Until now, Apple has always had a limit on the amount of RAM an iPadOS app is allowed to use, in order to keep its iPads running smoothly.
If for some reason an app requested all the RAM available on the tablet, it would seriously affect overall performance, and to avoid this, Apple initially installed a memory cap of just 5 GB, to ensure that enough is left to keep the tablet running at maximum speed.
However, more and more professionals (especially creative professionals) are using Apple’s increasingly powerful tablets for professional purposes, using demanding programs that require more than the maximum 5 GB of RAM allocated to Apple to function optimally. This applies in particular to applications related to graphic design, including 3D modeling and editing of videos or photos.
For this reason, Apple has decided to definitely raise the bar with iPadOS 15, which will be launched on September 20. As reported by MacRumors, developers will soon have the option to schedule their apps to request additional RAM so that iPad users can get the most out of even very demanding apps (although the additional RAM isn’t unlimited either). The limit of this new memory cap varies for iPads with different amounts of RAM.
A group of graphic design app developers originally discovered that on the iPad Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM, apps are now allowed to request up to 12GB of RAM, leaving the remaining 4GB. for the main functions of the system.
The iPad Pro models powered by the M1 chip which have less available memory (ie 8 GB), Apple allows applications to request up to 6 GB in iPadOS 15. The remaining 2 GB is retained to maintain all processes. necessary basic operational, and in no event will be allowed to eat in the latter buffer (or the remaining 4 GB on the iPad Pro 16 GB version).
According to Apple, all “supported devices” will be able to take advantage of this new memory usage update, although this is still quite vague – at least we can be sure that it will make its way to the later ones. iPad Pro powered by M1 with iPadOS 15.
The newly released iPad mini 6 and Entry-level 9th gen iPads are unlikely to benefit from an increase in their original RAM buffer, as they hardly have much RAM to start with (4GB for the mini and only 3 Go for the 9th generation iPad).
