Low Memory Warning. This is a bad impression.

[bluehaze013]

I'm not arguing that 256 is lower then what most like. I'm suggesting that these apps actually aren't running out of memory at all. The error message does not result in the application crashing, stalling or even exhibiting lower performance. In fact the only symptom of this 'issue' is the message itself.

For everybody complaining about the iPad, if it doesn't meet your performance expectation, didn't buy one. Thats the quickest way to affect a change in Apples approach.

As for me I've been typing on one all night, and despite only having 256MB, it's the best experience I've had with a highly portable device.

The app doesn't actually crash when it runs out of memory, it essentially starts reading information off the HD making the apps sluggish and not working properly. Essentially the HD becomes the RAM, that's why you get that warning. Apples idea of a fix is making the warning go away but still having the app page information off the HD, thats not a fix. It's similiar to Safari having to reload the page everytime you try and tab out to another page only worse.

People complain because they like the product and want it to get better. People that don't actually like the product don't buy it and therefore don't ever complain about it. You should be happy that people complain, if no one ever complained we would likely all still own 286's ad be stuck playing Space Invaders!

 

[err404]

There is just so much potential for this device but it is undeniably going to be held back by the lack of ram.

Deal with it. It's too late to talk about potential. The iPad is out now and it has 256MB. This limitation is intrinsict to the A4 processor. A mythical iPad with 512MB can not be built and still share much in common with what we have today. A developer has to write to those limitations.

 

[bluehaze013]

Deal with it. It's too late to talk about potential. The iPad is out now and it has 256MB. This limitation is intrinsict to the A4 processor. A mythical iPad with 512MB can not be built and still share much in common with what we have today. A developer has to write to those limitations.

See post above this ^

Incidentally I think my two bit developer theory might be right on track, found a pic of Dschwartz88's app in another thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5906744&#post5906744

 

[phpmaven]

The device running out of ram cannot be corrected other than sacrificing features and or performance of the software that needs the ram. Phones are fine with 256mb they are much lower resolution and don't use nearly as much ram, you can run iphone apps on the ipad all day long without memory errors same cannot be said for ipad apps.

So are you suggesting that Apple just screwed up and forgot this wasn't a phone and didn't put enough memory in?

 

[bluehaze013]

So are you suggesting that Apple just screwed up and forgot this wasn't a phone and didn't put enough memory in?

Well it's a pretty huge oversight considering their own browser can't even function properly with the amount of ram installed wouldn't you say?

I don't think they forgot though, more likely they wanted people to have a reason to upgrade to the iPad that will come out in 6 months along with iPad OS 4.0 LOL I don't mind so much though that's why I only bought a 16gb iPad

Let me ask you this though, Do you feel 256mb of ram is enough for the iPad?

 

[err404]

The app doesn't actually crash when it runs out of memory, it essentially starts reading information off the HD making the apps sluggish and not working properly. Essentially the HD becomes the RAM.

We are going in circles. This specific error which the tread is following is NOT resulting in the behavior you describe above. The message pops up and has no impact on the performance of the app. The message that spawned this thread seams to be a bug.

This warning message has turned into a jump point for a discussion about the merits of the iPad hardware. Using the error message as a justification of insufficient RAM is misleading.

As I said, I agree that 256 is low . Beleive me, we are on the same page. I'm just trying to keep this on topic to the original post.

 

[GamecockMac]

See post above this ^

Incidentally I think my two bit developer theory might be right on track, found a pic of Dschwartz88's app in another thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5906744&#post5906744

So since you obviously can't counter the guy's arguments, you have to resort to a personal attack? Nice.

Just out of curiosity, why don't you post some screenshots of your app? You know, just to demonstrate that you aren't simply talking out of your ass?

 

[bluehaze013]

We are going in circles. This specific error which the tread is following is NOT resulting in the behavior you describe above. The message pops up and has no impact on the performance of the app. The message that spawned this thread seams to be a bug.

This warning message has turned into a jump point for a discussion about the merits of the iPad hardware. Using the error message as a justification of insufficient RAM is misleading.

As I said, I agree that 256 is low . Beleive me, we are on the same page. I'm just trying to keep this on topic to the original post.

Oh but it is, as the self proclaimed developer himself suggests:

Agreed. I haven't developed for the iPhone in over two years but this seems to me like a slacker developer who didn't turn off verbose error reporting on the iPad. .

The discussion evolved into "slacker" developers being at fault for not turning off the error reporting, you see, all turning that off is going to do is remove the popup the program will still continue to page information off the HD and the performance will still suffer. It's a problem due to the lack of RAM.

I can live with it, I like the device enough to "deal with it" as you suggest however i'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist because if all we ever did was pretend these problems didn't exist they would never get fixed and we would all have nothing but 256mb iPads for the rest of our lives!

 

[GamecockMac]

I can live with it, I like the device enough to "deal with it" as you suggest however i'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist because if all we ever did was pretend these problems didn't exist they would never get fixed and we would all have nothing but 256mb iPads for the rest of our lives!

Well, we all know that's not true, because as you've boldly proclaimed in numerous threads, we'll be seeing iPad 2.0 in the first half of October. Right?

 

[bluehaze013]

So since you obviously can't counter the guy's arguments, you have to resort to a personal attack? Nice.

Just out of curiosity, why don't you post some screenshots of your app? You know, just to demonstrate that you aren't simply talking out of your ass?

I don't think it's a personal attack at all, the guy attacked my character, proclaiming himself to be superior because he is a "developer" and me to "not know what i'm talking about" if you are going to proclaim yourself a developer and more knowledgable than everyone else on the subject at hand then you should actually be a developer, all this guy is is a guy who paid 100 bucks for the developer package. As he said in the previous post in this thread:

Agreed. I haven't developed for the iPhone in over two years

He hasn't developed in 2 years, well this post was from him 2 years ago:

Hey Guys,

I just got accepted and paid the $100 ($105 if you include tax....) and am being sent the developer package. My question is now what? I need some help getting started with coding.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/460169/

Seems rather self explanatory...

 

[MRU]

1 thread & 1 app reporting low memory and it's crisis central. Quick put the nation in Terror Alert

 

[bluehaze013]

Well, we all know that's not true, because as you've boldly proclaimed in numerous threads, we'll be seeing iPad 2.0 in the first half of October. Right?

Actually I said in the Fall with iPad OS 4.0 LOL and I guess we'll know in 6 months or so!

Anyways I got to go to bed, gonna go read a book on my iPad and fall asleep!

Cheers man.

 

[err404]

The discussion evolved into "slacker" developers being at fault for not turning off the error reporting, you see, all turning that off is going to do is remove the popup the program will still continue to page information off the HD and the performance will still suffer. It's a problem due to the lack of RAM.

Actually I've been seeing this issue on more then just the iPad since apps created using the 3.2 SDK have been released. I never said that the developer is at fault or doing a poor job. The error seems to stem from changes in the SDK's error reporting. That said, the developer may have the opportunity to prevent worrisome pop-ups from being displayed to the user, especially since the root cause of the pop-up is not resulting in an observable decrease in performance.

Or do you also feel that Windows developers should display warning messages every time Windows is unable to allocate the full virtual heap size into physical RAM?

 

[macduke]

Prove it. Otherwise it's just a lot of wasted ones and zeros.

Way to dodge every question, smartass.

What is there to prove? iFixit did the breakdown, it's 256mb of RAM in a 2010 portable computer. It doesn't take a wizard to figure that one out. 5x resolution, fact. iPad has same RAM as a cell phone. If you actually had an iPad, you would know that Safari runs out of memory all the time. This happens in older full-size computers all the time, but unlike those systems, we can't upgrade anything on the iPad, aside from external protection. Modern websites need more memory than they did in 2001, fact. No matter how you code it, the app doesn't have enough space to store the media-rich content of 2010 because there is not enough room. Try opening a couple pages on Safari on the Mac. I used the Apple start page, MacRumors front page, and ESPN. Only 3 tabs equates to 139mb, over half the RAM in the iPad with three tabs! Open a few more tabs to max out at 9, and it jumps up to 243mb. Oh snap! Now there's no room for system resources, time to dump a tab! We wouldn't have to do this with more RAM, now would we? Unless you're suggesting that Apple force all websites to cut down on their content to fit within the small 256mb footprint?

The only potential save I see for this is using virtual "swap" memory, which caches the RAM onto the flash memory for later use. I believe this may be how Apple implements fast app switching in OS 4.0? This, coupled with Webkit2's ability to have each tab running in it's own process MAY fix this issue, but not until Autumn! Apple may have chose to use less RAM to save money, knowing that it wouldn't matter as much down the road. But they are still sacrificing the user experience until they fix it. Even if you don't think that Apple cheaped out on RAM, you can't argue that they shipped some buggy software, which is kinda cheap, but also the tax we pay as early adopters.

 

[DSchwartz88]

See post above this ^

Incidentally I think my two bit developer theory might be right on track, found a pic of Dschwartz88's app in another thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5906744&#post5906744

So you pull up a thread about an app I didn't even push to market? My lord it's like talking with babies here. What happened to the old days of macrumors? I'm kinda sad I came back to this.

 

[DSchwartz88]

Way to dodge every question, smartass.

What is there to prove? iFixit did the breakdown, it's 256mb of RAM in a 2010 portable computer. It doesn't take a wizard to figure that one out. 5x resolution, fact. iPad has same RAM as a cell phone. If you actually had an iPad, you would know that Safari runs out of memory all the time. This happens in older full-size computers all the time, but unlike those systems, we can't upgrade anything on the iPad, aside from external protection. Modern websites need more memory than they did in 2001, fact. No matter how you code it, the app doesn't have enough space to store the media-rich content of 2010 because there is not enough room. Try opening a couple pages on Safari on the Mac. I used the Apple start page, MacRumors front page, and ESPN. Only 3 tabs equates to 139mb, over half the RAM in the iPad with three tabs! Open a few more tabs to max out at 9, and it jumps up to 243mb. Oh snap! Now there's no room for system resources, time to dump a tab! We wouldn't have to do this with more RAM, now would we? Unless you're suggesting that Apple force all websites to cut down on their content to fit within the small 256mb

well you aren't loading any flash content

 

[Consultant]

1 thread & 1 app reporting low memory and it's crisis central. Quick put the nation in Terror Alert

I might have to make an app that pops up the message: Don't Panic!

Wait a second, isn't that just a saying from some guy with a towel? =p

 

[Simgar988]

So you pull up a thread about an app I didn't even push to market? My lord it's like talking with babies here. What happened to the old days of macrumors? I'm kinda sad I came back to this.

In my experience the nice people are at appleinsider. If only they had some iPhone, ipad, iPod subsections!

 

[Dr Gonzo]

1 thread & 1 app reporting low memory and it's crisis central.

This.

 

[Koalaboy]

This thread is the perfect example of 'a little knowledge' being 'a dangerous thing'.

I suggest all of those people who think 256MB isn't enough, either:

a) Don't buy an iPad

or

b) Don't open too many tabs

The world will be a happy place once more

 

[CanonicalKoi]

Dated April 8th from the GoSkyWatch website - http://www.gosoftworks.com/GoSkyWatch/Support.html

"The iPad version is a time limited trial version and will be removed from the app store soon." (bolding added)

So a trial version of software that's not running as expected? Shocking. If folks are having problems, it can be reported directly to GoSkyWatch via the email address listed on the link above.

 

[diabolic]

This thread is the perfect example of 'a little knowledge' being 'a dangerous thing'.

I suggest all of those people who think 256MB isn't enough, either:

a) Don't buy an iPad

or

b) Don't open too many tabs

The world will be a happy place once more

Definitely. Strangely enough, if I have a lot of pages open in Safari, and just 4 or 5 won't do it, my wifi works fast enough for reloading that it's not an inconvenience and certainly not annoying. People are really having to nitpick for these complaints.

 

[shujin]

What is this post? really? Do you have a brain or any device that can assist you on thinking?

Are you suggesting that Apple should add extra memory to millions and millions of devices because some retarded developer can't code? Do you get this memory warning when running any Apple app including some memory hogging apps like google maps? Yes? No?

Do you know that the Xbox 360 has only 512MB of ram? surprised? yes? no? weird isn't it? Those MS people must be some cheapasses! They just want to intentionally slow down their console!

Some of the posters here are just brain dead. There can't be just any other explanation.

The ps3 has a combined ram of 512 mb. I really don't think only having 256 mb is a big deal. I have seen that same warning when playing we rule. I am not a developer so I can't say why it does this. When I do get the error the app still runs fine.

 

[err404]

This thread is the perfect example of 'a little knowledge' being 'a dangerous thing'.

I suggest all of those people who think 256MB isn't enough, either:

a) Don't buy an iPad

or

b) Don't open too many tabs

The world will be a happy place once more

I think for the time being 256 is ok, but the main concern for some in this tread is how future proof the device is.
Look at the iPhone 3G compared to the 3GS. The biggest improvement in the user experience comes from the extra RAM (128 vs 256), not the CPU.
I fully expect that in 18 months my current iPad will feel sluggish for this same reason.
BTW - This really isn't a complaint as much as an observation of where weaknesses exist. Let's not ignore them just to not offend Steve.

 

[lily69]

Most of us will just leave the head in the sand.

I guess in OS 4, they will have to start to use Virtual Memory/swap file etc, problem solved.