iPad 2 reviews pop up, confirm 512MB RAM
iPad 2 reviews have started popping up from sites who got one to play with before the official release tomorrow. Once you read through various performance tests, videos, pictures etc it really comes down to what we already knew: it’s the iPad, just thinner, lighter, and faster. If you liked the iPad 1, you will like the iPad 2, and if you didn’t…well, take a guess. There are also some random whining about the screen resolution from people who don’t understand the issues that would have been the result of a 4x increase in resolution, but that basically just underscores what Allen said about tech writers being “generally moronic”. If you want a list of available reviews to read for yourself, check out liliputing.
These reviews did confirm something else though: the iPad has 512MB of RAM. All we needed was for someone to run a memory detection app on the thing and all those rumors of 256MB RAM suddenly died. Again, some of these sides don’t quite understand what this means though, claiming that it’s too little and should be 1GB “even though they didn’t experience any memory issues”. What these people fail to realize is that while 512MB is twice that of the iPad 1, the actual free memory increase is 3x, not double. About half of the 256MB RAM on the iPad 1 is used for running the OS, which leaves the other half- about 120MB. On the iPad 2, the OS will still use about 130-140MB, leaving you with the rest. iPhone 4 owners normally see up to 360MB of RAM (depending on what system process are running) available after the OS has been served, which is 3 times that of the iPad 1. Another thing that cracked me up was that the magnets apparently ” just seem to know where to go”. No, really?! I wonder why. I honestly don’t understand why Apple sends review units to some of these people…
