The Apple iPad Review (2012)
by Vivek Gowri & Anand Lal Shimpi on March 28, 2012 3:14 PM ESTThe Impact of Larger Memory
Apple doubled memory capacity on the new iPad to 1GB, marking the first time in recent history that Apple's flagship product offers a similar amount of memory to the current crop of high-end Android devices. Apple's iOS can do a relatively good job with limited system memory as it will conservatively unload applications from memory in the event that it needs to free up more space. iOS does not support paging to flash, making DRAM size a hard limit for developers looking to really push the platform.
Apple has always been conservative on DRAM sizing because it's a great way of reducing the BOM (Bill of Materials) cost. If Apple can make up for having less DRAM by being more aggressive in software (read: kicking apps out of memory), it's a tradeoff that makes sense. It's really Apple's foray into gaming that has added pressure to increase memory sizes.
With the move to the Retina Display, the amount of memory needed to store a single frame increases by 4x—from 3MB to 12MB. Assuming two buffered frames you're looking at 24MB of RAM just to smoothly display what you're seeing on the screen.
The bigger problem isn't the frame buffer, but rather all of the other data you need (e.g. level data, textures, etc...). The higher the screen resolution, the more important it is to have higher quality assets in your game. Texture compression can go a long way, but at some point there's simply more data to deal with as game complexity increases. It's not just about the increase in resolution either. As GPU horsepower increases, so will the complexity of what game developers try to build.
While the frame buffer size increased thanks to the Retina Display, total system memory increased by a much larger amount. With 1GB of memory, game developers are now less constrained.
A more immediate benefit is apps and web pages will remain resident in memory longer as you open open up and switch to other apps. For example, on the iPad 2 if I open four tabs in Safari (AT, Engadget, Reddit, and Tech Report), open iPhoto, run Infinity Blade 2 and GTA 3, switching between the latter two will always require a full game reload (as in you see the intro and everything before you pick up where you left off). On the new iPad, with the same setup, I can switch between Infinity Blade 2 and GTA 3 and automatically resume where I last left off thanks to the extra DRAM. You can still create a scenario where even 1GB isn't enough, it's just that the limit is now higher than it was on the iPad 2.
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vol7ron - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Think you meant "except" :)adityarjun - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
No, you aren'tsiddharth7 - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
Yeah! Kind of a typo :). Also forgot the question mark. :-)Wanted to edit it, but was not able to after posting. :)
Xyraxx - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Ok, gaming clearly the TF came out ahead. Why the backhanded commentary in that section? I don't see that for the sections that the iPad clearly won. TF takes the overall top spot for its gaming performance. But instead of commentary on that, we get aggressive talk about how they should be pushing even further ahead, and how they are failing at it.The controller compatibility is an absolute win for the Android side, but instead of talk about that, we get this "Yeah, but who says controllers will win over touch". Its like every advantage the iPad doesn't win over, gets trotted out and downplayed as if to say it doesn't mean anything, or somehow doesn't matter.
darkcrayon - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Interesting. I got a different impression entirely. It seems like games specifically optimized for the Tegra 3 by nVidia were somewhat better visuallyr, but the iPad has a more extensive game library and considering the GPU is far more powerful than the Tegra 3's, it's only a matter of time before there are far better graphics to be had on iPad games.Though there is no OS level controller support in iOS, both Bluetooth and dock connector controllers are possible (hence the iControlpad iCade, and a few others). It may be that more games support them now on Android, but nothing is stopping developers from supporting them on iOS at this point.
Finally, it's pretty important that ~100% of the iPad games in the App Store will run on the new iPad, which can't be said for the TF as shown in the review, or probably for any other individual Android tablet.
mr_ripley - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
It seems to me that the iPad does charge when I plug it into the USB port on my Macbook Pro. In fact I was surprised to see that not only did it not say "not charging" and show the "plugged-in" icon, it also seemed pretty fast (I will have to try it again to see if it was as fast as the power charger).However, when I tried to this morning to plug it into my Lenovo laptop it showed "not charging". Does this only work when plugged into Apple products?
vol7ron - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
This question seems better suited for the Apple support forums.doobydoo - Sunday, April 1, 2012 - link
This reply seems better suited to the kids-r-us forum.Aenean144 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Modern Macs have special USB hubs that output 7 to 8 Watts of power (~5V at ~1.6A). Most Windows machines or non-Macs and older Macs output about 4.5 Watts max. There's a USB battery charging specification, but I'm not aware of any computers that have this implemented.So, most Mac should be able to charge an iPod, iPad, iPhone relatively quickly. A PC with the normal USB specs will typically do it a little bit slower. 40 to 50%. 4.5 Watts is basically the bare minimum. Doable on an iPad 2 with the screen off, but the 2012 iPad will be tough. If you have the screen off, turn off WiFi and Bluetooth, it'll charge ok if Apple lets it. The screen has to be off with 4 Watt power source.
mr_ripley - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Ah ha! Thanks for the clarification. When I saw that I was able to charge my new ipad while using it with my Macbook pro USB, I neglected to bring along my charger to work. Seems like that was unwise.But I still have around 50% power left so should be fine for today. And yes I do use it at work.