Reading the latest DJTT blog post, I noticed the claim “There is no RAM.”
Just wanted to point out (as an iPhone and soon iPad developer) that iPhone-like devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) definitely do have RAM. Apple does not advertise that fact, because it does not deem it important. (They don’t advertise processor speed either for the iPhone and iPod Touch.)
The iPhone 3GS has 256MB of RAM, while the earlier iPhones and all the iPod touches all had 128MB of RAM. I won’t know for sure until I get my hands on one (unfortunately even developers can’t get 'em early), but I imagine it’ll come with either 512MB or 1024MB of RAM.
More importantly than the size of the RAM though, is the fact there is RAM. The suggestion that it uses the main flash memory as a “scratch / swap drive” is false. If it were true, it’d be really bad for performance, but thankfully, that is not the case.
it’s hard to believe people are thinking the iphone or the ipad don’t have RAM
i looked on the “technical specs” page of the iphone and of course like mentioned they don’t list it. I think they don’t list it cause they don’t want people to make a comparision to computer specs.
Just like everything else, its not only important how much ram it has but how efficient the programs (or program in the case of the iphone (ipad too?) makes use of it.
Yeah, like charo said, Apple doesn’t want you to compare the iPhone (&iPad) by its specs. They want you to compare the experience.
Take, for example, the iPhone 3GS and the Nexus One by Google. In terms of specs, the Nexus wins with its 1GHz CPU over the iPhone’s 600MHz. Yet, thanks to the superior OS and lack of multitasking, the 3GS is a lot snappier.
Apple doesn’t want the comparison to be based on the specs, where Google wins, but instead on the experience, where Apple wins. Apple has always been a company that defines itself and its product on the user experience, rather than tech specs.
You won’t find anything on Apple’s site that confirms or denies the existence (and amount) of RAM on the iPad. But trust me (or any of the many reports & spec dumps from other iPhone developers or hackers) on this, the iPhone has RAM, and so will the iPad.
Your message is precisely why Apple doesn’t live by specs. On paper, you’re right. In real life, everybody is going to forget about those devices you just mentioned while the iPad is going to revolutionize an industry, just like the iPhone did.
I think everyone is forgetting about the mess that the macbook Air turned into on revolutionizing laptops or whatever they said it would do.
I don’t think Apple has provided as revolutionary of an experience as people want to say they have. There are people who will buy it because it’s apple, but they’ve disappointed a LOT of consumers too. They should have gone further, then even I’d be excited.
I let my own experiences speak for itself before I go rambling about how amazing something is. I use a MBP and think its amazing, this is also coming from a career tech who has his MCSE, and works almost exclusively with Windows in a business environment. My views on Apple are unbiased.
When coding for the iPhone/iPod touch/iFuture gadget you find out pretty quickly that there IS RAM because you are responsible for the memory management. Whatever RAM you allocate you have to give back the system. If you have a memory leak and run out of RAM your app will crash. It will not page the RAM to the flash memory, so when you are out of physical RAM you have to release any memory that you don’t need.
In order to play a sound or view an image you have to allocate RAM for it and get it copied into RAM.
Sorry but i hardly think the iPad will revolutionise the industry. I really dont see people buying this to replace their laptops/netbooks or whatever. The iPhone was a whole different ball game. The computer industry doesn’t have the same ‘glamour’ factor as the phone industry does. Alot of people buy smart phones because they’re a status symbol. People dont buy laptops/netbooks/computers in the same way.
As others have said I think the iPad will be added to the massive pile of failed apple products.
Although I think the ipad is pretty useless itself, it’s a prime example of what Apple does best; showing us the next step in tech interface in an easy to swallow pill. Nobody thought that whole Graphical User Interface and mouse thing was going to take off when the Apple ][ came out, and nobody outside the business world knew what a smartphone was till the iphone came out. Now everyone’s gonna scramble to make the next “ipad killer” and we’ll all have some dope new tech to play with!