Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iPad Air Review

anandtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 102 posts

Re: iPad Air Review

#41

Post by blinkingled »

gwright wrote: post #32
blinkingled wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever number of customers use a browser to browse the Internet using their iPad - they would benefit from the RAM increase. Besides it's not known how much exactly another GB would cost in terms of lost minutes of battery. Probably nothing to sweat about. But I will defend your right to defend Apple at any cost - known or unknown ;)

I'm not defending them. Just pointing out that there are tradeoffs associated with the configurations you were advocating. That doesn't mean that Apple's choice is right and yours is wrong (or vise versa) just that they are different choices.

I got the tradeoff part when you mentioned it the first time - it's just that I am saying more RAM is worth the tradeoff of whatever unknown amount of possibly minuscule loss of battery life. And I don't say this without a reason - several times a day I get annoyed by background audio / airplay getting killed and my browser tabs getting reloaded. So it's not without a valid reason.

Anyway - I think at the very least Apple could shove off power consumption elsewhere in the next round of updates and give us more RAM if that's what it takes.

Re: iPad Air Review

#42

Post by threeseed »

mirsadm wrote: post #2

As usual Anandtech has one of the best reviews. My only complaint is the CPU benchmarks are more or less useless. I understand there aren't any good cross platform benchmarks right now but using JS benchmarks is completely inaccurate. Not only are there major variations between scores on the same device (across different browsers and versions) but the same browser isn't even available on both platforms. I'd love to s…

Especially not with companies like Samsung deliberately rigging benchmark tests.

Re: iPad Air Review

#43

Post by Alterlife »

wozniacki wrote: post #38
programminggeek wrote: post #13

"The iPad Air is the most significant upgrade to the 9.7-inch iPad in its history." I would actually say the iPad to iPad 2 transition was a bigger jump, but maybe just because it's so easy to forget how much bigger and bulkier the original iPad was. The iPad came out what 3 and a half years ago and it's faster, lighter, better resolution, and has gone from a "who would ever buy that" to one of the most popular compu…

I would actually say the iPad to iPad 2 transition was a bigger jump, but maybe just because it's so easy to forget how much bigger and bulkier the original iPad was. Are you trolling or are you simply a moron? The dimensions and weight comparison table ( right smack on the first page [1] ) shows the iPad Air is a good 181 grams lighter than the previous version, the iPad 4. The second generation iPad at 601 grams is…

The perceived 'bulkiness' is more than just weight. Drawing from your own link, the original iPad is 13.4 mm thich, the iPad 2 is 8.8 mm.

If I remember right the original iPad 1 had no front camera (or was it no cameras at all?).

To me that's a huge upgrade.

Re: iPad Air Review

#44

Post by blinkingled »

tedunangst wrote: post #35
blinkingled wrote: post #3

Another great review as usual from Anandtech. Wow, Apple is still skimping on RAM at the expense of user experience. It would've been a great time to bump the RAM up to 2GB given the switch to 64-bit iOS 7 seems to be causing 20-30% higher memory consumption. It was already kind of bad on previous gen 32-bit iPads. It's still tempting to upgrade from the brick that the iPad 3 now feels but I'll live with it until the…

If they ship an ipad with 2GB, developers will start to use 2GB and then apps will run like crap on older models. Then people will complain about forced obsolescence. (Source: the dozens of comments I've read from people complaining their 512MB iOS device has been rendered useless.)

Something's gotta give - after sticking to 1GB on 4 generations users would hardly complain about the newer one having more RAM - that's just technological progress. Macs no longer have 2GB RAM for example. Secondly developers would be stupid to use more RAM just because they can - if their app only runs on the latest iPad, I'd say that would be a big issue.

Re: iPad Air Review

#45

Post by interpol_p »

Segmentation wrote: post #20

I wasn't planning on buying an iPad Air, as I'm still happy with my iPad 2, but that comparison chart on the first page really sold me that the iPad Air is the first real upgrade to the iPad 2. My only complaint is I want high capacity, and I find it so ridiculous that to go from 16GB to 64GB I have to pay $200 extra. Two hundred dollars for 48GB. I think the last time I paid that much for 48GB was ten years ago. Edi…

They do sell an SD card reader for iPad, don't they? A lot of people use it to offload their large photos and videos from the device.

I agree that Apple's memory upgrades are expensive (and probably account for a fair chunk of their margin). Supporting an SD card would necessitate a huge re-thinking of many parts of iOS, and create another point of failure and support. I dislike the way Android handles SD cards and prefer just to have more internal memory, it's a nicer experience not to explicitly manage that.

I think Apple should just charge less for memory instead.

Re: iPad Air Review

#46

Post by wozniacki »

Alterlife wrote: post #43
wozniacki wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would actually say the iPad to iPad 2 transition was a bigger jump, but maybe just because it's so easy to forget how much bigger and bulkier the original iPad was. Are you trolling or are you simply a moron? The dimensions and weight comparison table ( right smack on the first page [1] ) shows the iPad Air is a good 181 grams lighter than the previous version, the iPad 4. The second generation iPad at 601 grams is…

The perceived 'bulkiness' is more than just weight. Drawing from your own link, the original iPad is 13.4 mm thich, the iPad 2 is 8.8 mm. If I remember right the original iPad 1 had no front camera (or was it no cameras at all?). To me that's a huge upgrade.

Wrong again.

Considering only the dimensions, the second generation iPad managed a meager trimmings of 4 mm, 2 mm and 4.6 mm in length, width and thickness for a total of 10.6 mm.

That pales in comparison to a total of 18.9 mm in combined length + width + thickness savings, in the current iPad Air.

So your elusive measure of "perceived bulkiness" falls short of explaining how iPad Air is not the greatest leap in terms of portability over its previous version, over all of the other deltas of iPad generations.

Re: iPad Air Review

#47

Post by qq66 »

wozniacki wrote: post #46
Alterlife wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perceived 'bulkiness' is more than just weight. Drawing from your own link, the original iPad is 13.4 mm thich, the iPad 2 is 8.8 mm. If I remember right the original iPad 1 had no front camera (or was it no cameras at all?). To me that's a huge upgrade.

Wrong again. Considering only the dimensions, the second generation iPad managed a meager trimmings of 4 mm, 2 mm and 4.6 mm in length, width and thickness for a total of 10.6 mm. That pales in comparison to a total of 18.9 mm in combined length + width + thickness savings, in the current iPad Air. So your elusive measure of "perceived bulkiness" falls short of explaining how iPad Air is not the greatest leap in term…

The "combined length+width+height" metric you've invented is highly dubious. A 1mm reduction in a dimension means much more if it's the shortest dimension than if it's the longest.

Re: iPad Air Review

#48

Post by nwh »

MikeCapone wrote: post #28
nwh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS7 does have memory compression though.

Could you point me to a URL that shows that iOS7 have compressed memory? I couldn't find an official mention of it (maybe I'm searching for it wrong).

There's no official mention, but a few jailbreak developers have specifically talking about its existence. (MuscleNerd and Steffan Esser if my memory serves)

Re: iPad Air Review

#49

Post by throwaway2048 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #34
blinkingled wrote: post #3

Another great review as usual from Anandtech. Wow, Apple is still skimping on RAM at the expense of user experience. It would've been a great time to bump the RAM up to 2GB given the switch to 64-bit iOS 7 seems to be causing 20-30% higher memory consumption. It was already kind of bad on previous gen 32-bit iPads. It's still tempting to upgrade from the brick that the iPad 3 now feels but I'll live with it until the…

"given the switch to 64-bit iOS 7 seems to be causing 20-30% higher memory consumption" I've not read about this. Can you cite a source?

larger pointers mean more ram is taken up by programs, its something that's a given with a transition from a 32bit to a 64bit architecture.

Re: iPad Air Review

#50

Post by devx »

tedunangst wrote: post #35
blinkingled wrote: post #3

Another great review as usual from Anandtech. Wow, Apple is still skimping on RAM at the expense of user experience. It would've been a great time to bump the RAM up to 2GB given the switch to 64-bit iOS 7 seems to be causing 20-30% higher memory consumption. It was already kind of bad on previous gen 32-bit iPads. It's still tempting to upgrade from the brick that the iPad 3 now feels but I'll live with it until the…

If they ship an ipad with 2GB, developers will start to use 2GB and then apps will run like crap on older models. Then people will complain about forced obsolescence. (Source: the dozens of comments I've read from people complaining their 512MB iOS device has been rendered useless.)

Wouldn't that happen anyway if they do that next year?
Post reply on HN