[blinkingled]

Yes, in this case more RAM is arguably the better trade off. Less need to reload apps and browser tabs, better multitasking performance etc. are good things to have over the 15 min or whatever of battery loss it might take to power on additional 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM. It's just a vastly better user experience for the common use cases. (Besides there are other tablets with 2GB RAM and they come very close to iPad in terms of battery life so it shouldn't be that big of an issue.)

[gwright]

Its all about tradeoffs. How many customers would benefit from boosts in multi-tasking and tab re-loading vs. longer battery life? Apple is known for its outstanding battery life, does it make sense to step back from that for the benefits that you describe?

[blinkingled]

Whatever number of customers use a browser to browse the Internet using their iPad - they would benefit from the RAM increase. Besides it's not known how much exactly another GB would cost in terms of lost minutes of battery. Probably nothing to sweat about.

But I will defend your right to defend Apple at any cost - known or unknown ;)

[gwright]

I'm not defending them. Just pointing out that there are tradeoffs associated with the configurations you were advocating.

That doesn't mean that Apple's choice is right and yours is wrong (or vise versa) just that they are different choices.

[blinkingled]

I got the tradeoff part when you mentioned it the first time - it's just that I am saying more RAM is worth the tradeoff of whatever unknown amount of possibly minuscule loss of battery life. And I don't say this without a reason - several times a day I get annoyed by background audio / airplay getting killed and my browser tabs getting reloaded. So it's not without a valid reason.

Anyway - I think at the very least Apple could shove off power consumption elsewhere in the next round of updates and give us more RAM if that's what it takes.

[gwright]

I don't think you get the 'tradeoff' part. At least I don't seem to be clearly communicating my thoughts on the matter.

You are suggesting that the configuration that is best for you is best for everyone and therefore is the best for Apple. But that isn't necessarily true. I don't doubt that it would be the best for you -- that is what you want. But don't assume that your preference is best for everyone or for Apple itself.

It is the nature of tradeoffs that you can't satisfy everyone 100% with a single configuration or even several configurations.

You think that additional memory is the better tradeoff. OK, some quick googling shows 1GB of DDR3 memory might be about $10 wholesale (I found $16 retail). So if you are going to sell 70 million tablets (that is the number of iPads sold in the past year), going from 1Gb to 2Gb is roughly a $700 million decision (per/year) and that assumes stable memory prices (they aren't) so your decision might cost more than that (or less). And you've now cut into your power budget for all future products.

[blinkingled]

It was confusing to me that you were thinking from the corporation's viewpoint! That makes it way more complicated than necessary. a) Apple constantly toots their horn about putting user experience ahead of anything else. b) Apple has lot of money. c) There are lot of products on the market - phones, tablets that sell for both premium and no-profit, that have 2GB RAM. d) Apple sells the iPad at premium price points e) I am certainly not the only one that would benefit from more RAM. I bet lot of people will benefit from having more memory for their "post PC" device.

As a user I don't have to care what Apple has to do to get the RAM up - renegotiate with their vendors, improve battery life, sell a different SKU with more RAM and $16 more in price, eat up the cost as a price to pay for user experience etc. You kept explaining why they couldn't do it when others have been there and done that.

Frankly even viewed 100% from Apple's standpoint, none of your arguments are very convincing, especially so if you look at what actually is involved in 1GB of additional RAM and when even lower priced devices have it.