to get away with 256mb.
I wonder how the iPad will do if/when multi-tasking is added and someone is working on something like Keynote with several other applications open.
That's the problem. It certainly IS enough, but 512 wouldn't be hard to put in and would open more possibilities for many apps, especially games.
This is a key point, nobody is saying iPad will not work as it is now. It is just that more RAM would have opened up far more possibilities. Not to mention have a positive impact on Apples own apps.
Quote:
I'm not saying "LOL IPAD HAZ LESS MEMORY THEN MY NEXUS APPLE SUXXXXX", nor that that'll kill it, but it would have been nicer for everyone if it DID have more memory.
Far nicer. More importantly it would put off the unit becoming obsolete to soon. To me the fear is the unit will become obsolete way to fast. Now people may say that happens to all computers and in a sense they would be right. The problem is most computers allow for RAM expansion when needed.
It isn't like the voice of inexperience is speaking here as I started out with Apple products on a Mac Plus, plus have had various other computers over the years. Everyone of them was limited in what it could do by the installed RAM. The expandable machines though had a much longer useful life. The point is iPhone is already demonstrating issues due to the lack of RAM, so either Apple isn't learning here or they simply have plans to compete with iPads at extremely low price points.
Comments
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
On what basis are people saying 256mb isn't enough? We're talking about apps *designed* for the iPad. There is no sense in measuring 256mb on the iPad against anything else, save for another iPad, or the *next* iPad.
I just did some quick and dirty tests. Safari on the iPad and 3GS the the same settings, iPod playing same playlist and Safari opened to same 4 pages the iPhone has about 60MB opened between inactive and free, while the iPad only had 20MB. Unless Apple has found a way to reduce the overhead I'm sure common multitasking is feasible on the iPad.
I still haven't restarted each to see starting levels but it appears that the iPad uses a lot more RAM. Remember, the 3GS is also running the cellular services.
Refined OS and new processor.
I'm not even sure what you are trying to say with this first sentence. As to the OS IPhone is more or less UNIX with a lot of the utility functions missing. Obviously Apple has gone in a different direction when they borrowed the core of Mac OS/X here but the fact remains you have a multitasking OS without a pageing system. That is no virtual memory, so real RAM is very important. More importantly iPhone OS is still growing in size and version 4.0 is due in very short order.
I'm not sure why you bring up the new processor as that has very little if anything to do with this issue. Apple could have used the current iPhones processor and the response would be the same. With out RAM a processor is pretty useless.
What validated evidence do you have that more is needed?
Validated? What year is this? Seriously the relationship between RAM and computer capability has been known for years. You question is seriously sounding like trolling.
In any event the easy question to ask here is this: have you used an iPhone? Apps are being hit with performance problems or failures all the time due to the lack of RAM. On iPad your RAM demands only go up due to the larger higher pixel count screen.
And why just another 256?
That is a good question! In a nut shell because it is feasable technology wise and would more than double RAM available to applications. Don't forget that a good portion of that initial 256MB will never be available to user apps. Some will go to the video function, some to the kernel and some to mandatory background processes. Right now developers are reporting less than 200MB of RAM actually available to programs. This is a step backwards not forwards.
Beyound that an additional 256MB makes apps possible that aren't currently without putting to much of a demand on the hardware. It should be enough to address regressive behaviour seen in many current iPhone apps. Finally more RAM makes life easier for developers thus leading to fewer bugs. Not too that the RAM issue only gets worst if multitasking becomes real. For that matter finding RAM to generate images for printing, if that becomes real, could be an issue for some programs. The list could become very long if you put thought into it.
Dave
I just did some quick and dirty tests. Safari on the iPad and 3GS the the same settings, iPod playing same playlist and Safari opened to same 4 pages the iPhone has about 60MB opened between inactive and free, while the iPad only had 20MB. Unless Apple has found a way to reduce the overhead I'm sure common multitasking is feasible on the iPad.
I still haven't restarted each to see starting levels but it appears that the iPad uses a lot more RAM. Remember, the 3GS is also running the cellular services.
Think about the screen size to start with. The video buffer has to be bigger right of the bat. The new programs often have more and bigger controls compared to their iPhone counterparts. Just taking the demands of the screen into account should be a big clue here that RAM is important on iPad.
This doesn't even address user apps where everything is bigger due again to the larger screen.
I think the A4 is really Just a repackaged Samsung Hummingbird processor.
There is a rumour that Apple has just bought another ARM chip design company - Intrinsity.
Intrinsity apparently designed the Hummingbird for Samsung. The A4 is manufactured by Samsung.
The Hummingbird is the chip that will be powering Samsung's new smart phones, the i9000 S Galaxy and the S8500 Wave, except the Hummingbird in these phones actually has 512mb of RAM.
Perhaps Apple's contribution to the A4 was to ask Samsung to drop half the RAM from the Hummingbird so they could put their logo on it and pretend it was a custom designed processor.
When it gets cold in my house I can turn up the central heating. However, I can also choose to improve the isolation of my house.
And exactly how do you propose to accomplish that? Move your house to North Dakota? "Fibberglas" batting? I imagine there'll never be a contextual content checker to provide us with the necessary "insulation" from inappropriate word choices.
Finally more RAM makes life easier for developers thus leading to fewer bugs.
As an iPhone and now an iPad developer, could you elaborate? This is a new one for me.
Just to add to this comment. After being purchased, it's techincally the owner's property. They did, after all, trade $X amount of dollars for it. If they want to rip it apart and see what's inside, there's no law stopping them from doing that. Apple already got its money from the purchase.
Indeed.
Companies buy competitors products for that purpose all the time. There's certainly nothing illegal in taking it apart.
That's what patents are for; to prevent someone from duplicating your work, even though they know how it works.
Refined OS and new processor. What validated evidence do you have that more is needed? And why just another 256?
Validated evidence? That's something that not needed. It's simply a matter of fitting all the required parts of a program and its resources into the RAM. The more programs running at once, and the larger they are, the more RAM is needed. If you read the articles written about this, you'll see the 128 is considered to be too low, and that phones that have tried with 128 are slow. 256 is considered to be much better, but tight.
It's very likely that the average iPad app will be larger than the average iPhone app. It's also likely that people would be more interested in this feature on the iPad more so than on the iPhone. That would be especially true if Apple allowed more than one app on the desktop at once. Then we have multiple windows to deal with as well. We don't know what, if anything Apple is going to do with multitasking beyond what they already have.
In addition, if we want to get more sophisticated programs such as photo editing apps and the like, more RAM is needed. A photo editing app needs a lot of RAM. If you've got several others running at the same time, you can run into memory limits, unless Apple has worked out a way to use virtual memory for overflow.
I think it's cool. It shows that Apple can deliver great performance with conservative hardware specs.
Think of it this way, if the ipad is as smooth as it is with 256mb now, think how nice a later generation with more ram will be.
But not perhaps as good for unlimited multitasking.
I recall that at the WWDC it was explained that RAM/multitasking was not the issue. Multitasking/battery life was.
Because RAM is easy to add. More wouldn't take up more room. It just costs a bit more, and is likely why Apple is sticking to 256 right now, assuming the reports are correct.
But RAM can slow multitasking. If not enough is present, then things will slow down.
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
On what basis are people saying 256mb isn't enough? We're talking about apps *designed* for the iPad. There is no sense in measuring 256mb on the iPad against anything else, save for another iPad, or the *next* iPad.
That's the problem. It certainly IS enough, but 512 wouldn't be hard to put in and would open more possibilities for many apps, especially games.
I'm not saying "LOL IPAD HAZ LESS MEMORY THEN MY NEXUS APPLE SUXXXXX", nor that that'll kill it, but it would have been nicer for everyone if it DID have more memory.
Because RAM is easy to add. More wouldn't take up more room. It just costs a bit more, and is likely why Apple is sticking to 256 right now, assuming the reports are correct.
But RAM can slow multitasking. If not enough is present, then things will slow down.
What reports?
How could it use less?
Think about the screen size to start with. The video buffer has to be bigger right of the bat. The new programs often have more and bigger controls compared to their iPhone counterparts. Just taking the demands of the screen into account should be a big clue here that RAM is important on iPad.
This doesn't even address user apps where everything is bigger due again to the larger screen.
¿Que? Is that a rhetorical question, because i didn't say the iPad does use less, I just didn't know how much more it used until I ran some tests.
Anyway, after checking the stats immediately after 3 restarts I obtained the following mean average...
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
On what basis are people saying 256mb isn't enough? We're talking about apps *designed* for the iPad. There is no sense in measuring 256mb on the iPad against anything else, save for another iPad, or the *next* iPad.
I questioned it because, first of all, there has been an assumption that Apple would double the amount of RAM in the new iPhone, and so should have doubled it in the iPad.
More RAM is always better. Many times, years ago, my Mac would put a message on the screen when I was doing heavy editing, that I needed to close windows, or programs because I didn't have enough RAM for the System to accomplish its tasks. OS X has eliminated that concern. But if not enough RAM is onboard, programs do slow down, as the OS swaps between the HDD and RAM.
People here might remember why we're moving to 64 bits. Not because it's faster, because it isn't. It's because we can get more RAM.
I've got 16GB in my Mac Pro, and soon I will move to 32 GB because some editing with large images slows down because of the limit.
Look how Apple continually raises the limits on the amount of RAM their machines use. Even an iMac can now take 16GB RAM.
There's a lot of things an iPad can do, but RAM limitations may prevent some of it. If Apple thinks 256 MB is enough, then I hope they're correct.
Apparently 256mb is enough because the iPad seems to run everything very quickly with 256mb.
Yes it does, but as my memory stats indicate there is no additional RAM to enable multitasking sufficiently without optimizing the OS to use the RAM more intelligently. Perhaps that is what they did or perhaps v4.0 won't have multitasking at all as it does seem to be only a niche of Apple's consumer base that even cares about it. It's certainly worth discussing, that's for sure.
Taking all bets onTthursday's preview.
Yeah, the hopes were for 512. IF the 4.0 ver. has third party multitasking, I would suppose Apple thinks 256 can squeeze it in.
Sadly typical for Apple. Give the lowest hardware spec they can get away with at a premium price. Then again with a 17.00 core processor 256mb of ram is expected.
What reports?
You know, it would be easy for you to look this stuff up for yourself, but I'll give you some.
Read the entirety of the articles. Sometimes the sentence is buried inside.
http://www.tipb.com/2010/01/15/ram-d...-multitasking/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/26/e...mostly-a-myth/
http://pocketnow.com/hardware-1/t-mo...-amount-of-ram
http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/10/03...face.concepts/
Sadly typical for Apple. Give the lowest hardware spec they can get away with at a premium price. Then again with a 17.00 core processor 256mb of ram is expected.
Most companies do that as well. Apple does seem to get more out of their hardware than other companies. Look at how poorly the Palm phones do with the same HW as the 3GS.
Most companies do that as well. Apple does seem to get more out of their hardware than other companies. Look at how poorly the Palm phones do with the same HW as the 3GS.
Well the Nexus One which is suppose to be the fastest smartphone right now has 512mb and I believe something like 576mb for the HD version. One the iPhone adds multi-tasking its going to be hard to get away with 256mb.
I wonder how the iPad will do if/when multi-tasking is added and someone is working on something like Keynote with several other applications open.
That's the problem. It certainly IS enough, but 512 wouldn't be hard to put in and would open more possibilities for many apps, especially games.
This is a key point, nobody is saying iPad will not work as it is now. It is just that more RAM would have opened up far more possibilities. Not to mention have a positive impact on Apples own apps.
I'm not saying "LOL IPAD HAZ LESS MEMORY THEN MY NEXUS APPLE SUXXXXX", nor that that'll kill it, but it would have been nicer for everyone if it DID have more memory.
Far nicer. More importantly it would put off the unit becoming obsolete to soon. To me the fear is the unit will become obsolete way to fast. Now people may say that happens to all computers and in a sense they would be right. The problem is most computers allow for RAM expansion when needed.
It isn't like the voice of inexperience is speaking here as I started out with Apple products on a Mac Plus, plus have had various other computers over the years. Everyone of them was limited in what it could do by the installed RAM. The expandable machines though had a much longer useful life. The point is iPhone is already demonstrating issues due to the lack of RAM, so either Apple isn't learning here or they simply have plans to compete with iPads at extremely low price points.
Dave