In the latest iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 betas, Apple is finally granting apps the ability to access more of a device’s memory or RAM – a major improvement that will allow developers to significantly improve the performance of their apps on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices.
Currently, apps are limited to the amount of RAM they can use, regardless of the amount available on the device. For example, despite the highest-end M1 iPad Pro featuring 16GB of RAM, on iPadOS 14, apps are limited to only use 5GB. 16GB of RAM is the highest amount of RAM ever offered in an iPhone or iPad, and the 5GB limitation means that apps aren’t able to utilize even half of what the iPad Pro has to offer.
In the second betas of iOS and iPadOS 15, released to developers yesterday, Apple is introducing a new entitlement that developers may request that will expose their apps to more memory. Apple says that this entitlement will inform the system that an app “may perform better by exceeding the default app memory limit.” Apple’s developer documentation doesn’t specify how much extra RAM an app may be exposed to and also says this is limited to “supported devices.”
While Apple doesn’t specify the amount of extra RAM an app may request, the wording of the documentation, which advises developers to use a function to “determine the amount of memory available,” suggests the ceiling of memory apps may request may be relatively high.
MacDailyNews Take: Hallelujah!
