Apple rarely plays the specs game, particularly when it comes to its iOS devices. Sure, you’ll get a name for the processor and they’ll boast about pixels when it suits them, but talk about RAM or clock speed and there’s radio silence. However, according to one source, the iPad’s dirty little secret is its ever-increasing RAM usage.
The Verge is reporting that “the new iPad” -- you know, the one with that amazing new Retina Display -- may very well be shipping with a full 1GB of RAM to assist that swanky new A5X processor with quad-core graphics and 2048x1536 screen. So what’s the big deal? It seems the iPad is doubling its RAM usage with each new model, according to sources.
“Sources have informed us that Apple's latest has indeed received an upgrade in that area as well, and will ship with 1GB of RAM -- double that of its predecessor,” the report reveals. “Cupertino has consistently tried to avoid playing the specifications game with the iPad and iPhone; the products have almost always shipped with memory and horsepower that were considered below the norm for their respective times, with the original iPad featuring just 256MB of RAM.”
256MB to 1GB of RAM in three generations is hardly a surprise, especially considering what the new iPad is capable of compared to the original model introduced in 2010. But it is a good indication that the iPad will eventually face many of the same problems that desktop computers have -- as apps get larger and more capable, they’ll need a bigger pool of random access memory to swim around in.
You can bet that there will be a teardown of the new iPad on or around March 16, and then we’ll probably all know for sure what the third-generation tablet is packing.
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