In technology, there is a saying that is almost a law: iPhone doesn’t need that much RAM than other competitors because its management is more efficient. And it’s true, because the integration of hardware, software and services has allowed Apple to reduce the demands of an iPhone. The iPad followed a similar pattern with a RAM regime that was broken fairly recently.
With the 2021 iPad Pro, Apple has started to offer models with 8 GB of RAM, from the 6 GB of the previous model. And the 1TB and 2TB iPad Pro double that up to 16GB of RAM. Not much is known about the functions or apps that can take advantage of it. Until now.
When Procreate runs out of layers to put together
One of the advantages of working in a multimedia company is that you have colleagues who testing technology to its limits
Procreate is one of our must-have iPad apps that many users love for both leisure and business. Sabán tells us how, at one point, the iPad couldn’t put on more layers in Procreation. And this limitation is due to the 6 GB of RAM of the iPad Pro.
The limitation lies in the amount of RAM memory of each iPad model. From Procreate, they announced last fall that they would triple the layers available on select iPads. with Procreate 5.2. According to the company:
With the release of iPadOS 15, Apple increased the RAM available to developers. Historically, iPad apps were RAM-limited due to a reserve needed for background apps and tasks, so when Apple opened up more RAM to developers this month, that was a big deal. For Procreate, this means an additional increase in the number of layers for iPads with 8 GB or more of RAM.
In this post, Procreate details how they hoped to triple the number of diapers substantially. So in iPad Pro M1 with 8GB it goes from 250 to 500 layers of 1920 x 1080. While in iPad Pro M1 with 16GB RAM it goes from 250 layers to 902 layers of same cut. The maximum resolution that can be worked with 8GB is 16384 x 8192 with three layers, or 10 layers at 16K x 8K in the 16GB model.
RAM as a key when choosing an iPad
Two clear lessons can be drawn from th is. The first is that choosing an iPad is also limited by RAM
In terms of RAM, there is a clear empty space between the iPad mini and the iPad Air. Even though the real jump occurs between the models with the highest storage capacity which open the doors to loas 16 GB of RAM. When considering using an iPad for gear-intensive tasks, the more basic models are pretty much out of the question.
Perhaps the M1 chip is responsible for creating a schism between iPads, dividing them by RAM capacity and pro app usage
The second learning is this: professional applications will require more and more RAM. It is interesting to see how, months before open the ram valve, Apple has started selling iPad models in sufficient quantities. Coincidence? It doesn’t look like it, of course.
This may be the beginning of the end of the game of hide and seek Until now Apple played with the RAM memory of the iPad, to go and detail it with each new model in the keynotes. And that from this WWDC 2022, we start to see concrete uses of more RAM for real professional apps.
