Some points about specs in general and RAM in particular.
This can be summed up quite eloquently:
RAM -- "Too much is never enough" (first heard describing N'Walins' cooking.
Specs in general -- "It's not the meat, it's the motion" (first heard in high school - lo, those many years ago)
IMO, individual specs are not as important as how easily they can be used, in concert, to accomplish what you want to do -- said with less vulgarity: it's not what you've got, rather how you [can] use it.
From my POV, RAM is important because it is, likely, the single spec that allows you to do things better and allows you to do things that aren't otherwise practical.
Consider: The reason those Photoshoppers and Video Editors and Logic users have 4 GB plus RAM -- is because they are dealing with large files in RAM. If they use less RAM, portions of the files are constantly being paged out and paged in to HDD. At some point, the paging uses so much resource that the app becomes impractical.
It is interesting that iMovie was made available on the iP4 but not the iPad 1. AFAICT, the only difference affecting iMovie is that iP4 has 512 MB RAM and iPad 1 has 256 MB RAM -- likely, 256 MB RAM is below the iMovie baseline requirement.
Now, RAM is important, bur it is only one spec.
I am interested in the specs of the GPU -- how many cores; speed; OpenCL capable.
Here's why. Say the GPU has 2 fast cores that are capable of supporting OpenCL.
If the iOS and SDK expose this, then any app can parcel out its work across 2 CPU cores and 2 GPU cores -- gaining capability and performance (GPU cores do some things much faster than CPU cores).
Because the iPad 2 runs iMovie, I suspect it has (at least) 512 GB RAM.
If the iPad 2 supports OpenCL (and has enough RAM) -- I believe it is capable (in the future) of running some rewritten Pro or Prosumer apps: Final Cut, Color, Motion, Logic, etc.
Who cares?
If you watch the keynote video where they demo iMovie and GarageBand, you are seeing the first baby steps of what multitouch can do for A/V editing -- pinching time lines, flicking cuts and clips...
The iPad 2 could be used stand-alone and/or as graphics tablet/control surface attached to a Mac...
You saw the GarageBand demo of pulling organ stops, banging drums or plucking guitar strings... the iPad 2 could bring those capabilities to the Mac Pro apps
This could, easily, be the start of a revolution of A/V editing, CAD, etc. at all levels: from hobbyist to Pro.
Edit: Just to be sure... A/V editing is kind of the "poster boy" app -- but there are implications in science, medicine, defense, etc. -- anywhere there is a need/advantage to manipulate high-resolution A/V files.
Uh, they trumpet the new "dual core 1GHz" A5 chip on the front page of the iPad site, and list basically all of the tech specs under "Tech Specs", except RAM - probably because it's the one area from a hardware standpoint that another device (ie Xoom) clearly outdoes it.
Its likely the iPad can make better use of RAM and doesn't need 1GB like the Xoom. More isn't always better.
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Plus the fact that Xoom can both play and output 1080p content while the iPad can digitally output 1080p but can only actually play 720p (cleverly presented by Apple, i must say).
What really is the point of playing 1920x1080 on a 1280x800 screen?
Would you agree with the statement that iPad 1 has about 120MB of RAM available for the user app? This under ideal conditions and does vary some with iOS version.
You see if you don't accept that number then you can't really judge iPad against other iOS devices. Frankly this is the only place I care to compare iPad as I'm not interested in Android or other devices.
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Originally Posted by Nobodyy
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
Err we are at odds right off the bat. First Mac OS/X supports paging for user data which dramatically alters the usage of RAM.
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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.
I'm not sure this is well stated, iOS does not page user data memory. There is no virtual memory for user data. This is actually very important because it it means RAM space is very valuable in iOS devices as nothing gets paged out to a backing store.
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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;
I think you are having issues explaining things here.
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it was derived directly from OS X's memory management techniques.
Well yeah iOS is basically the core of Mac OS/X with out the virtual memory support and a different scheduler. Of course people even have a hardtime wrapping their heads around this.
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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.
Yes IF there is enough RAM in the first place. If not the app itself has to manage it's memory and possibly fails to get the memory it needs.
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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!).
nope! OS/X apps can use a lot of memory[/quote] 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.
[/quote]
in the context of iOS apps Apple has been strict about program size but the why is the big thing here. The why is that iPad 1 has far to little memory available to it. That is there is somewhere around 120MB free to apps for code and data. Data is not paged so the platform is extremely tight RAM wise. These issues put severe limits on what apps are capable of doing. Or in otherwords developers can only go so far before hitting walls imposed by Apple.
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That said, 512mb of memory is way more than enough, even for the iPad.
512MB is a significant improvement and nothing more. It may or may not be enough for apps that are non trivial. In any event you seem to imply that 512MB is enough for OS/X apps too, this has me questioning your sanity as there are all sorts of Mac apps that actively use far more RAM.
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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.
The biggest benefit is in having apps successfully handle the task at hand without crashing. In the realm of iOS, on the iPad, this is one of the biggest benefits of more RAM. For most users iPad is a one app at a time machine, when it fails to handle apps like that it is pretty bad, especially if the problem is the lack of RAM.
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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]).
Your logic escapes me here. 256MB only works because Apple constrains what developers can develop for the machine. You apparently know this as you alluded to the app store requirements above but yet you contend that 256 MB of RAM is enough (really less than 120MB). Do you not see where your logic fails? IPad 1's 256MB has only worked because Apple makes sure that more demanding apps never make it to app store.
To look at it another way a DOS machine might have run fine with 32MB of RAM as long as you avoided software that demanded more RAM. If that fancy new DOS based word processor required 64MB of RAM you are out of luck.
In any event the problem with RAM on iOS devices can be itemized below.
1. Some apps simply need a larger foot print. That is more RAM. Safari is a prime example here but there are others.
2. More RAM makes multitasking more useful.
3. Apple restricts apps in a way that limits capability. This is apparently directly related to the lack of RAM in the device. This developers have not been able to ship everything that they might want to.
4. The lack of RAM results in many page reloads for Safari and other apps. This can lead to excessive data usage and thus additional expenses.
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1gb of RAM would be a waste of resources and money in iOS land, for the time being.
Well this last statement is highly debatable. The problem I have is that it appears as if Apple is intentionally limiting iPads capability. On the other hand 512MZb should go a very long ways to making iPad a better performing machine. Since the SoC are a stack of processor and RAM chips there are possible technical limits on just how much RAMmshould be in iPad 2. All I know is staying at 256MB is not acceptable.
In the end here it is pretty obvious that you have a better understanding of iOS than some here. However you seem to waltz right over the fact that iPad apps work fairly well simply because of Apple putting real constraints upon what an app can do. Basically any sort of computer hardware design can be made to work if you have that much control over the software running on it. I look forward to some real testing on these machines as that should clear up just what are the advantages of the new hardware in iPad 2.
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?
Well I dont own the iPad 1 but I'll get the iPad 2 for the following reasons:
- Battery Life
- Weight/Portability
- fast and responsive OS
- Thousands of Apps and great collection's of magazines and books
I need something to take with me while traveling. This product meets all my expectations. I can surf the web, watch a movie, play some games, read a book, etc
I really dont care for the android tablets, on which I need to spend hours customizing it and tweaking it, and than brag how customizable is.
I need a simple device that does the above mentioned things well and works perfect out of the box.
If I need to do some hardcore design or some decoding I have my quad core SLI desktop. For casual surfing, reading and playing I can lay on my couch, or sit on my balcony and play with my iPad, not worrying that I have to recharge it in an hour or two.
This isn't true either. Apple's competitors always attempt to trumpet betters hardware specs than Apple's products. The vast majority of people have little to no understanding of any of that stuff means. And have shown to not really care.
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Originally Posted by kpluck
I don't know that the iPad 2 is in need of more than 512MB of RAM from a usability stand point. It may work perfectly fine with just 512MB. However, from a marketing stand point, not having a 1GB of RAM is a huge mistake.
People should look more at how it performs and not at the numbers.
Agreed, and it performs poorly when many apps are open together, same as the 3GS phone, which is entirely down to RAM. I agree with a previous poster who said that when the next iOS is released, it could be an issue. iPhone 4 runs a lot smoother than the iPad in many scenarios (I know, I have both).
Historically Apple has always been stingy with RAM - I remember my 2006 MacBook shipped with 512MB as standard, when most systems were shipping with 1GB or more. Even Tiger 'recommended' 1GB of RAM at that time.
Having said that, the iPad does a lot better with its 256MB than the PlayBook seems to do with a gig. RAM isn't everything, but if iOS 5 makes the same leap iOS 4 did, the original iPad will be left behind after less than 18 months, and even the new iPad might struggle, which is not acceptable given this could be resolved for less than the price of an iTunes Movie.
In any event you seem to imply that 512MB is enough for OS/X apps too, this has me questioning your sanity as there are all sorts of Mac apps that actively use far more RAM.
What makes me question your sanity is the fact that you are comparing OS/X with iOS.
There are many reasons Apple is keeping their system closed. Developers are not limitted byt he amount of the RAM but by the overall hardware of the device.
I dont see any ground braking applications for the 1GB Android devices, do you?
512MB of RAM is more than enough for iPad 2.
As CPU, memory, and battery capacity improve, so will the applications created for these devices. As simple as that...
You can wait for 10 years and get something more advanced or you can purchase a product that makes you happy today and enjoy it. What you need to do though is fix your expectations. Tablets are not PCs, and when they made tablet/laptops, they barely sold any... ask HP and Toshiba.
Yes I remember those days. Often was the case Apple was shipping less RAM but on a faster bus than most everyone else. So the RAM that Apple was using was more expensive than what most everyone else was using.
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Originally Posted by Zoolook
Historically Apple has always been stingy with RAM - I remember my 2006 MacBook shipped with 512MB as standard, when most systems were shipping with 1GB or more. Even Tiger 'recommended' 1GB of RAM at that time.
If there was a large market for people who need more ram then Apple would supply the product... but why bother when you might only sell 1000 extra units.
Buy a fuckin' Xoon and quit bitching...
Xoom.
The Xoon is the sex toy you currently have shoved up your ass.
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 ...
1) That's partially because the iOS4 version you installed on your 3G is different from the other 2 phones, with a lot of stuffs disabled.
2) And again, I could see some people claiming that their iphone 3G ran iOS4 just fine, but there's also a lot of people (myself and my friend included) that experienced problems with it because of memory issues. That tells me when some people say 'just fine', or 'not fine', it's probably subjective, but I did list the problems myself and my friends had on the iphone 3G (apps shut down, battery drains fast, phone shut down randomly, lags, etc).
I see many comparisons or allusions to RAM in Xoom, WebOS or other devices. Frankly guys they have nothing to do with the discussion. Rather what is important is the need to get beyond 256MB of RAM in the iPad. This to deliver a more acceptable user experience and to allow for more powerful apps. It really doesn't matter what Xoom has, what is important is a more capable iPad.
Sadly based on some of the posts here I don't think a lot of people on the forum today get it. More RAM is a big deal for every user.
Never said there wasn't a noticeable speed improvement
Actually, you wrote precisely that. But that's ok. No need for me to be nitpicky since we are not in serious disagreement.
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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.
Well, since iOS 4.3 supports 3GS and up but not 3G, we can say that the minimum requirement is now 256 MB.
It can only play 720p video... when mirroring the iPad's screen. There are no hardware limitations preventing the iPad from outputting to 1080p. 9x the GPU power comparing to the original iPad (which produced graphics akin to the original Xbox) also speaks volumes.
As I said it in another thread, the hardware is way ahead of software for the ipad2 --- which I think is showing that Apple is genuinely worried about the zillion android tablet models out there. I think that Apple drop a bunch of software features because they want to launch early (even though the hardware is capable of doing more).
Also Apple never demo'ed any third party apps that took advantage of the increased hardware specs. This is a very rush launch.
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.
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Originally Posted by NasserAE
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Couldn't have said it better myself.
I would only add one thing to the non-opinion parts above. iOS does not do the paging to the SSD (backing store) that the desktop OS X does. The rest of the memory subsystems are the same. I'm not sure what the full reasoning for this is, but they do make that clear in the documentation. [Edit: now I see wizard69 mentions this up a few posts too. I disagree with him on iOS having Virtual Memory though -- it most definitely does, that's what delivers the full 32-bit address space. iOS just doesn't deliver a backing store for the VM to use, a subtle but important distinction when we get to the point of splitting hairs.]
This is the main reason Prof Peabody sees a pseudo last-state sometimes rather than the true last-state all the time. if iOS paged there would be no reason for the reload from a file version of pseudo state restoration. (pseudo state is my wording, not Apple's).
Is 512MB enough? There is never enough memory if you are a developer, by definition. I wouldn't compare the 512MB to 1GB on a Xoom very directly though. That Xoom is running a robust JVM behind everything, and that means it is running a copy of that JVM in every process. That is a verified Metric Shitload of memory requirement that the app developers can never use.
You should know, you lovingly shoved it up there... you dirty boy...
Xoon... pronounced, Zune... a much more fitting name for Moto's offering.
I was just washing my hands...lol. I was actually just joking with you. I have to say its amazing to me that people simply don't understand how all this works.
RAM is like having gas in your car. A car doesn't go any faster with a half tank of gas compared to a full tank of gas. As long as there is enough RAM to run the application and OS more doesn't make anything faster.
The fact that iOS is not a resource hog I would say at this point 512MB should be just fine.
I would like to see Apple add more RAM at some point because I would like to see more high level games for the iPad. Something like RAGE that got demo on the iPhone would certainly benefit from added RAM on the iPad.
Comments
Lottsa' good posts here... some not so good.
Some points about specs in general and RAM in particular.
This can be summed up quite eloquently:
RAM -- "Too much is never enough" (first heard describing N'Walins' cooking.
Specs in general -- "It's not the meat, it's the motion" (first heard in high school - lo, those many years ago)
IMO, individual specs are not as important as how easily they can be used, in concert, to accomplish what you want to do -- said with less vulgarity: it's not what you've got, rather how you [can] use it.
From my POV, RAM is important because it is, likely, the single spec that allows you to do things better and allows you to do things that aren't otherwise practical.
Consider: The reason those Photoshoppers and Video Editors and Logic users have 4 GB plus RAM -- is because they are dealing with large files in RAM. If they use less RAM, portions of the files are constantly being paged out and paged in to HDD. At some point, the paging uses so much resource that the app becomes impractical.
It is interesting that iMovie was made available on the iP4 but not the iPad 1. AFAICT, the only difference affecting iMovie is that iP4 has 512 MB RAM and iPad 1 has 256 MB RAM -- likely, 256 MB RAM is below the iMovie baseline requirement.
Now, RAM is important, bur it is only one spec.
I am interested in the specs of the GPU -- how many cores; speed; OpenCL capable.
Here's why. Say the GPU has 2 fast cores that are capable of supporting OpenCL.
If the iOS and SDK expose this, then any app can parcel out its work across 2 CPU cores and 2 GPU cores -- gaining capability and performance (GPU cores do some things much faster than CPU cores).
Because the iPad 2 runs iMovie, I suspect it has (at least) 512 GB RAM.
If the iPad 2 supports OpenCL (and has enough RAM) -- I believe it is capable (in the future) of running some rewritten Pro or Prosumer apps: Final Cut, Color, Motion, Logic, etc.
Who cares?
If you watch the keynote video where they demo iMovie and GarageBand, you are seeing the first baby steps of what multitouch can do for A/V editing -- pinching time lines, flicking cuts and clips...
The iPad 2 could be used stand-alone and/or as graphics tablet/control surface attached to a Mac...
You saw the GarageBand demo of pulling organ stops, banging drums or plucking guitar strings... the iPad 2 could bring those capabilities to the Mac Pro apps
This could, easily, be the start of a revolution of A/V editing, CAD, etc. at all levels: from hobbyist to Pro.
Edit: Just to be sure... A/V editing is kind of the "poster boy" app -- but there are implications in science, medicine, defense, etc. -- anywhere there is a need/advantage to manipulate high-resolution A/V files.
.
Uh, they trumpet the new "dual core 1GHz" A5 chip on the front page of the iPad site, and list basically all of the tech specs under "Tech Specs", except RAM - probably because it's the one area from a hardware standpoint that another device (ie Xoom) clearly outdoes it.
Its likely the iPad can make better use of RAM and doesn't need 1GB like the Xoom. More isn't always better.
Plus the fact that Xoom can both play and output 1080p content while the iPad can digitally output 1080p but can only actually play 720p (cleverly presented by Apple, i must say).
What really is the point of playing 1920x1080 on a 1280x800 screen?
Wasn't Gizmodo at the launch? Didn't they get an iPad 2 to evaluate?
No?
ha ha...
You see if you don't accept that number then you can't really judge iPad against other iOS devices. Frankly this is the only place I care to compare iPad as I'm not interested in Android or other devices.
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
Err we are at odds right off the bat. First Mac OS/X supports paging for user data which dramatically alters the usage of RAM.
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.
I'm not sure this is well stated, iOS does not page user data memory. There is no virtual memory for user data. This is actually very important because it it means RAM space is very valuable in iOS devices as nothing gets paged out to a backing store.
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;
I think you are having issues explaining things here.
it was derived directly from OS X's memory management techniques.
Well yeah iOS is basically the core of Mac OS/X with out the virtual memory support and a different scheduler. Of course people even have a hardtime wrapping their heads around this.
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.
Yes IF there is enough RAM in the first place. If not the app itself has to manage it's memory and possibly fails to get the memory it needs.
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!).
nope! OS/X apps can use a lot of memory[/quote] 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.
[/quote]
in the context of iOS apps Apple has been strict about program size but the why is the big thing here. The why is that iPad 1 has far to little memory available to it. That is there is somewhere around 120MB free to apps for code and data. Data is not paged so the platform is extremely tight RAM wise. These issues put severe limits on what apps are capable of doing. Or in otherwords developers can only go so far before hitting walls imposed by Apple.
That said, 512mb of memory is way more than enough, even for the iPad.
512MB is a significant improvement and nothing more. It may or may not be enough for apps that are non trivial. In any event you seem to imply that 512MB is enough for OS/X apps too, this has me questioning your sanity as there are all sorts of Mac apps that actively use far more RAM.
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.
The biggest benefit is in having apps successfully handle the task at hand without crashing. In the realm of iOS, on the iPad, this is one of the biggest benefits of more RAM. For most users iPad is a one app at a time machine, when it fails to handle apps like that it is pretty bad, especially if the problem is the lack of RAM.
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]).
Your logic escapes me here. 256MB only works because Apple constrains what developers can develop for the machine. You apparently know this as you alluded to the app store requirements above but yet you contend that 256 MB of RAM is enough (really less than 120MB). Do you not see where your logic fails? IPad 1's 256MB has only worked because Apple makes sure that more demanding apps never make it to app store.
To look at it another way a DOS machine might have run fine with 32MB of RAM as long as you avoided software that demanded more RAM. If that fancy new DOS based word processor required 64MB of RAM you are out of luck.
In any event the problem with RAM on iOS devices can be itemized below.
1. Some apps simply need a larger foot print. That is more RAM. Safari is a prime example here but there are others.
2. More RAM makes multitasking more useful.
3. Apple restricts apps in a way that limits capability. This is apparently directly related to the lack of RAM in the device. This developers have not been able to ship everything that they might want to.
4. The lack of RAM results in many page reloads for Safari and other apps. This can lead to excessive data usage and thus additional expenses.
1gb of RAM would be a waste of resources and money in iOS land, for the time being.
Well this last statement is highly debatable. The problem I have is that it appears as if Apple is intentionally limiting iPads capability. On the other hand 512MZb should go a very long ways to making iPad a better performing machine. Since the SoC are a stack of processor and RAM chips there are possible technical limits on just how much RAMmshould be in iPad 2. All I know is staying at 256MB is not acceptable.
In the end here it is pretty obvious that you have a better understanding of iOS than some here. However you seem to waltz right over the fact that iPad apps work fairly well simply because of Apple putting real constraints upon what an app can do. Basically any sort of computer hardware design can be made to work if you have that much control over the software running on it. I look forward to some real testing on these machines as that should clear up just what are the advantages of the new hardware in iPad 2.
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?
Well I dont own the iPad 1 but I'll get the iPad 2 for the following reasons:
- Battery Life
- Weight/Portability
- fast and responsive OS
- Thousands of Apps and great collection's of magazines and books
I need something to take with me while traveling. This product meets all my expectations. I can surf the web, watch a movie, play some games, read a book, etc
I really dont care for the android tablets, on which I need to spend hours customizing it and tweaking it, and than brag how customizable is.
I need a simple device that does the above mentioned things well and works perfect out of the box.
If I need to do some hardcore design or some decoding I have my quad core SLI desktop. For casual surfing, reading and playing I can lay on my couch, or sit on my balcony and play with my iPad, not worrying that I have to recharge it in an hour or two.
I don't know that the iPad 2 is in need of more than 512MB of RAM from a usability stand point. It may work perfectly fine with just 512MB. However, from a marketing stand point, not having a 1GB of RAM is a huge mistake.
People should look more at how it performs and not at the numbers.
Agreed, and it performs poorly when many apps are open together, same as the 3GS phone, which is entirely down to RAM. I agree with a previous poster who said that when the next iOS is released, it could be an issue. iPhone 4 runs a lot smoother than the iPad in many scenarios (I know, I have both).
Historically Apple has always been stingy with RAM - I remember my 2006 MacBook shipped with 512MB as standard, when most systems were shipping with 1GB or more. Even Tiger 'recommended' 1GB of RAM at that time.
Having said that, the iPad does a lot better with its 256MB than the PlayBook seems to do with a gig. RAM isn't everything, but if iOS 5 makes the same leap iOS 4 did, the original iPad will be left behind after less than 18 months, and even the new iPad might struggle, which is not acceptable given this could be resolved for less than the price of an iTunes Movie.
Just one indication of how investors feel:
AAPL up 1.81%
MMI (MotoMobile) down 4.72%
.
Just four years ago you needed a PowerMac G5 to edit HD video.
Well this last statement is highly debatable. The problem I have is that it appears as if Apple is intentionally limiting iPads capability.
In any event you seem to imply that 512MB is enough for OS/X apps too, this has me questioning your sanity as there are all sorts of Mac apps that actively use far more RAM.
What makes me question your sanity is the fact that you are comparing OS/X with iOS.
There are many reasons Apple is keeping their system closed. Developers are not limitted byt he amount of the RAM but by the overall hardware of the device.
I dont see any ground braking applications for the 1GB Android devices, do you?
512MB of RAM is more than enough for iPad 2.
As CPU, memory, and battery capacity improve, so will the applications created for these devices. As simple as that...
You can wait for 10 years and get something more advanced or you can purchase a product that makes you happy today and enjoy it. What you need to do though is fix your expectations. Tablets are not PCs, and when they made tablet/laptops, they barely sold any... ask HP and Toshiba.
Historically Apple has always been stingy with RAM - I remember my 2006 MacBook shipped with 512MB as standard, when most systems were shipping with 1GB or more. Even Tiger 'recommended' 1GB of RAM at that time.
If there was a large market for people who need more ram then Apple would supply the product... but why bother when you might only sell 1000 extra units.
Buy a fuckin' Xoon and quit bitching...
Xoom.
The Xoon is the sex toy you currently have shoved up your ass.
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 ...
1) That's partially because the iOS4 version you installed on your 3G is different from the other 2 phones, with a lot of stuffs disabled.
2) And again, I could see some people claiming that their iphone 3G ran iOS4 just fine, but there's also a lot of people (myself and my friend included) that experienced problems with it because of memory issues. That tells me when some people say 'just fine', or 'not fine', it's probably subjective, but I did list the problems myself and my friends had on the iphone 3G (apps shut down, battery drains fast, phone shut down randomly, lags, etc).
Sadly based on some of the posts here I don't think a lot of people on the forum today get it. More RAM is a big deal for every user.
Never said there wasn't a noticeable speed improvement
Actually, you wrote precisely that. But that's ok. No need for me to be nitpicky since we are not in serious disagreement.
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.
Well, since iOS 4.3 supports 3GS and up but not 3G, we can say that the minimum requirement is now 256 MB.
It can only play 720p video... when mirroring the iPad's screen. There are no hardware limitations preventing the iPad from outputting to 1080p. 9x the GPU power comparing to the original iPad (which produced graphics akin to the original Xbox) also speaks volumes.
As I said it in another thread, the hardware is way ahead of software for the ipad2 --- which I think is showing that Apple is genuinely worried about the zillion android tablet models out there. I think that Apple drop a bunch of software features because they want to launch early (even though the hardware is capable of doing more).
Also Apple never demo'ed any third party apps that took advantage of the increased hardware specs. This is a very rush launch.
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.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Couldn't have said it better myself.
I would only add one thing to the non-opinion parts above. iOS does not do the paging to the SSD (backing store) that the desktop OS X does. The rest of the memory subsystems are the same. I'm not sure what the full reasoning for this is, but they do make that clear in the documentation. [Edit: now I see wizard69 mentions this up a few posts too. I disagree with him on iOS having Virtual Memory though -- it most definitely does, that's what delivers the full 32-bit address space. iOS just doesn't deliver a backing store for the VM to use, a subtle but important distinction when we get to the point of splitting hairs.]
This is the main reason Prof Peabody sees a pseudo last-state sometimes rather than the true last-state all the time. if iOS paged there would be no reason for the reload from a file version of pseudo state restoration. (pseudo state is my wording, not Apple's).
Is 512MB enough? There is never enough memory if you are a developer, by definition. I wouldn't compare the 512MB to 1GB on a Xoom very directly though. That Xoom is running a robust JVM behind everything, and that means it is running a copy of that JVM in every process. That is a verified Metric Shitload of memory requirement that the app developers can never use.
You should know, you lovingly shoved it up there... you dirty boy...
Xoon... pronounced, Zune... a much more fitting name for Moto's offering.
I was just washing my hands...lol. I was actually just joking with you. I have to say its amazing to me that people simply don't understand how all this works.
RAM is like having gas in your car. A car doesn't go any faster with a half tank of gas compared to a full tank of gas. As long as there is enough RAM to run the application and OS more doesn't make anything faster.
The fact that iOS is not a resource hog I would say at this point 512MB should be just fine.
I would like to see Apple add more RAM at some point because I would like to see more high level games for the iPad. Something like RAGE that got demo on the iPhone would certainly benefit from added RAM on the iPad.