You tryin' to kill my "ent-y-tainment" reading these bozo's comments an' spoutin' off 'bout stuff they obviously don't have a clue about? Lordy knows: they would do it soooo much better! Ya right!
Just don't "evah" try eating Cheerios? at the same time as reading these Forums... b'-weave me!
PS: Hey Wiz: ya gonna write again how the iPad needs more RAM? It's in every thread.
We get it!... too bad you don't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
It always amazes me how so many people know so much more than Apple about designing iProducts.
After all, it is only logical that some no-name person with zero design experience on a forum like this will know more than Apple's thousands of engineers who have designed some of the leading products in the world.
When you've designed a consumer product that has done 1/100 as well as the iPad, feel free to throw out your comments. Until then, the facts are clear:
1. The iPad 1 was a huge, runaway success
2. The iPad 2 is better in nearly every way (thinner, lighter, cameras, twice the RAM, twice the CPU, much greater graphics performance).
3. While there were undoubtedly some complaints about iPad performance (mostly from people who didn't understand that it isn't a laptop, IMHO), they were rare - and virtually every review talks about near-instantaneous response. My own experience is that I don't recall a time when I felt that it was slow. The iPad 2 will be much better.
The problem is when people jump from that into telling Apple how to design the system - when I'm willing to venture that not a single poster here has the technical credentials for that 'advice' to be useful.
Uh hum, some of us are experienced engineers specialized in design of electronic products. So listen up to my *useful advice*.
The memory thing is a red herring, up to an extent.
Let's face it. Apple has rarely made it a priority to have the absolutely fastest processor and greatest amount of memory in any of their products. In fact, they don't make it easy for users to add their own RAM. But I don't remember too many people choosing Windows strictly because of low RAM.
One notable exception is storage capacity for iPods, as they were one of the first companies to sell large-capacity MP3 players (although that's a different type of memory storage). Why did they do down that path? Because they saw a real demand (although I did not believe it at the end) to store that many songs on a portable device.
The neat thing about Apple is that they make their own software and hardware. So we should trust that they know how much memory their software needs.
Motorola is a pure hardware company. So they have to distinguish themselves by brandishing specs that may or may not be essential.
Finally, there is the cost factor. Apple is *cutting some corners* to keep their price lines where they are. I say that not in a derogatory way. They could have added a better rear camera, more RAM or try to out-brawn others in processing power, USB, micro-USB, SD slot or perhaps add a 128 GB version. But the configuration we see is the best compromise between design, usability, manufacturability and cost. Not just the best compromise for Apple. But clearly the best compromise anyone has yet to conjure up.
WOW, people have no idea how technology works in this thread... I am no expert, but I do have a CS degree...
iOS does NOT store multiple applications in memory, or running simultaneously on the processor. You may ask "Then how does it multi-task". The short answer is "It doesn't" in the common sense of the word.
When you switch to another application, the iPad uses the advantage of a solid state drive. It freezes the application and stores its current state to the SSD. This means, what the user sees is a very fast resume and the APPEARANCE of multitasking. While it is true that applications can request to background process, nearly NO app does this. Even calendar applications simply add events to the system scheduler, rather than multi-tasking. It's a brilliant way to give the consumer what they want while preserving battery life and performance.
That being said, only one application and parts of the OS are actually stored in memory. That means, unless you are running a singular application that needs that memory, MORE does NOT help. Like the poster above me, the system-on-a-chip technology has insanely fast bus speeds. Even if the OS has to retrieve information from the hard-drive, it's an SSD, which is VERY fast compared to a traditional HD.
My point: The pauses, slow down, etc. are due to iOS bugs more so than lack of memory. 512MB of RAM is MORE than enough for the way iOS works. The iPhone 4 uses the same chip and has nearly the resolution of the iPad; it works fine.
That's not entirely true. iOS does not swap ANY memory to disk. When the system needs more memory, first it sends a message to an app telling it to free up any non-critical memory. If the system still needs more memory, then it tells an app to prepare to be killed. This gives the app an opportunity to save its current state.
iOS's multitasking services are only for CPU allocation purposes, not memory management.
The application still has to exist in memory for any background processing to occur, so it cannot be offloaded to the disk. When an application requests a background service, it tells the system that it will need to handle specific tasks while it is in the background. The system then wakes the application up and send it the appropriate messages for whichever backgrounding task is requested.
Every app that is put in the background is fair game for being purged from memory, not swapped out of memory, but completely killed. As of iOS 4, before this happens all apps are woken up and sent a message telling it to prepare to be killed, so that it can save its state if necessary and given a set amount of time to complete that task.
If you travel quite a bit, it is sometimes nice to load up movies on an iDevice and play them back on the flat panel in a hotel room. Granted, 720 works just fine for that purpose.
Yes, that 720 is just fine was my point. Not only is it just fine, but no one would ever be able to tell the difference on a screen that size. (And, if you say you can, you're talking BS.)
Yes... but will it stop the bitching... knowledge, reason and logic seem to have absolutely no effect on the bitch quota...
That's because many people who post here have no interest in knowledge, reason, logic, truth or honesty. They are here to promote competing technology or to specifically disparage Apple, and they aren't about to let reason and facts get in the way.
It does not work fine, at least from my experience and a lot of my friends' experience. Apps shut down randomly, battery drains much faster, some apps would open and then close in 10 secs, etc.
People keep forgetting that when you've 512MB, about 1/4-1/2 of that is already being used by the OS itself and phone/email/iPod. Also I'd willing to bet that iOS5 which is around the corner will increase the amount of ram needed for the OS itself.
It does work fine, I've USED a friend's iPhone 3G and it was fine. It was only slightly slower than my 3GS which I use all the time with only 256MB and a 600MHz CPU.
iOS does not use that much memory, if you knew ANYTHING about how memory management works in iOS, you would KNOW that.
It does work fine, I've USED a friend's iPhone 3G and it was fine. It was only slightly slower than my 3GS which I use all the time with only 256MB and a 600MHz CPU.
I owned the 3G, 3GS and now use the iP4, and having had a full year (nearly so with iP4), I tell you with absolute certainty that the speed improvement with every generation is very noticeable.
Agreed! One of the very few enlightening posts on the subject thus far.
Thanks, I tried to explain it as best I could.
Quote:
That's not entirely true. iOS does not swap ANY memory to disk. When the system needs more memory, first it sends a message to an app telling it to free up any non-critical memory. If the system still needs more memory, then it tells an app to prepare to be killed. This gives the app an opportunity to save its current state.
Actually, this is not right. iOS doesn't notify the app before it kills it - It just kills it right then and there. Apps are supposed to save their states before they are closed out by the user. E.g., the user pressing the home button.
People keep forgetting that when you've 512MB, about 1/4-1/2 of that is already being used by the OS itself and phone/email/iPod. Also I'd willing to bet that iOS5 which is around the corner will increase the amount of ram needed for the OS itself.
Interesting point.
Let's put it to the test. I still have my 3G, 3GS, along with my iP4. The 3G has 128 MB RAM and 3GS has 256 MB. I was able to install and run iOS 4.2 on my 3G (remember 128 MB!!) just fine. And of course, iOS 4.2 runs perfectly well on my 3GS and iP4 (512 MB).
So, when you say iOS uses 1/2 of 512MB, how can it work so well on my 3G and 3GS, neither of which has 512 MB? Hmmm ...
May be I'm completely wrong but wouldn't Android based devices require much more ram because of the need to keep Dalvik VM in ram? While iOS provides native interface. So 1Gb on Android and 512Mb on iOS don't translate directly to how much RAM individual app can use?
Actually, the biggest problem with the PS3 is its lack of video RAM. Porting games to it is a real pain in the ass.
Despite its Cell processor and Blu-Ray drive, the PS3 has often struggles to match the apparently "out-dated" Xbox 360 in terms of graphics. Blu-Ray is capable of holding huge textures but the PS3 can't take advantage. You can have all of the processing power in the world but it's wasted if it's not matched by an equally high amount of RAM.
Right..... and we are talking here about an iPad, for surfing the net and playing some games at 1024x768 with a fraction of textures that the PS3 and XBOX 360 process, and you think the iPad is lacking RAM...
Come on, don't use patronizing arguements, you can do better than that. By your logic, you dont have any right to complain or suggest improvements to any thing someone has bought unless they design it themselves, thats silly.
To dismiss the post you responded to, as patronizing, and possibly silly may*** in itself be patronizing. The prior post is not so much about logic, as you construed, but more a sense of dismay, desperation of what this forum, and many internet forums have become.
It is emblematic of current social discussion -- it is rare to find "talk shows" or community forums, that are guided by civil discourse. And when I state civil discourse, it is not about niceties -- even ridicule or sarcasm has a role sometimes-- but more that there must be a goal to find eventually what is true and factual.
Instead, internet forums have become simply places for "stating contrasting or opposing positions", stating them as loudly and as often as we can. And, see who can have the last say; or both sides simply stop from exhaustion or lack of time, only to state the same opposing positions again, in various guizes in other threads?
Take the time, to read through the posts of the same people in this forum thread for example, and the essence of their posts in other threads. You will find two extremes:
Those who believe everything Apple/Steve Jobs good and superior
Those who find everything Apple/Steve Jobs bad to be bad and inferior. This group also has the mindset that anyone who uses any Apple product must be a "fanboi".
and many others in-between
I am not too surprised about the first kind. After all this is an Apple-centric site.
But, if you examine those of the second group, they hate everything Apple/Steve Jobs so much, and yet, some of them have hundreds, thousands, some 5,000 or more posts. Many have multiple posts in a single thread. Take one poster, and take the time to read their postings in quite a number of different posts over the years.
How many of them can you really claim to be motivated by logic and the goal to search for what is true and factual?
There are a lot of people arguing about how memory management works on iOS (and OS X, also, because they use the same technique), so I thought I would try and outline it as best as possible and my view as a iOS developer...
Thanks for writing this. It seems to confirm my perceptions of the problems I've been seeing with memory and gives me hope that 512 is enough to fix them. The problems I've seen with some of the comic book readers not saving the app state seem likely related to bad coding and a memory leak. The fact that the apps sometimes freeze and crash is also a clue.
Pages not saving it's state seems directly related to the iOS system "giving up" the memory when other memory intensive apps request it, which is pretty much exactly as I said it was and will likely be "fixed" by the fact that the memory will be doubled on the new model.
First off I don't own a tablet as of yet but I was wondering. If you own an ipad why with all the options coming out this year would you buy an ipad2? Please don't get me wrong I have no bias either way. I have an ipod touch 32g and an android phone and I like both.
I just wonder why you would jump on something so fast without checking all the options. I see it the same as anything else, I don't buy for name whether it be a fridge a tv or a car I will always see whats on the horizon before I invest now.
Seems to me that waiting would be prudent in this case if you already own an ipad. Unless you are buying on brand name alone, then I understand. I'm just saying with the explosion in the tablet market right now why jump early ?
I will be getting a tablet in 2012 when I can see all the players cards.
ps. if my grammar is a problem get over it ! I didn't like my English teacher...lol
Not being technical from an IT or C/S-Eng perspective...I have a feeling that the RAM debate between 512GB on an iPad2 and 1GB on a XOOM (or other Android tablet devices) can be best described by the following interview...
?The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven. Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Eleven. Exactly. One louder.?
With all this talk about 512 MB, does anyone know if this iPad 2 thingie comes with dedicated RAM for graphics and video?
Jobs talked about boosting graphics processing 9X. They also showed Photo Booth with 9 videos *streaming*. I wonder if there is dedicated VRAM or frame buffer. After all, it would be a natural evolution of smartphone/tablet design to follow the path of PCs.
I owned the 3G, 3GS and now use the iP4, and having had a full year (nearly so with iP4), I tell you with absolute certainty that the speed improvement with every generation is very noticeable.
Never said there wasn't a noticeable speed improvement, just said the 3G works fine with iOS 4. It doesn't multitask, but it is perfectly capable of running apps. I used an original iPhone for two years, it had iOS 3 on it and ran fine as well. I definitely noticed a speed up when I moved to the 3GS, but that didn't render my original iPhone completely unusable.
The problem some people are having is trying to gauge the usability of a device based off a metric (RAM) that doesn't really apply across operating systems and platforms. Each operating system handles memory management differently. Apple completely redesigned OS X memory management to handle very low memory limitations. iOS overhead is almost half of Android, which means it leaves more memory for running apps. This is why the original Android phone (the G1) debuted with 192 MB, because it couldn't fit in 128 MB of memory and why all Android 3.0 devices are being released with 1GB RAM.
3+ years on, not only can iOS still fit in 128 MB of memory, it has plenty of room for running apps. And as someone else mentioned, I'm sure iOS 5 will up the minimum requirements to 256 MB. It's only natural.
There are a lot of people arguing about how memory management works on iOS (and OS X, also, because they use the same technique), so I thought I would try and outline it as best as possible and my view as a iOS developer
As memory get used, it's divided into categories: Active Memory, memory currently being used by an application; Inactive Memory, memory not currently being used by an application and is therefore inactive, this memory is also paged to disk; Wired Memory, memory being used by iOS or other frameworks called by an app; Free Memory, memory not used by the application or iOS, virtually free of use.
When you launch an app, it gathers memory from either the free memory pool OR the inactive memory pool (which I'll describe in a little) and pulls it into the active memory pool for itself.
Whenever you leave a program (assuming that it does not have any multitasking-frameworks written in it) iOS automatically suspends it's active memory, shoving it into the inactive memory pool.
Inactive memory is the memory of other applications that have been previously opened then closed, or chunks of memory that an application is not actively using. This is why applications are faster to launch after you've previously opened them and Apple was easily able to add the "quickly resuming applications where you left off"-style multitasking to apps without requiring developers to rewrite anything; it was derived directly from OS X's memory management techniques. The difference between iOS and OS X, however, is that instead of paging inactive memory to disk whenever an app needs more than it currently has in it's own section of inactive memory and the available free memory, iOS just removes the oldest inactive memory (without saving it to disk), and gives what is needed to the requesting App and giving the rest back to the free memory pool.
To prevent this killing of apps too often, iOS uses a memory management technique (which is built into all apps, you're forced to use memory management instead of garbage collecting in iOS) for all of its apps. Basically, memory management works like this: App needs 10kb of memory, so it asks iOS for 10kb of memory, and iOS serves it 10kb of memory. When the App is done with the 10kb of memory, it HAS TO MANUALLY release the memory back to iOS, which then controls that memory. If this is done incorrectly, memory leaks spring, the app begins to DEVOUR memory, iOS is unhappy and kills the app. Because of this method, iOS apps rarely take up more than 50-75mb (Even for the iPad or OS X!). Don't get me wrong, there are intensive apps that take up more (like Safari), but that is very rare. Apple is strict about this in app creation.
That said, 512mb of memory is way more than enough, even for the iPad. While you'll notice a slight change in memory intensive applications such as Safari (which is very memory intensive because it decompresses Javascript, renders HTML, and caches images to memory) or iBooks (when rendering large PDF's and images), the biggest benefit will be multitasking, as more applications can be stored in the memory without having to remove them.
Currently, 256mb of memory is more than enough to run most any application (aside from running into problems with a few specific problems such as Safari with multiple tabs [which, Safari kills large and older tabs on its own when iOS tells it that it needs to reserve memory, often when loading other significantly large tabs]).
1gb of RAM would be a waste of resources and money in iOS land, for the time being.
I do not know the technology behind, but I never found the Macs I have used to be inadequate for my purpose, even when I used them for years, even when I have multiple applications (Pages, iPhoto, Numbers, Fetch, Editors, Previews, etc.), and several dozens of browser windows open (sometimes using Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Netscape, Camino when I am checking layouts) with a gazillion of files open.
The first time I used an iPad, I thought it may not load my site because it lags a few seconds in my latest MacBookPro, but it loaded even much faster. Even with the smaller screen size (in portrait position), I was surprised how the resized whole page was "clear" and quite readable. There were so many things I found surprising for coming from the first generation iPad.
The other thing that I was amazed with are the "diskspace" sizes of the applications -- they seem to be much less space usage than what I would have expected.
One thing I am curious about, there used to be a function(?) called "Rebuild" I think in pre-OSX Macs. If memory serves me, it was supposed to deal with rebuilding more efficient storage of the contents of a file in the memory storage. This function is no longer in OSX?
Comments
You tryin' to kill my "ent-y-tainment" reading these bozo's comments an' spoutin' off 'bout stuff they obviously don't have a clue about? Lordy knows: they would do it soooo much better! Ya right!
Just don't "evah" try eating Cheerios? at the same time as reading these Forums... b'-weave me!
PS: Hey Wiz: ya gonna write again how the iPad needs more RAM? It's in every thread.
We get it!... too bad you don't.
It always amazes me how so many people know so much more than Apple about designing iProducts.
After all, it is only logical that some no-name person with zero design experience on a forum like this will know more than Apple's thousands of engineers who have designed some of the leading products in the world.
When you've designed a consumer product that has done 1/100 as well as the iPad, feel free to throw out your comments. Until then, the facts are clear:
1. The iPad 1 was a huge, runaway success
2. The iPad 2 is better in nearly every way (thinner, lighter, cameras, twice the RAM, twice the CPU, much greater graphics performance).
3. While there were undoubtedly some complaints about iPad performance (mostly from people who didn't understand that it isn't a laptop, IMHO), they were rare - and virtually every review talks about near-instantaneous response. My own experience is that I don't recall a time when I felt that it was slow. The iPad 2 will be much better.
Stop the whining, please.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Agreed! One of the very few enlightening posts on the subject thus far.
Agreed! One of the very few enlightening posts on the subject thus far.
Yes... but will it stop the bitching... knowledge, reason and logic seem to have absolutely no effect on the bitch quota...
That's not even close to what I said.
The problem is when people jump from that into telling Apple how to design the system - when I'm willing to venture that not a single poster here has the technical credentials for that 'advice' to be useful.
Uh hum, some of us are experienced engineers specialized in design of electronic products. So listen up to my *useful advice*.
The memory thing is a red herring, up to an extent.
Let's face it. Apple has rarely made it a priority to have the absolutely fastest processor and greatest amount of memory in any of their products. In fact, they don't make it easy for users to add their own RAM. But I don't remember too many people choosing Windows strictly because of low RAM.
One notable exception is storage capacity for iPods, as they were one of the first companies to sell large-capacity MP3 players (although that's a different type of memory storage). Why did they do down that path? Because they saw a real demand (although I did not believe it at the end) to store that many songs on a portable device.
The neat thing about Apple is that they make their own software and hardware. So we should trust that they know how much memory their software needs.
Motorola is a pure hardware company. So they have to distinguish themselves by brandishing specs that may or may not be essential.
Finally, there is the cost factor. Apple is *cutting some corners* to keep their price lines where they are. I say that not in a derogatory way. They could have added a better rear camera, more RAM or try to out-brawn others in processing power, USB, micro-USB, SD slot or perhaps add a 128 GB version. But the configuration we see is the best compromise between design, usability, manufacturability and cost. Not just the best compromise for Apple. But clearly the best compromise anyone has yet to conjure up.
WOW, people have no idea how technology works in this thread... I am no expert, but I do have a CS degree...
iOS does NOT store multiple applications in memory, or running simultaneously on the processor. You may ask "Then how does it multi-task". The short answer is "It doesn't" in the common sense of the word.
When you switch to another application, the iPad uses the advantage of a solid state drive. It freezes the application and stores its current state to the SSD. This means, what the user sees is a very fast resume and the APPEARANCE of multitasking. While it is true that applications can request to background process, nearly NO app does this. Even calendar applications simply add events to the system scheduler, rather than multi-tasking. It's a brilliant way to give the consumer what they want while preserving battery life and performance.
That being said, only one application and parts of the OS are actually stored in memory. That means, unless you are running a singular application that needs that memory, MORE does NOT help. Like the poster above me, the system-on-a-chip technology has insanely fast bus speeds. Even if the OS has to retrieve information from the hard-drive, it's an SSD, which is VERY fast compared to a traditional HD.
My point: The pauses, slow down, etc. are due to iOS bugs more so than lack of memory. 512MB of RAM is MORE than enough for the way iOS works. The iPhone 4 uses the same chip and has nearly the resolution of the iPad; it works fine.
That's not entirely true. iOS does not swap ANY memory to disk. When the system needs more memory, first it sends a message to an app telling it to free up any non-critical memory. If the system still needs more memory, then it tells an app to prepare to be killed. This gives the app an opportunity to save its current state.
iOS's multitasking services are only for CPU allocation purposes, not memory management.
The application still has to exist in memory for any background processing to occur, so it cannot be offloaded to the disk. When an application requests a background service, it tells the system that it will need to handle specific tasks while it is in the background. The system then wakes the application up and send it the appropriate messages for whichever backgrounding task is requested.
Every app that is put in the background is fair game for being purged from memory, not swapped out of memory, but completely killed. As of iOS 4, before this happens all apps are woken up and sent a message telling it to prepare to be killed, so that it can save its state if necessary and given a set amount of time to complete that task.
If you travel quite a bit, it is sometimes nice to load up movies on an iDevice and play them back on the flat panel in a hotel room. Granted, 720 works just fine for that purpose.
Yes, that 720 is just fine was my point. Not only is it just fine, but no one would ever be able to tell the difference on a screen that size. (And, if you say you can, you're talking BS.)
Yes... but will it stop the bitching... knowledge, reason and logic seem to have absolutely no effect on the bitch quota...
That's because many people who post here have no interest in knowledge, reason, logic, truth or honesty. They are here to promote competing technology or to specifically disparage Apple, and they aren't about to let reason and facts get in the way.
It does not work fine, at least from my experience and a lot of my friends' experience. Apps shut down randomly, battery drains much faster, some apps would open and then close in 10 secs, etc.
People keep forgetting that when you've 512MB, about 1/4-1/2 of that is already being used by the OS itself and phone/email/iPod. Also I'd willing to bet that iOS5 which is around the corner will increase the amount of ram needed for the OS itself.
It does work fine, I've USED a friend's iPhone 3G and it was fine. It was only slightly slower than my 3GS which I use all the time with only 256MB and a 600MHz CPU.
iOS does not use that much memory, if you knew ANYTHING about how memory management works in iOS, you would KNOW that.
It does work fine, I've USED a friend's iPhone 3G and it was fine. It was only slightly slower than my 3GS which I use all the time with only 256MB and a 600MHz CPU.
I owned the 3G, 3GS and now use the iP4, and having had a full year (nearly so with iP4), I tell you with absolute certainty that the speed improvement with every generation is very noticeable.
Agreed! One of the very few enlightening posts on the subject thus far.
Thanks, I tried to explain it as best I could.
That's not entirely true. iOS does not swap ANY memory to disk. When the system needs more memory, first it sends a message to an app telling it to free up any non-critical memory. If the system still needs more memory, then it tells an app to prepare to be killed. This gives the app an opportunity to save its current state.
Actually, this is not right. iOS doesn't notify the app before it kills it - It just kills it right then and there. Apps are supposed to save their states before they are closed out by the user. E.g., the user pressing the home button.
People keep forgetting that when you've 512MB, about 1/4-1/2 of that is already being used by the OS itself and phone/email/iPod. Also I'd willing to bet that iOS5 which is around the corner will increase the amount of ram needed for the OS itself.
Interesting point.
Let's put it to the test. I still have my 3G, 3GS, along with my iP4. The 3G has 128 MB RAM and 3GS has 256 MB. I was able to install and run iOS 4.2 on my 3G (remember 128 MB!!) just fine. And of course, iOS 4.2 runs perfectly well on my 3GS and iP4 (512 MB).
So, when you say iOS uses 1/2 of 512MB, how can it work so well on my 3G and 3GS, neither of which has 512 MB? Hmmm ...
Actually, the biggest problem with the PS3 is its lack of video RAM. Porting games to it is a real pain in the ass.
Despite its Cell processor and Blu-Ray drive, the PS3 has often struggles to match the apparently "out-dated" Xbox 360 in terms of graphics. Blu-Ray is capable of holding huge textures but the PS3 can't take advantage. You can have all of the processing power in the world but it's wasted if it's not matched by an equally high amount of RAM.
Right..... and we are talking here about an iPad, for surfing the net and playing some games at 1024x768 with a fraction of textures that the PS3 and XBOX 360 process, and you think the iPad is lacking RAM...
You are delusional....
Rant- skip buy if you are anti-rant.
Come on, don't use patronizing arguements, you can do better than that. By your logic, you dont have any right to complain or suggest improvements to any thing someone has bought unless they design it themselves, thats silly.
To dismiss the post you responded to, as patronizing, and possibly silly may*** in itself be patronizing. The prior post is not so much about logic, as you construed, but more a sense of dismay, desperation of what this forum, and many internet forums have become.
It is emblematic of current social discussion -- it is rare to find "talk shows" or community forums, that are guided by civil discourse. And when I state civil discourse, it is not about niceties -- even ridicule or sarcasm has a role sometimes-- but more that there must be a goal to find eventually what is true and factual.
Instead, internet forums have become simply places for "stating contrasting or opposing positions", stating them as loudly and as often as we can. And, see who can have the last say; or both sides simply stop from exhaustion or lack of time, only to state the same opposing positions again, in various guizes in other threads?
Take the time, to read through the posts of the same people in this forum thread for example, and the essence of their posts in other threads. You will find two extremes:
- Those who believe everything Apple/Steve Jobs good and superior
- Those who find everything Apple/Steve Jobs bad to be bad and inferior. This group also has the mindset that anyone who uses any Apple product must be a "fanboi".
and many others in-betweenI am not too surprised about the first kind. After all this is an Apple-centric site.
But, if you examine those of the second group, they hate everything Apple/Steve Jobs so much, and yet, some of them have hundreds, thousands, some 5,000 or more posts. Many have multiple posts in a single thread. Take one poster, and take the time to read their postings in quite a number of different posts over the years.
How many of them can you really claim to be motivated by logic and the goal to search for what is true and factual?
I will respond to your other points separately.
CGC
*** the operative term is "may"
There are a lot of people arguing about how memory management works on iOS (and OS X, also, because they use the same technique), so I thought I would try and outline it as best as possible and my view as a iOS developer...
Thanks for writing this. It seems to confirm my perceptions of the problems I've been seeing with memory and gives me hope that 512 is enough to fix them. The problems I've seen with some of the comic book readers not saving the app state seem likely related to bad coding and a memory leak. The fact that the apps sometimes freeze and crash is also a clue.
Pages not saving it's state seems directly related to the iOS system "giving up" the memory when other memory intensive apps request it, which is pretty much exactly as I said it was and will likely be "fixed" by the fact that the memory will be doubled on the new model.
I just wonder why you would jump on something so fast without checking all the options. I see it the same as anything else, I don't buy for name whether it be a fridge a tv or a car I will always see whats on the horizon before I invest now.
Seems to me that waiting would be prudent in this case if you already own an ipad. Unless you are buying on brand name alone, then I understand. I'm just saying with the explosion in the tablet market right now why jump early ?
I will be getting a tablet in 2012 when I can see all the players cards.
ps. if my grammar is a problem get over it ! I didn't like my English teacher...lol
?The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven. Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Eleven. Exactly. One louder.?
-Nigel Tufnel
Jobs talked about boosting graphics processing 9X. They also showed Photo Booth with 9 videos *streaming*. I wonder if there is dedicated VRAM or frame buffer. After all, it would be a natural evolution of smartphone/tablet design to follow the path of PCs.
I owned the 3G, 3GS and now use the iP4, and having had a full year (nearly so with iP4), I tell you with absolute certainty that the speed improvement with every generation is very noticeable.
Never said there wasn't a noticeable speed improvement, just said the 3G works fine with iOS 4. It doesn't multitask, but it is perfectly capable of running apps. I used an original iPhone for two years, it had iOS 3 on it and ran fine as well. I definitely noticed a speed up when I moved to the 3GS, but that didn't render my original iPhone completely unusable.
The problem some people are having is trying to gauge the usability of a device based off a metric (RAM) that doesn't really apply across operating systems and platforms. Each operating system handles memory management differently. Apple completely redesigned OS X memory management to handle very low memory limitations. iOS overhead is almost half of Android, which means it leaves more memory for running apps. This is why the original Android phone (the G1) debuted with 192 MB, because it couldn't fit in 128 MB of memory and why all Android 3.0 devices are being released with 1GB RAM.
3+ years on, not only can iOS still fit in 128 MB of memory, it has plenty of room for running apps. And as someone else mentioned, I'm sure iOS 5 will up the minimum requirements to 256 MB. It's only natural.
There are a lot of people arguing about how memory management works on iOS (and OS X, also, because they use the same technique), so I thought I would try and outline it as best as possible and my view as a iOS developer
As memory get used, it's divided into categories: Active Memory, memory currently being used by an application; Inactive Memory, memory not currently being used by an application and is therefore inactive, this memory is also paged to disk; Wired Memory, memory being used by iOS or other frameworks called by an app; Free Memory, memory not used by the application or iOS, virtually free of use.
When you launch an app, it gathers memory from either the free memory pool OR the inactive memory pool (which I'll describe in a little) and pulls it into the active memory pool for itself.
Whenever you leave a program (assuming that it does not have any multitasking-frameworks written in it) iOS automatically suspends it's active memory, shoving it into the inactive memory pool.
Inactive memory is the memory of other applications that have been previously opened then closed, or chunks of memory that an application is not actively using. This is why applications are faster to launch after you've previously opened them and Apple was easily able to add the "quickly resuming applications where you left off"-style multitasking to apps without requiring developers to rewrite anything; it was derived directly from OS X's memory management techniques. The difference between iOS and OS X, however, is that instead of paging inactive memory to disk whenever an app needs more than it currently has in it's own section of inactive memory and the available free memory, iOS just removes the oldest inactive memory (without saving it to disk), and gives what is needed to the requesting App and giving the rest back to the free memory pool.
To prevent this killing of apps too often, iOS uses a memory management technique (which is built into all apps, you're forced to use memory management instead of garbage collecting in iOS) for all of its apps. Basically, memory management works like this: App needs 10kb of memory, so it asks iOS for 10kb of memory, and iOS serves it 10kb of memory. When the App is done with the 10kb of memory, it HAS TO MANUALLY release the memory back to iOS, which then controls that memory. If this is done incorrectly, memory leaks spring, the app begins to DEVOUR memory, iOS is unhappy and kills the app. Because of this method, iOS apps rarely take up more than 50-75mb (Even for the iPad or OS X!). Don't get me wrong, there are intensive apps that take up more (like Safari), but that is very rare. Apple is strict about this in app creation.
That said, 512mb of memory is way more than enough, even for the iPad. While you'll notice a slight change in memory intensive applications such as Safari (which is very memory intensive because it decompresses Javascript, renders HTML, and caches images to memory) or iBooks (when rendering large PDF's and images), the biggest benefit will be multitasking, as more applications can be stored in the memory without having to remove them.
Currently, 256mb of memory is more than enough to run most any application (aside from running into problems with a few specific problems such as Safari with multiple tabs [which, Safari kills large and older tabs on its own when iOS tells it that it needs to reserve memory, often when loading other significantly large tabs]).
1gb of RAM would be a waste of resources and money in iOS land, for the time being.
I do not know the technology behind, but I never found the Macs I have used to be inadequate for my purpose, even when I used them for years, even when I have multiple applications (Pages, iPhoto, Numbers, Fetch, Editors, Previews, etc.), and several dozens of browser windows open (sometimes using Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Netscape, Camino when I am checking layouts) with a gazillion of files open.
The first time I used an iPad, I thought it may not load my site because it lags a few seconds in my latest MacBookPro, but it loaded even much faster. Even with the smaller screen size (in portrait position), I was surprised how the resized whole page was "clear" and quite readable. There were so many things I found surprising for coming from the first generation iPad.
The other thing that I was amazed with are the "diskspace" sizes of the applications -- they seem to be much less space usage than what I would have expected.
One thing I am curious about, there used to be a function(?) called "Rebuild" I think in pre-OSX Macs. If memory serves me, it was supposed to deal with rebuilding more efficient storage of the contents of a file in the memory storage. This function is no longer in OSX?
CGC