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iPad Pro Why 16 GB RAM is awesome for average joe

U

UBS28

macrumors 68030
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Oct 2, 2012
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I suppose no more constant closing of apps in the background with the 16 GB of RAM. Apps will probably not have to be reloaded anymore.

So not just "pro" users will benefit from it.
 
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As much as I think it's neat, I always chuckle because on all my tablets, regardless to specs I close every application as soon as I'm done using it, I never multitask. Have no idea why, just my own personal quirk. I hate having apps idle in the background, even if they're not "technically" using resources, they still kinda are.
 
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Yeah i ain’t paying £550 for 16GB RAM just so apps won’t need to reload.

i got the 256GB model for £850 which is enough storage for me. I will never use 1TB so can’t even say it’s worth it for that too. I’m not dropping £550 more just for RAM.

know how much it is for 8GB LPDDR4 RAM to put in a laptop? £40. A 1TB SSD is ~£100-150. I know it’s not the EXACT same part Apple uses but it’s the closest we can compare it to. Apple is making a HUGE profit on people they convince to cough up the money just for an extra 8GB. I’d guess they are charging about £300 too much and that’s still allowing for a profit most likely.

Absolutely huge margins but hey that’s why they are the most valuable company in the world. People will pay it so Apple get away with it.

with that £550 i’m not spending on acquiring RAM that would cover about 65% of a new iPad in a couple years! By the time i NEED 16GB i could just buy a new iPad.

or maybe i could buy myself a magic keyboard and apple pencil! That’s much better value and use to me.
 
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krspkbl said:
Yeah i ain’t paying £550 for 16GB RAM just so apps won’t need to reload.

i got the 256GB model for £850 which is enough storage for me. I will never use 1TB so can’t even say it’s worth it for that too. I’m not dropping £550 more just for RAM.

know how much it is for 8GB LPDDR4 RAM to put in a laptop? £40. A 1TB SSD is ~£100-150. I know it’s not the EXACT same part Apple uses but it’s the closest we can compare it to. Apple is making a HUGE profit on people they convince to cough up the money just for an extra 8GB. I’d guess they are charging about £300 too much and that’s still allowing for a profit most likely.

Absolutely huge margins but hey that’s why they are the most valuable company in the world. People will pay it so Apple get away with it.
Click to expand...

Right... I think thats a good point, there's certainly nothing wrong with anyone spending the extra money for the extra ram, or storage, or whatever, but for most people it's probably a poor investment. I could see how for some being able to have 50 applications all idling in the background with immediate access is nice, possibly even important to them... but does the typical user function in that way? Doubt it. I would imagine the typical user has a handful of apps the switch back and forth to.

Safari, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix is probably your base.

To anyone who wants it, I'm glad it's available, but from a value proposition it's difficult to most to justify.
 
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8 GB will be plenty for that as well for average users. If you're an average user you don't need to fork out that much money for 1TB. I have a pretty large photo library but it's all in the cloud. Other than that I don't have the need for much local storage. So why spend more when the base model already has twice the memory of my previous iPad Pro (which worked pretty well for my uses anyway).
 
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isoft7 said:
Right... I think thats a good point, there's certainly nothing wrong with anyone spending the extra money for the extra ram, or storage, or whatever, but for most people it's probably a poor investment. I could see how for some being able to have 50 applications all idling in the background with immediate access is nice, possibly even important to them... but does the typical user function in that way? Doubt it. I would imagine the typical user has a handful of apps the switch back and forth to.

Safari, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix is probably your base.

To anyone who wants it, I'm glad it's available, but from a value proposition it's difficult to most to justify.
Click to expand...
I’m mostly gonna be doing safari, twitter, netflix, youtube, and listening to music. the most demanding things i’ll do would be messing about with Garageband, light photo/video editing, and playing some casual games. Could I afford to pay £550 more? Yeah but i’m just gonna buy what i feel i need and what i think is good value. But sure there are people out there who make waaay more money than me so maybe dropping that money is nothing to them. Like you say it’s good the choice is there but for most people it’s gonna be poor value.
 
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isoft7 said:
As much as I think it's neat, I always chuckle because on all my tablets, regardless to specs I close every application as soon as I'm done using it, I never multitask. Have no idea why, just my own personal quirk. I hate having apps idle in the background, even if they're not "technically" using resources, they still kinda are.
Click to expand...
Factually speaking, more resources are used on closing an app than leaving it in the background
 
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isoft7 said:
Right... I think thats a good point, there's certainly nothing wrong with anyone spending the extra money for the extra ram, or storage, or whatever, but for most people it's probably a poor investment. I could see how for some being able to have 50 applications all idling in the background with immediate access is nice, possibly even important to them... but does the typical user function in that way? Doubt it. I would imagine the typical user has a handful of apps the switch back and forth to.

Safari, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix is probably your base.

To anyone who wants it, I'm glad it's available, but from a value proposition it's difficult to most to justify.
Click to expand...

I think if you have 50 apps idling, you're still gonna get reloads on 16GB unless Apple implements swap.

Heck, if I use YouTube on a 4GB RAM iPad, it's pretty much a guarantee that all my Safari tabs will reload.

With that said, yes, for most users, it's not worth spending extra for RAM if you don't need 1TB storage.
 
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casperes1996 said:
Factually speaking, more resources are used on closing an app than leaving it in the background
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've heard Craig Federighi say this before, and obviously what qualifications do I have to argue with the senior vice president of software engineering for Apple lol... I'd have to be an idiot to try. But I'm old school. Certain applications, even in Apples ecosystem have the potential of leading to memory leaks that would overtime clog resources. Far far less of an issue than it used to be, but like I said I'm old school.
 
axboi87 said:
Also depends on how long you intend to keep the tablet. I have a 2017 10.5" Pro and I remember people saying the same thing about what is now a measly 4gb of ram, but it's kept this thing going now 5 years later, with no real need to replace it (yet) for at least another 2 (for my needs)
Click to expand...
5 and a half year for my 2015 pro... at that time 4GB was massive for iPad... now it's normal, but still good... but others things don't age as well...
16GB is very future proof but problem with future proofing is that at some point other things become weak points
(in the old ipads lightning port, pencil 1, to some extent CPU, lack of compatibility with new accessories etc.).
Even the M1 could be improved with centered webcam, maybe better face ID, better screen coming to the 11 pro, bigger screen for those that would like that... Or even Apple moving to new sizes like 12in and 14in for the pro at some point, and all accessories going with that....
So it's very hard to completely future proof for many years (like 10 years for instance), let alone, after a couple of years, the loss of warranty, apple care and battery degradation (which can be replaced for a charge for up to 5 years after sales of new devices end).
 
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UBS28 said:
I suppose no more constant closing of apps in the background with the 16 GB of RAM. Apps will probably not have to be reloaded anymore.

So not just "pro" users will benefit from it.
Click to expand...
MacOS runs fine on 8GB RAM for most uses. 16GB on the dumbed-down iPad OS is definitely over kill. 8GB is more than enough.
 
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4GB IPP 2018 here - I never even pay attention to whether apps from way back in my multitasking are loaded in the memory or reloaded.

If they're loaded - great, they load pretty much instantly. If they're not loaded - great, still load pretty much instantly.

Really the only real benefits of these RAM upgrades are for true power users who have multiple (3 or more) intensive apps running at the same time all the time - say LumaFusion with 4k files, simultaneously making high definition thumbnails and at the same time doing high amounts of heavy I/O.

iPadOS is so much of a limiting factor at this point that I think if i gave the average joe e.g. my dad my 2018 IPP 11 and the latest IPP 11 and told him to use them both for a regular day, he'd probably not notice a difference at all.
 
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axboi87 said:
Also depends on how long you intend to keep the tablet. I have a 2017 10.5" Pro and I remember people saying the same thing about what is now a measly 4gb of ram, but it's kept this thing going now 5 years later, with no real need to replace it (yet) for at least another 2 (for my needs)
Click to expand...
With 16GB and your logic(which is sane) iPP should last good 10 years, aside from battery failing/getting worn out about 2-3x times during its lifetime, which could be replaced, however, we dont know how long will other elements like mini LED backlighting and M1 components/motherboard itself last? Sure, usually its only the battery that needs to be replaced.
 
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Wesd1234 said:
Yep, 16 GB memory and 1TB storage on a flagship premium tablet is way overkill for the average joe. Average joe doesn’t load big apps workflow, and 8 GB memory is plenty to have many apps running in background with no issue.
Click to expand...
I’m obviously a nut since I just ordered the 12.9 16GB 2TB model this morning. I’m looking forward to the release of no-compromise games like Divinity Original Sin II, which even my 10.5 iPad Pro can’t play (or even buy):

apps.apple.com

‎Divinity - Original Sin 2

‎READ BEFORE PURCHASE: This is a next-gen iPad game, and WILL NOT WORK on any device not listed below. Supported devices: - iPad Pro 12.9 (2022) - iPad Pro 11 (2022) - iPad (2022) - iPad Mini (2021) - iPad Pro 11 (2021) - iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) - iPad Air (2020) - iPad Pro 11 (2020) -...
apps.apple.com
 
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The RAM upgrade is nice, but I want the additional storage a bit more. I honestly think the base 8GB will perform similarly in terms of page reloads and multi-tasking efficiencies (may not be able to offload as many pages as 16GB though).

The bigger draw for me is finally having 1TB of storage. I’ve always gotten 128/256 GB configurations of MBPs and iPads in the past. Since this will be my daily driver, I want to be able throw as much on it as possible without worry about optimizing storage.
 
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