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exoticSpice

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Jan 9, 2022
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So M2 can deliver up to 24GB of RAM. Why did Apple limit it to only 16GB the M2 iPad?

Both the MBA M2 and MBP M2 got 24GB.
 

Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,263
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How can someone realistically benefit from 24GB of RAM on iPadOS? By running 8 professional apps and doing sorts of things in parallel? not even sure if stage manager can pull that off or iPadOS would allow doing that.

Blame iPadOS for this arbitrary limit. I don’t see many People able to take advantage of that.
 

exoticSpice

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Original poster
Jan 9, 2022
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How can someone realistically benefit from 24GB of RAM on iPadOS? By running 8 professional apps and doing sorts of things in parallel? not even sure if stage manager can pull that off or iPadOS would allow doing that.

Blame iPadOS for this arbitrary limit. I don’t see many People able to take advantage of that.
Yes but why offer 16GB then?
 

exoticSpice

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Jan 9, 2022
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Why do you think you currently need 24GB of RAM with iPAdOS?
I was just wondering why does Apple offer 16GB?

They gave 16GB with M1 but why not 24GB with M2?

After all iPad Pro folks will get if its an option. In the future iPadOS may get more desktop features/apps like No Mans Sky.
 
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rkuo

macrumors 65816
Sep 25, 2010
1,308
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I was just wondering why does Apple offer 16GB?

They gave 16GB with M1 but why not 24GB with M2?

After all iPad Pro folks will get if its an option. In the future iPadOS may get more desktop features/apps like No Mans Sky.
Most likely they felt it wasn't worth the effort to carve out a new SKU considering they can barely justify the existence of the 16GB models right now. No one is going to have a definitive answer for you on this.
 

Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,263
11,764
Yes but why offer 16GB then?
Because more people buy 16GB than 24GB, even if it is available, at least on M2 MBA?
You know M2 MacBook Air has been on sale for quite a few months before M2 iPad Pro shows Up right?
So can the 24GB RAM option.
See above.
Who really needs more than 8GB on an iPad currently?
I can’t run two games at 120fps so I need 24GB of RAM /s
Seriously, I need CPU and GPU power that is 200% of what it is now to achieve the above goal, not necessarily 24GB of RAM.
 

rkuo

macrumors 65816
Sep 25, 2010
1,308
955
Apple also likes to meter out the improvements, so maybe they’re saving the 24gb for a future revision to drive top end upgrades.
 

darngooddesign

macrumors P6
Jul 4, 2007
18,362
10,114
Atlanta, GA
So M2 can deliver up to 24GB of RAM. Why did Apple limit it to only 16GB the M2 iPad?

Both the MBA M2 and MBP M2 got 24GB.
There is one important difference. On the Mac you can upgrade RAM separate from the SSD, whereas on the iPad to get 16GB you have to buy the 1TB+ iPad.

Apple could have made both large capacity iPads 24GB, or they could have made the 2TB iPad 24GB, but they didn't and no one on here who actually knows will give you the answer you want. Anything else is speculation.
 
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LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,877
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Wouldn’t more ram make sense for video editing, even on an iPad Pro? Especially since DaVinci Resolve was recently announced.
 
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Propine

macrumors regular
Jun 14, 2020
110
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So M2 can deliver up to 24GB of RAM. Why did Apple limit it to only 16GB the M2 iPad?

Both the MBA M2 and MBP M2 got 24GB.
Giving iPad so much RAM will enable users to run more apps in the background, which will drain more battery. Now here is the thing - iPad‘s battery is twice less powerful than the one on MacBook. That will hit battery life badly.

Besides that it doesn’t make much sense to add more expensive RAM without first utilising the swap feature, which has been added recently. The existence of swap in computing is driven by desire of saving costs by occasionally using hard drive as a memory source for applications. When users will hit limits while running 8/16 GB RAM + swap, that‘s when we actually need more RAM.
 
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NewUsername

macrumors 6502a
Aug 20, 2019
589
1,322
I was just wondering why does Apple offer 16GB?

They gave 16GB with M1 but why not 24GB with M2?

After all iPad Pro folks will get if its an option. In the future iPadOS may get more desktop features/apps like No Mans Sky.
Offering 16GB is somewhat of a mystery. Some say that people who buy Macs with 1TB or 2TB will overwhelmingly also choose 16GB RAM, so Apple has more of that combination lying around, which is why they chose it for the iPad Pro. But that’s just speculation.
 

Nekomichi

macrumors 6502
Sep 20, 2016
299
459
Yes but why offer 16GB then?
Some apps can take advantage of the increased 16GB RAM. For example, I cloned the same Procreate project between an iPad with 8GB RAM and one with 16GB RAM and on the latter, the maximum limit of layers is much higher. At that point, the increased RAM probably isn't for extra multitasking but rather for handling heavier tasks in individual applications like in this use case.
image.jpg
 
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MacLappy

macrumors 6502a
Jul 28, 2011
530
394
Singapore
Fresh reboot, with no apps opened, M2 iPad 16gb vs iPad Pro 2020 6gb. Having more ram definitely helps make the device feel snappier, also helps to keep more apps opened in the background without having to refresh.

7e22b517b967ea359745557a136d4a26.jpg


b80f134b10b665f82a6902073c621de1.jpg
 
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