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The iPad’s Dirty Secret

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Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#3

Post by jodrellblank »

g0atbutt wrote: post #2

The lack of tabs didn't surprise me, but the way the iPad OS poorly handled memory management did.

That's not poorly handled memory management, it's good handling. Poorly handled would be to give you an out of memory error, or make the other pages disappear completely as if you'd never opened them at all.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#4

Post by g0atbutt »

jodrellblank wrote: post #3
g0atbutt wrote: post #2

The lack of tabs didn't surprise me, but the way the iPad OS poorly handled memory management did.

That's not poorly handled memory management, it's good handling. Poorly handled would be to give you an out of memory error, or make the other pages disappear completely as if you'd never opened them at all.

I would have to disagree. My Droid also has 256 mb of memory, and I can have more pages open at once without it having to flush pages. This is still true with Pandora running in the background.

Overall I'm a fan of the iPad, it just falls short in this area.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#5

Post by ihodes »

Is this because the iPhone OS doesn't use paging? It seems like this could be handled from the software side of things: the HD is solid state, and though sacrificing a second of time to switch to a web page that's been cached in the HD isn't Apple-gorgeous it's certainly faster and nicer to see than a blank white page and a twirling loading symbol.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#6

Post by DrSprout »

ihodes wrote: post #5

Is this because the iPhone OS doesn't use paging? It seems like this could be handled from the software side of things: the HD is solid state, and though sacrificing a second of time to switch to a web page that's been cached in the HD isn't Apple-gorgeous it's certainly faster and nicer to see than a blank white page and a twirling loading symbol.

It's just the problem with the interface design paradigm that says a user should be able to do anything immediately without instruction. If you want to cache, you need to have an understanding of how the Internet works, so it's "too hard" for "most people" to understand or care about.

Re: The iPad’s Dirty Secret

#7

Post by ihodes »

DrSprout wrote: post #6
ihodes wrote: post #5

Is this because the iPhone OS doesn't use paging? It seems like this could be handled from the software side of things: the HD is solid state, and though sacrificing a second of time to switch to a web page that's been cached in the HD isn't Apple-gorgeous it's certainly faster and nicer to see than a blank white page and a twirling loading symbol.

It's just the problem with the interface design paradigm that says a user should be able to do anything immediately without instruction. If you want to cache, you need to have an understanding of how the Internet works, so it's "too hard" for "most people" to understand or care about.

You're missing my point: the OS should be able to cache the (up to n) pages that haven't been explicitly closed by the user in the HD, and when there's a page fault in main memory when a user tries to access the ones the 256MB can hold, the OS should go to the disk and grab that page, and swap out another page that's currently in RAM with the requested page.

Bam, no re-downloading the page. Should be over in under a second (depending on the memory used in the iPad.)

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