Those are pretty amazing speeds. In Forest Hills, Queens with my 3G phone and using the same Ookla Speed Test, I'm getting 7150/739 over WiFi, but only 146/35 over 3G. And in Manhattan, I think it would be far worse. Using the Xtreme Labs SpeedTest, I've gotten as little as 31/90 (and yes, download was slower than upload on that test) over 3G.
Maybe you're holding it wrong. Seriously though, those speeds really do suck. It's too bad the FCC can't step in and make it easier for carriers to get the tower setups they need for certain areas because those speed are abysmal enough to make me jump to another carrier.
gotta be better than 2G - with 3 bars - I get a speedtest result around 30 to 60 kbps downstream and about 20 kbps upstream - yes kbps - on my network WiFi I get above 2Mbps down and near 768 kbps up - on a 15Mbps down and 768k up service.
just hoping that the voice service works better than my 2G phone.
just hoping that the voice service works better than my 2G phone.
The voice algorithm is typically better over 3GSM than over GSM(2G). Add in the noise canceling mic of the iPhone 4 and you should be satisfied with the device
He's pointing out that Apple listing the RAM on their site might be confusing for the average buyer. His comment was an example of what one might say if they didn't know better.
Even the average buyer by now wouldn't be that stupid to confuse 512MB RAM with total memory. His analogy was stupid.
Even the average buyer by now wouldn't be that stupid to confuse 512MB RAM with total memory. His analogy was stupid.
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
Solipsism, you're like our very own rapid response team today.
Maybe you're holding it wrong. Seriously though, those speeds really do suck. It's too bad the FCC can't step in and make it easier for carriers to get the tower setups they need for certain areas because those speed are abysmal enough to make me jump to another carrier.
No, he was saying those low speeds were using his iPhone 3G, not iPhone 4 (if I understand him correctly).
Yes, it was a slight disappointment...but when AT&T is on the ball the speeds aren't any worse than WiMax (in philly on the Evo anyway).
(that last 4.7M bps run on the list is 802.11N to a Time Capsule connected to a 5 Mbps FiOS feed)
I'm getting slower speeds (2.5 Mbps vs 3.9 Mbps) this morning since...hey, more folks are awake and hitting that same tower. Both Sprint's WiMax and AT&T HSPA 7.2 networks are limited by their backhauls. As AT&T updates their towers with more backhaul to support HSPA+ 14.4 speeds we're going to see our phone more consistently hit that 4-5 Mbps performance range. Which will be just as fast as it is at home connected via a low end FiOS contract...
The congestion point isn't the radio...it's backhaul. And they have to continue to improve that before LTE makes much difference. Same for WiMax for Sprint.
Typical towers have 1-3 T1 as backhauls while upgraded towers have fiber. Estimates are that only 15% of towers have been updated to fiber* in the US. My guess is that the AT&T tower I'm hitting is HSPA 7.2 (and not one of the upgraded HSPA+ ones) with 2-3 T1s equivalents given that I had good signal and probably little load at 1AM.
Once that tower goes fiber (or provisioned higher) I expect to see real world 5 mbps consistently given the signal strength. Even the old HSPA 3.6 towers can do 3 Mbps if it has 3.6+Mbops backhaul to the net.
By the time our contracts are up neither LTE or HSPA+ will see consistent real world speeds faster than HSPA 7.2. This is why 4G WiMax isn't spanking T-Mobile's 3.5G HSPA+ roll out in Philly.
By the time it matters that we don't have a HSPA+ 14.4 radio in the iPhone 4 we're probably all standing in line or waiting on FedEx for our new iPhone 8...
--
* many towers already physically have fiber to them since there are often multiple carriers per tower. The thing was in the 90s it was cheaper to stick in a mux and run the last bit as copper T1s to the different users. So you need to rip out a couple hundred to a couple thousand feet of copper even if it "already" has fiber then replace the mux in the cabinet with something like a Fujitsu 4100 that can do a optical GigE output to provision all the (new) wireless carrier gear with what they need. VZW fiber towers are typically provisioned between 10 to 100 meg vs the full GigE fiber feed off that original OC12. Yah...10 megs for LTE would suck but they can dial it up when the tower needs more without redoing the backhaul cabinets.
Upgrading a single tower can run you $30K+ and take months to do. Just running physical fiber to the tower is a fraction of that cost and effort so even already having fiber to the tower cabinet with a copper mux doesn't mean an easy/fast/cheap upgrade to "fiber".
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
The reason Apple probably isn't announcing processor speed is because they can tweak it with a firmware update and as Samsungs 45NM process improves you will get more chips capable of higher freq so by not telling they can make an adjustment down the road just like they never said how much DDR ram for the iPad, I wouldn't be surprised if the new iPads rolling off the line now contain 512MB and the older 256MB was from an earlier run in the manufacturing cycle.
The reason Apple probably isn't announcing processor speed is because they can tweak it with a firmware update and as Samsungs 45NM process improves you will get more chips capable of higher freq so by not telling they can make an adjustment down the road just like they never said how much DDR ram for the iPad, I wouldn't be surprised if the new iPads rolling off the line now contain 512MB and the older 256MB was from an earlier run in the manufacturing cycle.
They have never announced an iPhone clockspeed and have adjusted the clockspeed as they made the device more efficient with updates on at least one occasion.
If they do update the iPad to 512MB I may just buy one.
We have the money-grabbing, corrupt congress of the US to thank for the mediocre service these phone companies offer to us. All these technology were invented in the US, yet other countries deploy it years ahead of us.
While these phone companies are paying their officers millions of dollars in compensation, America citizens are subjected to low-class phone service. But we have the corrupt politicians that receive bribery from these corporations to blame.
Shame on American government. All they do is talk, and do nothing but go to war and pile up debt. And we are told this is the best country in the world. Yes, best at nothing but fighting war.
Even if it is 10 times faster, doesn't that just mean you will likely reach your 2GB limit 10 times as fast? I mean faster is always nicer, but doesn't that almost tease you into wanting to use more data intensive activities like more audio and video streaming? It looks like Verizon might follow suit and also introduce caps. I just pray that Sprint and T-Mobile hold the line and offer "unlimited" data. Well 5GB on 3G and truly unlimited on the 4G Wimax network.
We have the money-grabbing, corrupt congress of the US to thank for the mediocre service these phone companies offer to us. All these technology were invented in the US, yet other countries deploy it years ahead of us.
While these phone companies are paying their officers millions of dollars in compensation, America citizens are subjected to low-class phone service. But we have the corrupt politicians that receive bribery from these corporations to blame.
Shame on American government. All they do is talk, and do nothing but go to war and pile up debt. And we are told this is the best country in the world. Yes, best at nothing but fighting war.
Do you want the blue pill, or the red pill? I never said that it would be easy, only that it will be the truth.
Even if it is 10 times faster, doesn't that just mean you will likely reach your 2GB limit 10 times as fast?
As stated, no. An file x-size is still x-size, the only that changes is the speed in which it's sent. However, this increased data rate will result in one saving time, which is likely to result in more data usage. I'd say this is a good problem to have.
No it is down right disgusting to anybody that expects a company to act in an ethical manner. For example: for many it doesn't matter if a car has a V8 or a V6, but you damn well expect the dealer and the manufacture to be honest about what is actually in the car they are selling you.
Quote:
Regular people (who are now the vast majority of iPhone buyers) just want a phone that does what it says on the box.
True. But that doesn't mean Apple can't put more info on the box or on their web site. The tech. spec sheet would be the proper place for that info and frankly people that would be confused by the info don't read that page anyways.
Quote:
Besides, having two memory sizes (one for working RAM and one for storage) would be confusing to a lot of people (what, it only has 512MB for storing music?!
Well screw them! The last thing we need is a society that panders even more to the idiots and low achievers that can't take the time to understand what they are buying. There is nothing in life that will generate more hostility in me then the attitude displayed in the above sentence.
Quote:
That's less than my USB stick!). This has been a deliberate marketing strategy of Apple since the first iPod (1000 songs), along with the slower than normal product life-cycle and relatively few choices (both of which make it easier for people to actually buy the product).
We are not talking about a simple iPod here. We are talking about a device capable of running a wide range of apps which have vastly different performance profiles based upon what memory is available to them. In some cases the apps are effectively unusable on iPhones with less free RAM.
I'm a big Apple fan but I'm also un afraid to call them out when doing things that are completely unacceptable. Some people don't like that on this forum and they are free to do so, but I just find it extremely funny that only weeks after saying the IPad had way to little RAM in the unit, Apple comes out with an iPhone that has twice as much RAM. Kinda looks like Apple agrees with me on that one. What they apparently don't agree with me on is the bit of sleazy business they are engaging in not being upfront about the RAM installed in released devices. Frankly this bothers me more than anything else about Apples behavior lately.
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
There is absolutely no justification for this on Apple part. The info could be plugged into the spec sheet just as easy as all the other data the "average customer" doesn't understand.
In the end Apples attempts to hide this information can only be seen as misleading and frankly sleazy. The amount of RAM in a device is just as important a spec as the bands the 3G radio uses or the supported WiFI standards. To constantly have this info left out can only indicate that it is a planned effort on Apples part to keep people in the dark.
Quote:
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
This is also interesting and questionable on Apples part. I would suspect though that they may very well be dynamically adjusting clock frequency based upon what is happening at the moment on the device. Still in shouldn't be that difficult to come clean on this spec either.
I fully understand that the so called "average customer" might not need nor understand the info, however I really don't give a damn about the average customer. More so the info we want could be easily delivered via a spec sheet the average customer doesn't read anyways. The problem isn't Apples marketing to the so called average customer, but rather the grouping of every customer into the same category of stupid bitch customer.
Maybe I'm going a little overboard here, but at work when I grab a PDF from a potential suppliers support sight it better have all the info I need to implement that device effectively. I expect the same thing when buying for personal use. I don't expect a line of crap from the sales engineer either. A product either does or doesn't do what I want, there really isn't any in between and the last thing one wants to hear is a shuck and jive that glosses over the issues faced. In the end Apple comes off as purposefully jerking the customer around. That is really distressing because I really like many of Apples products.
The reason Apple probably isn't announcing processor speed is because they can tweak it with a firmware update and as Samsungs 45NM process improves you will get more chips capable of higher freq so by not telling they can make an adjustment down the road just like they never said how much DDR ram for the iPad, I wouldn't be surprised if the new iPads rolling off the line now contain 512MB and the older 256MB was from an earlier run in the manufacturing cycle.
In fact I'd think that would open Apple to all sorts of legal issues. That is if they silently updated the RAM installed on an existing product and did not in any other manner update the part number. Think about it, a person could walk into a store and buy an iPad and have a chance of getting one with 256MB of RAM or 512MB of RAM. If you are paying the same price for both devices then you could very well be getting ripped off.
As to 512MB iPads I do think they are coming sooner than many suspect. In fact I suspect they will come about the time iOS 4 is ready to run on them. In other words in the fall. However they will be offered up by Apple as a new and improved model. The free memory situation on iPad is bad enough now, I can't see iOS 4 being viable on the current model.
On a side note a great deal is going on in the ARM side of things. We now have ARM 9 chips built on 22nm processes ( not production ready) so I'm not to certain how long Apple can hang onto the partnership with Samsung. Intrinsity isn't the only low power solution either, it is going to be interesting to see if Apple can keep a qualitative edge with its processor design group. Frankly they will need a dual core ARM 9 by 2011 for the iPad.
Comments
Those are pretty amazing speeds. In Forest Hills, Queens with my 3G phone and using the same Ookla Speed Test, I'm getting 7150/739 over WiFi, but only 146/35 over 3G. And in Manhattan, I think it would be far worse. Using the Xtreme Labs SpeedTest, I've gotten as little as 31/90 (and yes, download was slower than upload on that test) over 3G.
Maybe you're holding it wrong. Seriously though, those speeds really do suck. It's too bad the FCC can't step in and make it easier for carriers to get the tower setups they need for certain areas because those speed are abysmal enough to make me jump to another carrier.
just hoping that the voice service works better than my 2G phone.
just hoping that the voice service works better than my 2G phone.
The voice algorithm is typically better over 3GSM than over GSM(2G). Add in the noise canceling mic of the iPhone 4 and you should be satisfied with the device
He's pointing out that Apple listing the RAM on their site might be confusing for the average buyer. His comment was an example of what one might say if they didn't know better.
Even the average buyer by now wouldn't be that stupid to confuse 512MB RAM with total memory. His analogy was stupid.
Even the average buyer by now wouldn't be that stupid to confuse 512MB RAM with total memory. His analogy was stupid.
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
I'm getting insane speeds on my iPhone 4, putting to shame those screenshots on the front page.
Tested inside my home, and no it doesn't matter how i hold the damn thing. Lol what idiots.
Wifi: 12.26 mb down - 11.16 mb up
3G: 2.72 mb down - 1.28 mb up
All of these numbers are a big jump over my 3GS, except the 3G download which has always been around 2.5mb during calm hours.
yesterday at around 745 am i got 4216 down 1634 up i was amazed north nj
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
Solipsism, you're like our very own rapid response team today.
Maybe you're holding it wrong. Seriously though, those speeds really do suck. It's too bad the FCC can't step in and make it easier for carriers to get the tower setups they need for certain areas because those speed are abysmal enough to make me jump to another carrier.
No, he was saying those low speeds were using his iPhone 3G, not iPhone 4 (if I understand him correctly).
Yes, it was a slight disappointment...but when AT&T is on the ball the speeds aren't any worse than WiMax (in philly on the Evo anyway).
(that last 4.7M bps run on the list is 802.11N to a Time Capsule connected to a 5 Mbps FiOS feed)
I'm getting slower speeds (2.5 Mbps vs 3.9 Mbps) this morning since...hey, more folks are awake and hitting that same tower. Both Sprint's WiMax and AT&T HSPA 7.2 networks are limited by their backhauls. As AT&T updates their towers with more backhaul to support HSPA+ 14.4 speeds we're going to see our phone more consistently hit that 4-5 Mbps performance range. Which will be just as fast as it is at home connected via a low end FiOS contract...
The congestion point isn't the radio...it's backhaul. And they have to continue to improve that before LTE makes much difference. Same for WiMax for Sprint.
Typical towers have 1-3 T1 as backhauls while upgraded towers have fiber. Estimates are that only 15% of towers have been updated to fiber* in the US. My guess is that the AT&T tower I'm hitting is HSPA 7.2 (and not one of the upgraded HSPA+ ones) with 2-3 T1s equivalents given that I had good signal and probably little load at 1AM.
Once that tower goes fiber (or provisioned higher) I expect to see real world 5 mbps consistently given the signal strength. Even the old HSPA 3.6 towers can do 3 Mbps if it has 3.6+Mbops backhaul to the net.
By the time our contracts are up neither LTE or HSPA+ will see consistent real world speeds faster than HSPA 7.2. This is why 4G WiMax isn't spanking T-Mobile's 3.5G HSPA+ roll out in Philly.
By the time it matters that we don't have a HSPA+ 14.4 radio in the iPhone 4 we're probably all standing in line or waiting on FedEx for our new iPhone 8...
--
* many towers already physically have fiber to them since there are often multiple carriers per tower. The thing was in the 90s it was cheaper to stick in a mux and run the last bit as copper T1s to the different users. So you need to rip out a couple hundred to a couple thousand feet of copper even if it "already" has fiber then replace the mux in the cabinet with something like a Fujitsu 4100 that can do a optical GigE output to provision all the (new) wireless carrier gear with what they need. VZW fiber towers are typically provisioned between 10 to 100 meg vs the full GigE fiber feed off that original OC12. Yah...10 megs for LTE would suck but they can dial it up when the tower needs more without redoing the backhaul cabinets.
Upgrading a single tower can run you $30K+ and take months to do. Just running physical fiber to the tower is a fraction of that cost and effort so even already having fiber to the tower cabinet with a copper mux doesn't mean an easy/fast/cheap upgrade to "fiber".
@NHT
Is your location already on the 7.2 ATT. I'm in Detroit and see nothing close to your speeds but I'm using the old 3G and were still on 3.6 Mbps
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
The reason Apple probably isn't announcing processor speed is because they can tweak it with a firmware update and as Samsungs 45NM process improves you will get more chips capable of higher freq so by not telling they can make an adjustment down the road just like they never said how much DDR ram for the iPad, I wouldn't be surprised if the new iPads rolling off the line now contain 512MB and the older 256MB was from an earlier run in the manufacturing cycle.
Solipsism, you're like our very own rapid response team today.
I try.
No, he was saying those low speeds were using his iPhone 3G, not iPhone 4 (if I understand him correctly).
Yeah, I was just joking around with the "holding" comment.
The reason Apple probably isn't announcing processor speed is because they can tweak it with a firmware update and as Samsungs 45NM process improves you will get more chips capable of higher freq so by not telling they can make an adjustment down the road just like they never said how much DDR ram for the iPad, I wouldn't be surprised if the new iPads rolling off the line now contain 512MB and the older 256MB was from an earlier run in the manufacturing cycle.
They have never announced an iPhone clockspeed and have adjusted the clockspeed as they made the device more efficient with updates on at least one occasion.
If they do update the iPad to 512MB I may just buy one.
While these phone companies are paying their officers millions of dollars in compensation, America citizens are subjected to low-class phone service. But we have the corrupt politicians that receive bribery from these corporations to blame.
Shame on American government. All they do is talk, and do nothing but go to war and pile up debt. And we are told this is the best country in the world. Yes, best at nothing but fighting war.
We have the money-grabbing, corrupt congress of the US to thank for the mediocre service these phone companies offer to us. All these technology were invented in the US, yet other countries deploy it years ahead of us.
While these phone companies are paying their officers millions of dollars in compensation, America citizens are subjected to low-class phone service. But we have the corrupt politicians that receive bribery from these corporations to blame.
Shame on American government. All they do is talk, and do nothing but go to war and pile up debt. And we are told this is the best country in the world. Yes, best at nothing but fighting war.
Do you want the blue pill, or the red pill? I never said that it would be easy, only that it will be the truth.
Btw, read my sig.
Even if it is 10 times faster, doesn't that just mean you will likely reach your 2GB limit 10 times as fast?
As stated, no. An file x-size is still x-size, the only that changes is the speed in which it's sent. However, this increased data rate will result in one saving time, which is likely to result in more data usage. I'd say this is a good problem to have.
"oddly secret 512MB"
It's only seems odd to geeks and techies.
No it is down right disgusting to anybody that expects a company to act in an ethical manner. For example: for many it doesn't matter if a car has a V8 or a V6, but you damn well expect the dealer and the manufacture to be honest about what is actually in the car they are selling you.
Regular people (who are now the vast majority of iPhone buyers) just want a phone that does what it says on the box.
True. But that doesn't mean Apple can't put more info on the box or on their web site. The tech. spec sheet would be the proper place for that info and frankly people that would be confused by the info don't read that page anyways.
Besides, having two memory sizes (one for working RAM and one for storage) would be confusing to a lot of people (what, it only has 512MB for storing music?!
Well screw them! The last thing we need is a society that panders even more to the idiots and low achievers that can't take the time to understand what they are buying. There is nothing in life that will generate more hostility in me then the attitude displayed in the above sentence.
That's less than my USB stick!). This has been a deliberate marketing strategy of Apple since the first iPod (1000 songs), along with the slower than normal product life-cycle and relatively few choices (both of which make it easier for people to actually buy the product).
We are not talking about a simple iPod here. We are talking about a device capable of running a wide range of apps which have vastly different performance profiles based upon what memory is available to them. In some cases the apps are effectively unusable on iPhones with less free RAM.
I'm a big Apple fan but I'm also un afraid to call them out when doing things that are completely unacceptable. Some people don't like that on this forum and they are free to do so, but I just find it extremely funny that only weeks after saying the IPad had way to little RAM in the unit, Apple comes out with an iPhone that has twice as much RAM. Kinda looks like Apple agrees with me on that one. What they apparently don't agree with me on is the bit of sleazy business they are engaging in not being upfront about the RAM installed in released devices. Frankly this bothers me more than anything else about Apples behavior lately.
Dave
The average customer couldn't give you a definition of RAM, has no idea what NAND stands for, how it relates to Flash memory, and so on. I hate having to wait for a teardown and/or x-ray to see the specs of an Apple product, but I understand their position on this.
There is absolutely no justification for this on Apple part. The info could be plugged into the spec sheet just as easy as all the other data the "average customer" doesn't understand.
In the end Apples attempts to hide this information can only be seen as misleading and frankly sleazy. The amount of RAM in a device is just as important a spec as the bands the 3G radio uses or the supported WiFI standards. To constantly have this info left out can only indicate that it is a planned effort on Apples part to keep people in the dark.
Note, we still don't know the clockspeed of the iPhone 4. We know it's an A4 and that the iPad's A4 is 1GHz, so all we can deduce is that it's less than 1Ghz. My guess is around 800MHz.
This is also interesting and questionable on Apples part. I would suspect though that they may very well be dynamically adjusting clock frequency based upon what is happening at the moment on the device. Still in shouldn't be that difficult to come clean on this spec either.
I fully understand that the so called "average customer" might not need nor understand the info, however I really don't give a damn about the average customer. More so the info we want could be easily delivered via a spec sheet the average customer doesn't read anyways. The problem isn't Apples marketing to the so called average customer, but rather the grouping of every customer into the same category of stupid bitch customer.
Maybe I'm going a little overboard here, but at work when I grab a PDF from a potential suppliers support sight it better have all the info I need to implement that device effectively. I expect the same thing when buying for personal use. I don't expect a line of crap from the sales engineer either. A product either does or doesn't do what I want, there really isn't any in between and the last thing one wants to hear is a shuck and jive that glosses over the issues faced. In the end Apple comes off as purposefully jerking the customer around. That is really distressing because I really like many of Apples products.
Dave
The reason Apple probably isn't announcing processor speed is because they can tweak it with a firmware update and as Samsungs 45NM process improves you will get more chips capable of higher freq so by not telling they can make an adjustment down the road just like they never said how much DDR ram for the iPad, I wouldn't be surprised if the new iPads rolling off the line now contain 512MB and the older 256MB was from an earlier run in the manufacturing cycle.
In fact I'd think that would open Apple to all sorts of legal issues. That is if they silently updated the RAM installed on an existing product and did not in any other manner update the part number. Think about it, a person could walk into a store and buy an iPad and have a chance of getting one with 256MB of RAM or 512MB of RAM. If you are paying the same price for both devices then you could very well be getting ripped off.
As to 512MB iPads I do think they are coming sooner than many suspect. In fact I suspect they will come about the time iOS 4 is ready to run on them. In other words in the fall. However they will be offered up by Apple as a new and improved model. The free memory situation on iPad is bad enough now, I can't see iOS 4 being viable on the current model.
On a side note a great deal is going on in the ARM side of things. We now have ARM 9 chips built on 22nm processes ( not production ready) so I'm not to certain how long Apple can hang onto the partnership with Samsung. Intrinsity isn't the only low power solution either, it is going to be interesting to see if Apple can keep a qualitative edge with its processor design group. Frankly they will need a dual core ARM 9 by 2011 for the iPad.
Dave