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What makes iPad so snappy and fast?

X

XciteMe

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 21, 2009
450
1
Santa Monica, CA
Forgive my "technological ignorance" but I'm very impressed by the speed of the iPad OS...

I will give you an example. On my iPhone, when you opened and closed apps in quick succession, or even if not in succession, it would "hiccup" sometimes and the transition from the app screen, to the shrinking app making way to the dashboard, wasn't very instant.

With iPad, you can enter and exit apps one after another and the transition to home screen is so quick!

Also, even things like menu navigation, is fast!!!

Why?
 
XciteMe said:
Forgive my "technological ignorance" but I'm very impressed by the speed of the iPad OS...

I will give you an example. On my iPhone, when you opened and closed apps in quick succession, or even if not in succession, it would "hiccup" sometimes and the transition from the app screen, to the shrinking app making way to the dashboard, wasn't very instant.

With iPad, you can enter and exit apps one after another and the transition to home screen is so quick!

Also, even things like menu navigation, is fast!!!

Why?
Click to expand...
It's the A4 chip in it. The 3GS and iPad have the same amount of ram.
 
It's magical ... the speed comes from Disney in the form of dreams and pixie dust.
 
Reportedly the iPhone 4 will be just as fast which is great news. My iPhone 3G is really feeling old now. I'm not sure whether to upgrade though... I'm actually thinking about ditching the iPhone and upgrading to an iPad 3G with unlimited data and just any old phone.

Will probably crumble and get it though :p
 
they've put an os meant for less powerfull machines (phones) in a powerhouse machine.
If you put windows 95 on a modern machine, you'd be amazed how fast it is (to give you a BSOD)
 
spammerhamster said:
they've put an os meant for less powerfull machines (phones) in a powerhouse machine.
If you put windows 95 on a modern machine, you'd be amazed how fast it is (to give you a BSOD)
Click to expand...

Well... No. Despite the challenges of doing this (drivers), it may not be fast or as fast as one might expect.

Sure you can toss fast hardware at software, but optimization is where you get real speed or 'snappiness.'

iOS is optimized for the iPad and iPhone. That is the advantage of controlling the hardware and software. This is where much of the snappiness comes from. It has very little to due with the intention of the software. Remember, iOS shares much of its underpinnings with OS X.
 
Magic.

pondie84 said:
Reportedly the iPhone 4 will be just as fast which is great news. My iPhone 3G is really feeling old now. I'm not sure whether to upgrade though... I'm actually thinking about ditching the iPhone and upgrading to an iPad 3G with unlimited data and just any old phone.

Will probably crumble and get it though :p
Click to expand...
You can't have unlimited data anymore. I'm assuming that you're in the U.S.

calderone said:
Remember, iOS shares much of its underpinnings with OS X.
Click to expand...
What is "OS X?" It seems vaguely familiar but I can't put my finger on it.
 
appleguy123 said:
Magic.


You can't have unlimited data anymore. I'm assuming that you're in the U.S.


What is "OS X?" It seems vaguely familiar but I can't put my finger on it.
Click to expand...

You can. It is still showing up for me on a never activated iPad.

And haha. I happen to use OS X everyday, I don't need Apple to toss updates at me every week.
 
Dude, seriously? I know you like to start new threads every other hour, but was this one really necessary? Did you even do any research on the iPad before buying it? Obviously it's the 1GHz A4 processor. The 3G's 412MHz and the 3GS's 600MHz processors are obviously going to pale in comparison to the iPad...
 
ngenerator said:
Dude, seriously? I know you like to start new threads every other hour, but was this one really necessary? Did you even do any research on the iPad before buying it? Obviously it's the 1GHz A4 processor. The 3G's 412GHz and the 3GS's 600GHz processors are obviously going to pale in comparison to the iPad...
Click to expand...

If you're going to criticize people for not knowing something about an Apple product and then asking about it on this forum, then you're in the wrong place, BUDDY. You're in the wrong place indeed.
 
Just saying, two minutes of research and a junior high math class would show that 412<600<1000.

And yes, the fools on this forum have finally outnumbered those of us with more than half a brain and a HS diploma, you win!
 
appleguy123 said:
You can't have unlimited data anymore. I'm assuming that you're in the U.S.
Click to expand...

I'm not :). Australia. I assumed there'd be no unlimited data plans for the iPad (since there are none for the iPhone here) so bought a WiFi. Now I'm regretting it haha. Will save up and buy the 3G iPad later in the year and sell off my WiFi model.
 
ngenerator said:
Just saying, two minutes of research and a junior high math class would show that 412<600<1000.

And yes, the fools on this forum have finally outnumbered those of us with more than half a brain and a HS diploma, you win!
Click to expand...
Ah, there's the weird thing about studying a subject in greater detail. You're absolutely right that, at junior high maths level then the 412<600<1000 is definitely true. Once you've done a Computer Science degree though, with a significant amount of Computer Engineering on the syllabus, you discover that the relationship between 412, 600 and 1000 is far more complicated and that those numbers on their own are virtually meaningless. It's most definitely not a given that 412<600<1000 (with respect to clock speeds and processor performance).

A similar thing happens when studying higher level physics. You start from high school certainties about the world around you and expect further study to peel back the layers and show you the world in more detail. What actually happens is that somewhere along the way, typically in a university final year quantum mechanics course, the whole of reality seems to disappear in a puff of smoke in front of your very eyes.

- Julian
 
The iPad is fast and snappy because it doesn't have a "file system", like OSX or Windows. Therefore the iPad OS is not stressing with reading and writing information. It is also using flash storage, compared to a hard disk drive. You put those two together and you get a really fast and snappy device.

The A4 processors most significant asset is it's low power consumption, battery life improvements. It is also a "real" processor, and thus can do the job better than the iPhone.
 
ngenerator said:
Just saying, two minutes of research and a junior high math class would show that 412<600<1000.
Click to expand...

true, but you're falling victim to the mhz myth, i.e. you're assuming you can compare clockspeeds across different architectures, which you can't. Now, as it so happens, that 412 mhz processor in the 3G is a slower architecture than the 600 in the 3GS, which is slower than the 1000 in the ipad. But since they're all different processors, it's not a linear relationship, and you can't, for example, assume that the 1Ghz A4 in the iPad is the same speed as the 1GHz snapdragon processor you're seeing in so many android phones.

So in short, you're right, but just reducing it to those numbers oversimplifies the comparison among processors.
 
ukyo229 said:
The iPad is fast and snappy because it doesn't have a "file system", like OSX or Windows. Therefore the iPad OS is not stressing with reading and writing information. It is also using flash storage, compared to a hard disk drive. You put those two together and you get a really fast and snappy device.

The A4 processors most significant asset is it's low power consumption, battery life improvements. It is also a "real" processor, and thus can do the job better than the iPhone.
Click to expand...

Such a huge misconception. All OS have filesystems including iOS, only difference is that in iOS, the filesystems are sandboxed from the users, meaning they can't access it directly. This means almost excellent security since nothing can interfere with each other and almost hard to infect as well.

What iOS is missing is an application to actually read the file system or an application to create an accessible file system. Apps like GoodReader allows you to access the file system but locked to Goodreader's sandboxed folder only on the iPad.

If you jailbreak iPad, you can use iFile app to access the whole file system with root access.

You're right about the flash, that alone can provide huge performance gains from the typical computer with spinning drives. A4 itself is very fast with low latency access to the RAM (256MB) due to the RAM being packaged directly on top of the A4 chip.

But most of all, iOS is specifically tuned to the hardware. Apple knows every single detail inside the hardware and can optimize the software to fit the spec and remove anything that's not being used. Not to mention, you can't really multitask on iOS (third party restrictions), a full view app has nearly full resource access so it's fast and sleek with nothing else interfering with it.

Imagine you have two computers, both running XP OS, all same parts.

Now imagine PC 1 have SSD in it, no antivirus/firewall/malware crap running in the background. Now imagine you can only run one application at same time.

Compare that to PC2 with 7200rpm drive, full antivirus/firewall/antimalware running with multiple applications at same time.

Take a guess which one will be the fastest, now imagine PC1 without the SSD. Is it still faster? So you can see how the "integration" of both software/hardware can affect the user's experience.

That's what Apple is excellent at.

Also: A4 isn't more "real" processor than the processor in the previous iPhones. They are basically the same technology with some tweaking and latest fab technologies. A4 is faster, customized and tuned for power efficiency.
 
Am I the only one who hates any form of lag in UI animations and transitions?

I even noticed a little lag while the girl in the iPhone 4 commercial sending an SMS.
When the text jumps up into the bubble and then moves to the right into the conversation it wasn't totally smooth.
 
snappy go lucky

"please tell me, steve: why exactly is the iPad so snappy, happy, super über awesome?"

"well, good question! that is, because we have put all our very, very best stuff in there, and an extra extra large portion of magic on top! that is why so many folks throughout the whole wide world love our iPad SO MUCH! isn't that awesome?!"
:rolleyes:
 
I thought the answer was quite obvious.

It's doing VERY little in the background.

You basically have a modern 1Ghz CPU doing nothing else but running the 1 program you are looking at and using on the screen NOW.

Also, the programs have been carefully coded just for the specific hardware.

Both these things means you are seeing how fast a chip should be if it has nothing else to do.

Remember how fast things like Amiga's could be, and they were only 8Mhz not 1000Mhz !

We've just got used to sloppy bloated codeing these days, (plus all the junk they have to run in the background)

Kinda like how a child can learn things so easy as they have sod all else to worry about, you are trying to learn the Piano and you also have to think about dinner tonight, how work it going, can you pay the rent this month, hows the pension doing, the argument with your partner last night.

Life is much easier when there is only 1 thing to do :)
 
Piggie said:
I thought the answer was quite obvious.

It's doing VERY little in the background.

You basically have a modern 1Ghz CPU doing nothing else but running the 1 program you are looking at and using on the screen NOW.

Also, the programs have been carefully coded just for the specific hardware.

Both these things means you are seeing how fast a chip should be if it has nothing else to do.

Remember how fast things like Amiga's could be, and they were only 8Mhz not 1000Mhz !

We've just got used to sloppy bloated codeing these days, (plus all the junk they have to run in the background)

Kinda like how a child can learn things so easy as they have sod all else to worry about, you are trying to learn the Piano and you also have to think about dinner tonight, how work it going, can you pay the rent this month, hows the pension doing, the argument with your partner last night.

Life is much easier when there is only 1 thing to do :)
Click to expand...

Except, it isn't necessarily doing only one thing. In addition to the foreground app there are background processes maintaing various things (network connectivity, power management, etc). The OS doesn't disappear when you run an app.

You also have to factor in email checking, music playing, etc etc.

Even so, the iPad has been super smooth for me running various things in the background with Backgrounder.

The fact is, the software has been written for the hardware which explains much of the snappiness.
 
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