Split screen

[MrRJ]

How is every one finding split screen?

I use it daily - with iBooks open I add one note for note taking and frequently find it slow to open. Same goes for word and the notes app. Now that I think about it, I've also been having some stuttering when dragging up to open the control centre. Is anyone else experiencing sluggishness on their Air2 in these tasks? I understood it was somewhat of a powerhouse - I didn't expect any slow down..

 

[sparksd]

I'm not seeing that on my Air 2 - I tried a similar test with a large book open in iBooks and opened OneNote and then Word in the split screen and did not see sluggishness or stuttering. It takes a short moment for a new app to open, but not long.

 

[SquireSCA]

How is every one finding split screen?

I use it daily - with iBooks open I add one note for note taking and frequently find it slow to open. Same goes for word and the notes app. Now that I think about it, I've also been having some stuttering when dragging up to open the control centre. Is anyone else experiencing sluggishness on their Air2 in these tasks? I understood it was somewhat of a powerhouse - I didn't expect any slow down..

It's from not having enough RAM. That's why the 1GB ipads can't do it at all. While these have 2GB, that still isn't very much. The OS itself and the required services, use up 1.15GB all by themselves.

The newer versions of iOS support "multitasking", but all it is really doing is keeping apps that you opened, still running in the background. They may be dormant and not using CPU cycles and just waiting for you to double tap the home button to swipe and bring them back up, but they are taking up the palty 800mb of RAM that your tablet has available for actual apps.

If you get a System Info type of app from the App Store, launch it and look at your memory resources. I have to manually go in and close down apps to get memory freed up... Normally there is like 50mb free and that is why having 3 or 4 tabs open in Safari causes constant page reloads and lag...

2GB simply isn't enough RAM in today's world...

 

[Martholemew]

Works well. I use it for my clipboard archive app. Saving copied text and images for access later without leaving safari.

 

[muchospanish]

That's interesting. Where did you get the 1.15 GB number from? (I'm not doubting you)

 

[SquireSCA]

That's interesting. Where did you get the 1.15 GB number from? (I'm not doubting you)

As you can see, I have safari open and the system info app, and that's it, I have almost no ram left. 2gb just isn't that much, it goes fast...

 

[SquireSCA]

When I close safari, I have 1gb free, meaning that the OS itself is using the other 1gb.

Safari is a bloated memory hog. It uses up most of your ram... Now try multitasking with that and you get lag...

 

[sparksd]

I tried the same with just Safari (1 tab) and System Info open (128GB LTE Air 2):

 

[sparksd]

But with just System Info open, I see this:



I see this after closing Safari and about the same after a reset with just System Info active.

 

[SquireSCA]

But with just System Info open, I see this:

View attachment 98120

I see this after closing Safari and about the same after a reset with just System Info active.

Exactly. A lot of people think that 2GB is plenty, and it simply isn't. The OS chews through at least half your RAM and you would be amazed how fast your apps, especially the browser, eat up the rest. And as a result, you get lag. page reloads, etc...

Apple does this for a reason. They want their devices to just barely run well at the time of sale and for a short window thereafter. By the time the next device comes out, they want the new OS to not run so well, so that you feel compelled to get the new device.

There is no reason why a company with Apple's resources, couldn't put an extra GB or two in the device. We are talking about an increase in manufacturing costs of less than a dollar.

 

[sparksd]

Exactly. A lot of people think that 2GB is plenty, and it simply isn't. The OS chews through at least half your RAM and you would be amazed how fast your apps, especially the browser, eat up the rest. And as a result, you get lag. page reloads, etc...

Apple does this for a reason. They want their devices to just barely run well at the time of sale and for a short window thereafter. By the time the next device comes out, they want the new OS to not run so well, so that you feel compelled to get the new device.

There is no reason why a company with Apple's resources, couldn't put an extra GB or two in the device. We are talking about an increase in manufacturing costs of less than a dollar.

I found the differences in our measurements with the same tests interesting. With Safari and System Info open, I had over 4X as much free memory as you (558MB vs 130MB) but with just System Info open, you showed a third more free memory (765MB vs 1GB) - significant disparities.

 

[SquireSCA]

Yeah, part of that will have to do with how many tabs you have open in Safari and how much content.

Also, I am on the latest public Beta, so that might account for differences at the OS level...

Either way, it shows that 2GB in this day and age, just isn't that much.

If you have Pandora up and running and a couple tabs in Safari and want to open up a spreadsheet or PPT and work on it, you are out of RAM before you get that far.

 

[Closingracer]

It's from not having enough RAM. That's why the 1GB ipads can't do it at all. While these have 2GB, that still isn't very much. The OS itself and the required services, use up 1.15GB all by themselves.

The newer versions of iOS support "multitasking", but all it is really doing is keeping apps that you opened, still running in the background. They may be dormant and not using CPU cycles and just waiting for you to double tap the home button to swipe and bring them back up, but they are taking up the palty 800mb of RAM that your tablet has available for actual apps.

If you get a System Info type of app from the App Store, launch it and look at your memory resources. I have to manually go in and close down apps to get memory freed up... Normally there is like 50mb free and that is why having 3 or 4 tabs open in Safari causes constant page reloads and lag...

2GB simply isn't enough RAM in today's world...

2GB is fine... This is IOS not Android and they both work differently ...

 

[Closingracer]

But with just System Info open, I see this:

View attachment 98120

I see this after closing Safari and about the same after a reset with just System Info active.

Much better browsers out there imo. I been using Firefox and they just released it globally and with private browsing. I been splitting my time with Firefox and Chrome and sometimes with Safari if I want to split screen with another app

 

[SquireSCA]

2GB is fine... This is IOS not Android and they both work differently ...

It isn't fine if it is laggy and having frequent page reloads. Just because one learns to accept and "live with it" doesn't mean that it is ok or working properly.

When you have just a couple apps open and have 47mb of free RAM, it isn't good no matter what OS it is on.

Hence why the new iPad Pro comes with 4GB.

If 2 was fine, it would still have that, or only gone to 3gb. But they jumped to 4 because they are selling it as a "professional device", and as such, they know that power users will use more and larger apps, and 2GB just won't cut it.

 

[SquireSCA]

Much better browsers out there imo. I been using Firefox and they just released it globally and with private browsing. I been splitting my time with Firefox and Chrome and sometimes with Safari if I want to split screen with another app

And when those other browsers are allowed to be the default app and work with split screen, then I will probably use them. But when I click on a link in an email, I refuse to have to copy and paste it from Safari to another browser in this day and age. It's not 2007 any more...

 

[Closingracer]

It isn't fine if it is laggy and having frequent page reloads. Just because one learns to accept and "live with it" doesn't mean that it is ok or working properly.

When you have just a couple apps open and have 47mb of free RAM, it isn't good no matter what OS it is on.

Hence why the new iPad Pro comes with 4GB.

If 2 was fine, it would still have that, or only gone to 3gb. But they jumped to 4 because they are selling it as a "professional device", and as such, they know that power users will use more and larger apps, and 2GB just won't cut it.

There is no lag though ... My laptop has 8GB of RAM and right now is lagging more then my iPad Air 2 is with it's 2GB of RAM. All I currently have up is Firefox with iMore tab, Microsoft Edge browser which is my default browser running Google music and Microsoft Word. I am running Firefox because for some reason imore wouldn't load on Microsoft browser. My laptop has an intel i7 4th gen cpu and Nividia 970M gpu so along with the 8GB of RAM I highly doubt this is such demanding.

 

[Closingracer]

And when those other browsers are allowed to be the default app and work with split screen, then I will probably use them. But when I click on a link in an email, I refuse to have to copy and paste it from Safari to another browser in this day and age. It's not 2007 any more...

Then why do you use iOS devices... God nobody at Apple is forcing you to buy their devices and they are making so much money they can dictate what they want to do. The new iPad Pro has 4GB of Ram so I guess that device is for you?


On my phone I prefer Safari so I don't really care if they force it upon us

 

[sparksd]

There is no lag though ... My laptop has 8GB of RAM and right now is lagging more then my iPad Air 2 is with it's 2GB of RAM. All I currently have up is Firefox with iMore tab, Microsoft Edge browser which is my default browser running Google music and Microsoft Word. I am running Firefox because for some reason imore wouldn't load on Microsoft browser. My laptop has an intel i7 4th gen cpu and Nividia 970M gpu so along with the 8GB of RAM I highly doubt this is such demanding.

Yeah, I'm trying to force it and I'm not seeing lag or reloads and I have open: Safari with 3 tabs, Chrome, IMDB, Mail, B&H Photo app, System Info, and FileBrowser. I can readily switch among them, use Slide Over, and double window (multitask). Under this load, System Info shows 149MB free.

 

[Closingracer]

Yeah, I'm trying to force it and I'm not seeing lag or reloads and I have open: Safari with 3 tabs, Chrome, IMDB, Mail, B&H Photo app, System Info, and FileBrowser. I can readily switch among them, use Slide Over, and double window (multitask). Under this load, System Info shows 149MB free.

He can say whatever he wants but 2GB is perfectly fine for iOS.... my Air 2 is fast enough for me.