“Apple is bringing split-screen multitasking — which Apple dubs Split View — to the iPad Air 2,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool.
“Apple is in the business of selling iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that the company would like to give users any and all reasons to upgrade to the latest iPads. Apple has been innovating on the hardware side of things for a while, and despite some pretty solid upgrades with the iPad Air 2, iPad sales have still been on the decline,” Eassa writes. “To persuade people to upgrade, new and improved hardware is helpful. However, to most customers, fast new processors and more memory probably aren’t convincing enough selling points in and of themselves. That hardware needs to enable fundamentally new and useful functionality.”
“I would argue that Split View (in addition to the other multitasking features that Apple is bringing to iOS 9 for iPad) is an example of a “fundamentally new and useful” capability. The question, then, is whether this feature really requires an iPad Air 2,” Eassa writes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, for things to work smoothly and without performance issues, the hardware of the iPad Air 2 is required… The older iPads may simply not have enough memory to support two potentially large applications running at the same time without performance and/or stability issues.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The main problem with iPads, and the main reason why we reach for our 11-inch MacBook Airs while on-the-go over our iPad Air (gen. 1) units for work, is that the iPads do not have enough RAM. This limitation puts a severe damper on multitasking on iPad. iPad Air 2, has a decent amount of RAM and can therefore handle real multitasking, including the ultimate in multitasking, iOS 9’s Split View. This is a major reason why we can’t wait for “iPad Pro!”
Our tests of the next-gen iPads plus iOS 9’s Split View multitasking are likely to have a major effect on how compelled we are to replace our MacBook Airs with whatever Apple’s smallest, lightest Mac is at the time. We may actually replace, not just complement, our Macs with iPads while on the road.
UPDATE: 5:25pm EDT: Fixed spelling mistake. Thanks, KingMel.
SEE ALSO:
Split-view multitasking: Hands on with Apple’s iOS 9 beta on iPad Air 2 – June 9, 2015