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Memory Hog

andyblila

andyblila

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 8, 2008
1,272
31
On My iPhone, or my iPad?
Has anyone noticed that the iPad doesn't regulate it's memory as well as the iPhone? I think that there may be a memory leak as well. I have the Memory Info app installed and frequently see only 35-55MB of RAM left. My iPhone doesn't eat up that much memory. I have to frequently use the app to clear out the RAM. Anyone else seeing this issue?
 
You think they'd have figured it out with the iPhone being out for three years already. Plus Apple is not allowing any more Apps that clears memory, so only we lucky ones that already own them are benefiting.
 
andyblila said:
You think they'd have figured it out with the iPhone being out for three years already. Plus Apple is not allowing any more Apps that clears memory, so only we lucky ones that already own them are benefiting.
Click to expand...

There is no excuse for apple not using at LEAST 512 mb of memory. No good excuse, anyway.
 
andyblila said:
You think they'd have figured it out with the iPhone being out for three years already. Plus Apple is not allowing any more Apps that clears memory, so only we lucky ones that already own them are benefiting.
Click to expand...

Well, thats deep. I Didn't know that.
 
Are you having performance issues that require memory clearing, or are you periodically checking memory even though you aren't experiencing any slow performace?

If the iPad is performing at acceptable speed, then does it really matter if the remaining memory is low?
 
Night Spring said:
Are you having performance issues that require memory clearing, or are you periodically checking memory even though you aren't experiencing any slow performace?

If the iPad is performing at acceptable speed, then does it really matter if the remaining memory is low?
Click to expand...

When I notice it getting sluggish, which is surprisingly often, I check the memory. It's frequently down to under 30MB.
 
andyblila said:
My iPhone doesn't eat up that much memory. I have to frequently use the app to clear out the RAM. Anyone else seeing this issue?
Click to expand...

Do you see any real benefit of clearing the memory, other than perceptual? It seems to me often the memory is being used for cache — especially by Mobile Safari.
 
mikethebigo said:
There is no excuse for apple not using at LEAST 512 mb of memory. No good excuse, anyway.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I believe the A4's "system on a chip" design has the memory on the same physical chip as the CPU. So I would assume it's more expensive and more difficult to just add another 256MB (compared to other devices that use standard memory chips). So, I'm not sure if that's a "good" excuse or not, but it's probably safe to say that this is more difficult than most people imagine.

That said, I would completely agree that memory is the iPad's biggest weakness and I'm worried about how it'll handle the new multitasking features in OS 4.0 (maybe that's why they need several extra months for the iPad 4.0 release). Yeah, I know, they're designed to minimize additional memory usage. But my iPad can't even run the NPR app without crashing two out of three times.
 
Your mind is telling you that the iPad need more memory. You want it ti have 512mb when it does not need that much
 
One thing to keep in mind is that the iPad's larger screen size means apps and the OS need to use more RAM to store and manipulate those additional pixels (about 5x as many of them), and with all the Quartz compositing, Core Animation layers, etc. many of those pixels need to be stored multiple times in multiple buffers. The iPad absolutely should have had 512 MB, 256 is barely adequate to do what it does now, and it is going to cripple it for future OS updates and apps. But that's what being an early adopter means, I expected this generation of iPad to be short-lived, which is why I got the cheapest model. Having said that, I have not noticed any sluggishness or slowdowns on mine, just a lack of cacheing for Safari sites (which they might be able to improve on somewhat in software).
 
Given the iPhoneOS doesn't have much in the way of state when an app is not running, why load a tool to view/clear memory, rather than just turn it off and back on? I admittedly don't own one (yet), but is loading a (now banned) tool, running some memory clearing operation, and quitting it, faster than just powercycling the device?
 
flyguy206 said:
Your mind is telling you that the iPad need more memory. You want it ti have 512mb when it does not need that much
Click to expand...

You have no idea what you're talking about. Take Safari as a good example. The multiple "tabs" that it appears to keep in memory are not actually kept in memory, they're purged when more memory is needed and this is noticeable when you select the page and it requires to reload before it will display. When a purge happens, that page's content is lost and what you're seeing in Safari's 9-page layout a static jpeg. If you take a closer look at this you'll notice that your iPad is purging almost all of these pages very quickly after the user changes to another page, which is proof that the browser is insufficiently equipped with memory.

The app crashes would also suggest that the iPad needs more memory, however this may be corrected in an update.
 
Ok, regardless of the 256MB vs 512MB being the right amount fight -

Keep in mind that the pad runs iPhone OS 3.2.... it's the only device to do so, and the changes to the Os were made by a team outside of the normal iPhone OS group. It's ENTIRELY possible that they introduced a few memory leaks in the core APIs when building those 3.2 changes/extensions, and that's why we're not seeing them in our iPhone running 3.1.x.

I'm hoping we'll see a 3.2.1 soon that fixes the memory issues.
 
2002cbr600f4i said:
Ok, regardless of the 256MB vs 512MB being the right amount fight -

Keep in mind that the pad runs iPhone OS 3.2.... it's the only device to do so, and the changes to the Os were made by a team outside of the normal iPhone OS group. It's ENTIRELY possible that they introduced a few memory leaks in the core APIs when building those 3.2 changes/extensions, and that's why we're not seeing them in our iPhone running 3.1.x.

I'm hoping we'll see a 3.2.1 soon that fixes the memory issues.
Click to expand...

Memory leaks are exactly what I think is happening.
 
HiRez said:
One thing to keep in mind is that the iPad's larger screen size means apps and the OS need to use more RAM to store and manipulate those additional pixels (about 5x as many of them), and with all the Quartz compositing, Core Animation layers, etc. many of those pixels need to be stored multiple times in multiple buffers. The iPad absolutely should have had 512 MB, 256 is barely adequate to do what it does now, and it is going to cripple it for future OS updates and apps. But that's what being an early adopter means, I expected this generation of iPad to be short-lived, which is why I got the cheapest model. Having said that, I have not noticed any sluggishness or slowdowns on mine, just a lack of cacheing for Safari sites (which they might be able to improve on somewhat in software).
Click to expand...

+1. This is also why I bought the base model. It is still awesome.
 
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