Xcode’s iOS simulator reports 2GB RAM for iPhone 6S, 4GB for iPad Pro
Apple doesn’t talk much about its SoCs beyond basic “chip X is Z percent faster than chip Y” comparisons—this is unfortunate, since Apple’s new chips are typically as fast or faster than the best high-end chips from Qualcomm and Intel when they’re released. One place where Apple has historically been stingy, though, is RAM. Even last year’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus shipped with 1GB of memory, at a time when comparable Android phones were shipping with 2 or 3GB.
That may be changing for the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, according to some sleuthing by developer Hamza Sood. Using a custom app and the iPhone 6S simulator included with the Xcode 7.1 beta, Sood has apparently confirmed that the iPhone 6Ses will include 2GB of RAM
This RAM upgrade will make a big difference for multitasking and using Safari without having tabs reloading all the time. On my Air 2, which has 2GB of RAM, Safari works a lot more like a desktop browser since I can switch back and forth between tabs without having them reload constantly.
Absurd infinitum: Deliberately misunderstanding Steve Jobs
There’s a stark difference between what Jobs was talking about and the Apple Pencil as evidenced from the iPad launch itself: The iPad didn’t have a physical keyboard, but Apple offered a keyboard dock on day one. Apple felt physical keyboards were ruining mobile phones and had no place on a tablet, but they still shipped one because sometimes you might want it. Likewise, the iPad Pro doesn’t ship with the Pencil because you don’t need a Pencil to use an iPad Pro. You just may want a Pencil to draw.
The hysteria around the iPad Pro launch is pretty crazy. The reality is that Apple rarely invents completely new products — they take product ideas from others and refine and usually simplify them, while creating new technology inside the device to make them easier to use.
So yes, the stylus has been around forever. And it makes no sense to require a stylus to use a tablet. But if you need greater precision for a particular task, it also makes sense to have one.
Apple Pay: More banks roll out Apple’s pay-by-iPhone service
Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland will be able to use Apple Pay from today. The three banks make up Lloyds Banking Group, Britain’s largest current account provider. According to its research, one in three customers expect to be using a mobile device to make payments on a day-to-day basis within the next five years.
The vast majority of banks are supporting Apple Pay at this point, but it still has one big problem for adoption:
It’s impossible to figure out what places accept it and which don’t. Apple needs to do a better job with branding so when you are standing in front of the cashier with a line of people in back of you, there’s no question whether they support Apple Pay. Otherwise you risk looking like an idiot while trying to make your iPhone or Watch do the payment only to find out that they don’t support it. Yes, this has happened to me.
When you do find a retailer that supports Apple Pay, it’s an amazing experience that’s far better than pulling out a credit card, and a lot better than the chip and pin or chip and signature systems that are really quite slow. And using the Watch is even simpler because you don’t have to pull anything out of a pocket.
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(On a side note I just realized that all three notes today were about Apple. Will try to do a better job of writing on a variety of topics going forward)
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Previous Thoughts You Might Have Missed:
- Tuesday: Microsoft is Trying Really Hard to Shoot Themselves in the Foot
- Monday: The Best Upgrade for Your Surface Pro 3 is the SP4 Keyboard
- Saturday: First Impressions of the Apple TV: Lots of Entering Passwords Using the Remote
- Friday: Soon, Windows 10 Will Be Automatically Pushed Through Windows Update
- Monday: The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares