iPad Pro IPAD Pro 9.7 - 2GB Ram and Safari tabs

[stulaw11]

To all the people saying "you don't need that many tabs", you sound like the apologists who defended the iPhone 4 antenna gate by saying "you're holding it wrong".

No, it's called you cannot build a product that fits EVERYONE. Bottom line.

You shoot for the 99.9% of your users and the .1% who want extreme use scenarios like this can complain or adapt.

You can never build something that makes every single person out there based on their use happy. If you can name 1 specific product that every single person 100% unanimously likes without any faults then I will buy you an iPP 9.7 because its simply not possible to appease everyone and everyone's use scenarios; especially extreme use like OP wants.

 

[macmee]

Because iOS doesn't have a storage-backed pagefile.

Why on earth not? How can Apple call iOS a "modern operating system" if it doesn't implement something as basic as pagefiling? In the beginning of iOS this was probably fine, but they added multitasking, split-screen, and sandboxed background processes. How can they justify not paging memory?

 

[oldmacs]

You shoot for the 99.9% of your users and the .1% who want extreme use scenarios like this can complain or adapt.

Would love to see your data on that one. Plenty of users use a lot of tabs. A lot of my clients do, a lot of my friends do. A lot of my family members do.

 

[stulaw11]

Why on earth not? How can Apple call iOS a "modern operating system" if it doesn't implement something as basic as pagefiling?

Neither does Android/Linux. Is it not a modern OS?

You simply cannot use a desktop paradigm on mobile.

 

[macmee]

Neither does Android/Linux. Is it not a modern OS?

You simply cannot use a desktop paradigm on mobile.

In the beginning of iOS this argument was probably fine, but they added multitasking, split-screen apps, and sandboxed background processes. How can they justify not paging memory?
[doublepost=1459701048][/doublepost]

Neither does Android/Linux. Is it not a modern OS?

You simply cannot use a desktop paradigm on mobile.

Also you're wrong. Android and Linux do file swaps.

 

[stulaw11]

In the beginning of iOS this argument was probably fine, but they added multitasking, split-screen apps, and sandboxed background processes. How can they justify not paging memory?
[doublepost=1459701048][/doublepost]

Also you're wrong. Android and Linux do file swaps.

Again neither does Android, so not popular mobile OS does.

If one refuses to change their usage habits to a mobile scenario that is on them.

Also you're wrong. Android and Linux do file swaps.

not out of the box it doesn't. With rooting maybe but that doesnt count as you can make the same argument for jailbreak.

 

[macmee]

Again neither does Android, so not popular mobile OS does.

If one refuses to change their usage habits to a mobile scenario that is on them.

I just checked and actually iOS *DOES* support virtual memory:

https://developer.apple.com/library...tual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html

Android does swapping:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1659231

and it's a fairly common fact that linux supports virtual memory too.

did I misunderstand what you meant? So isn't it weird then that iOS supports virtual memory but still has this safari tab reloading issue?

 

[stulaw11]

I just checked and actually iOS *DOES* support virtual memory:

https://developer.apple.com/library...tual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html

Android does swapping:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1659231

and it's a fairly common fact that linux supports virtual memory too.

did I misunderstand what you meant? So isn't it weird then that iOS supports virtual memory but still has this safari tab reloading issue?

You mean after rooting/hacking, yup not a comparison; same can be said of jailbreaking then. We're talking how consumers get their devices in the box.

And I have no idea of the complexities of storing tabs into iOS virtual memory. Obviously Apple didn't see a way to do it and rather increased the RAM from 1gb to 2gb and touted that as increased retention of tabs without reloads. There is obviously a reason.

 

[macmee]

You mean after rooting, yup not a comparison; same can be said of jailbreaking then. We're talking how consumers get their devices in the box.

yeah but my point here is that iOS supports virtual memory out of the box, so I wonder why Apple didn't special case safari to allow it to do swapping. Seems like it would be a fairly clean way of doing it.

also I know the link I sent was to an xda post about android swapping, but you don't need to root in order to swap. I think you just have to be running with an SD card in your android device and it configures swapping for you or something.

 

[stulaw11]

yeah but my point here is that iOS supports virtual memory out of the box, so I wonder why Apple didn't special case safari to allow it to do swapping. Seems like it would be a fairly clean way of doing it.

also I know the link I sent was to an xda post about android swapping, but you don't need to root in order to swap. I think you just have to be running with an SD card in your android device and it configures swapping for you or something.

I would venture to guess that since Apple uses much better quality/speed RAM than competitors that it doesnt need to use virtual memory for the tabs. I would also guess writing to virtual memory on the storage portion is more battery intensive than using the RAM. It could be many factors.

Another issue could be storage longevity (hence why XDA warns it can degrade the SD card). Im pretty sure using virtual memory is pretty taxing on the storage constantly writing and wiping data continuously every second.

[doublepost=1459701786][/doublepost]

Would love to see your data on that one. Plenty of users use a lot of tabs. A lot of my clients do, a lot of my friends do. A lot of my family members do.

lol 25 tabs, yup ok that's normal for the bulk of users. Start a thread with poll here you fill find yourself quite wrong.

My guess is the majority polled here (who are more power users than you friends and family) never have more then 10 open at a time tops.

In fact there ya go did the leg work for you so we can get rid of the talkers vs fact here.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-keep-open-at-any-one-time-regularly.1965617/

 

[aevan]

My advice: choose based on screen size preference. 4Gb is nice, but if you prefer the 9.7" screen, choose that one.

 

[rui no onna]

I just checked and actually iOS *DOES* support virtual memory:

https://developer.apple.com/library...tual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html

iOS supports virtual memory, yes. However, it's not backed by disk-based storage.

If there are no free pages available in physical memory, the handler must first release an existing page to make room for the new page. How the system release pages depends on the platform. In OS X, the virtual memory system often writes pages to the backing store. The backing store is a disk-based repository containing a copy of the memory pages used by a given process. Moving data from physical memory to the backing store is called paging out (or “swapping out”); moving data from the backing store back in to physical memory is called paging in (or “swapping in”). In iOS, there is no backing store and so pages are are never paged out to disk, but read-only pages are still be paged in from disk as needed.

As for why not, entry level storage is still at 16GB. Also, the NAND flash used in iPads is pretty slow. Consider random 4K writes even on the latest iPad (~2MB/s) is around the same speed as a 7200RPM HDD. Before that, random 4K was at ~1MB/s or slower.

 

[Wando64]

Oh my, a truly genuine 'first world' problem - "I can't bear to close tabs - which iPad should I get?" FFS!

I would like to quote @seadragon from another thread:
"Every topic on MR forums is a first world problem. Should we discuss third world issues here?"

FFS indeed

 

[stulaw11]

Would love to see your data on that one. Plenty of users use a lot of tabs. A lot of my clients do, a lot of my friends do. A lot of my family members do.

lol 25 tabs, yup ok that's normal for the bulk of

users. Start a thread with poll here you fill find yourself quite wrong.

My guess is the majority polled here (who are more power users than you friends and family) never have more then 10 open at a time tops.

In fact there ya go did the leg work for you so we can get rid of the talkers vs fact here.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-keep-open-at-any-one-time-regularly.1965617/

Whomp whomp. Looks bad for your claim considering that VAST majority are voting 10 or less, 85%; and in fact only 1 vote over 15 and we all know who that is.

 

[rui no onna]

Whomp whomp. Looks bad for your claim considering that VAST majority are voting 10 or less, 85%; and in fact only 1 vote over 15 and we all know who that is.

That was actually me.

Just because I understand Apple's reasoning for sticking to 2GB doesn't mean my specific use-case wouldn't benefit from having more RAM. That said, as annoying as the Safari tab refresh issue is, using a Windows-based tablet is a far more frustrating experience for me.

In fairness, tab refresh has improved compared to before. On older iOS versions, when the tab refreshes, you always go to the top of the webpage and you lose your place. I think it may have been starting with iOS 7 or 8 that even when a page is refreshed, you go back to the place/section where you left it. Also, a number of websites have adapted. For example, MacRumors now saves drafts of forum posts. Before, you'd have to retype your entire post if the tab refreshes.

 

[stulaw11]

That was actually me.

Just because I understand Apple's reasoning for sticking to 2GB doesn't mean my specific use-case wouldn't benefit from having more RAM. That said, as annoying as the Safari tab refresh issue is, using a Windows-based tablet is a far more frustrating experience for me.

In fairness, tab refresh has improved compared to before. On older iOS versions, when the tab refreshes, you always go to the top of the webpage and you lose your place. I think it may have been starting with iOS 7 or 8 that even when a page is refreshed, you go back to the place/section where you left it. Also, a number of websites have adapted. For example, MacRumors now saves drafts of forum posts. Before, you'd have to retype your entire post if the tab refreshes.

While I understand, my earlier point was Apple targeting the 99.9% of usage cases and the .1% have do deal or change their usage habits.

To which I was challenged to produce data which has been done. My point proven that the 1% of 1% of people have your usage habits.

Not that it's wrong or right, but a reasonable limit to such things. But OP accepting no limitations and refusing to close tabs in a mobile device simply isnt reasonable; and then concluding that Apple of course sucks the iPad sucks etc etc the usual.

 

[qap]

With regards to safari tabs reloading, why doesn't mobile safari write old tab memory to a pagefile to avoid the reloading problem?

Because it will kill the iDevices fastness. Because write and write on the flash storage will degrade it...I absolutely don't want a swap file on the flash storage!

 

[Count Blah]

That was actually me.

Just because I understand Apple's reasoning for sticking to 2GB doesn't mean my specific use-case wouldn't benefit from having more RAM. That said, as annoying as the Safari tab refresh issue is, using a Windows-based tablet is a far more frustrating experience for me.

In fairness, tab refresh has improved compared to before. On older iOS versions, when the tab refreshes, you always go to the top of the webpage and you lose your place. I think it may have been starting with iOS 7 or 8 that even when a page is refreshed, you go back to the place/section where you left it. Also, a number of websites have adapted. For example, MacRumors now saves drafts of forum posts. Before, you'd have to retype your entire post if the tab refreshes.

So were people whiners, when they complained about the issues with the lack of RAM?

 

[rui no onna]

So were people whiners, when they complained about the issues with the lack of RAM?

No comment. I prefer to deal with facts and objective analyses, not name-calling.

 

[lux9488]

I was set to get the IPAD Pro 9.7 even with 2GB ram but my plan got halted after watching this youtube video showing how much better the IPAD Pro 12.9 with 4GB ram was against the Air2 with 2GB ram.

Since this video is comparing the Air 2 & the iPad Pro 12.9, it's definitely not an accurate representation of how the iPad Pro 9.7 would perform. I'm using the 9.7" Pro to write this post and I've been using it with at least 10 tabs open. Not once has a tab reloaded on me.

Like a few others have said, I would go into the Apple Store and test it out for yourself to see if you would be able to integrate it into your workflow.

The 12.9 was just too inconvenient for me in most situations.