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iPad Air Virtual memory
- Thread starter R!TTER
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This is the main feature I’m looking forward to. But I just realized as if I need my Apps to load faster off my 2018 11” Pro. 0.5 seconds vs 0.7 seconds I mean everything launches immediately anyways.
As @Digitalguy mentioned in another thread, perhaps Apple is expecting more swapping/SSD wear on the Air 4 with 4GB RAM compared to the Air 5 with 8GB.
I think my desktop SSD does around 50GB host writes per day. Estimate 3x write amplification and that would kill a 64GB SSD with 3,000 P/E cycles in around 3.5 years. Meanwhile, 256GB will last 14 years under the same scenario.
So iPad Pro M1 with 128 GB can have virtual memory, but no mention for the 64 GB iPad Air M1, and only mention iPad Air A14 with 256 GB storage minimum, this is confusing.
They announced on the keynote that it’s coming to M1 iPads so I expect Air 5th gen will have it (on 256GB at least).
Of course, another possibility is that Air 4th gen on the footnotes is a typo and it should’ve been 5th gen.
That makes more sense to me than randomly including the A14 based Air, but not the A15 based mini. 256 limitation is probably because 64GB is considered too small, while the Pros obviously start at 128GB.
Everything is possible but I wouldn't be surprised that the treat the mini differently from other iPads, because it's smaller and does not have a smart connector
That may be a consideration, but then even aside from the mini, why include the 4GB A14 based Air 4 but not the 6GB A12X 2020 iPP? I would have thought the RAM was a much more pressing bottleneck than chip performance (and the A12X is marginally ahead of the A14 for multicore performance and graphics).
Very interested going forward to see how a 64gb iPad Air M1 will be impacted vs a 256gb one that gets this, I presume just more usability with apps not needing to reload as much but curious how effective/notable having the ability is. Then again if you were really trying to be a full time iPad user even for barebones productivity, its not hard to justify hopping up to the 256gb over a 64gb machine.