Q: Ipad ram memory question

You should ask the App maker why their numbers do not add up.

Poorly written app.
The real question is why would you download something like that?

The ipad dynamically controls memory usage.
There are no user adjustable memory management settings.

Message was edited by: Johnathan Burger

That app, if accurate, should be named "TMI" and, if inaccurate, well the mods will get upset with me if I use that word.

Adding those four things does nothing.
Kinda like adding, watermelons, lemons, fish and cars.
It is meaningless.
-> http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Performance/Conceptual/Man agingMemory/ManagingMemory.html

From -> About.com - OS X Memory Usage
Free. This one is pretty straightforward. It's the RAM in your Mac that isn't currently in use, and can be freely assigned to any process or application that needs all or some portion of available memory.

Wired. This is memory your Mac has assigned to its own internal needs, as well as the core needs of applications and processes you're running. Wired memory represents the minimum amount of RAM your Mac needs at any point in time to keep running. You can think of this as memory that's off limits for everyone else.

Active. This is memory currently in use by applications and processes on your Mac, other than the special system processes assigned to Wired memory. You can see your Active memory footprint grow as you launch applications, or as currently running applications need and grab more memory to perform a task.

Inactive. This is memory that's no longer required by an application but hasn't yet been released to the Free memory pool."

Chris, best answer I have seen on the memory usage question. While it may an interesting academic exercise to try and assess the memory in a particular computing device, in the real world it is not relevant. Well written software and OSs work together to use the available memory and mass storage to accomplish a task. If you are concerned about speed, then the more memory the better because it feeds the CPU fastest. But, you can get the job done via mass storage, i.e., HD or SSD, swapping.

Back in the old days, when memory was outrageously expensive, we had to fool the computers by using overlay specifications...made a program and OS think there was more physical memory than actually existed. But that is probably boring you all.

+ 1

To what end?
What does it matter?
Why?

You cannot adjust any settings or alter memory usage at all, so why bother monitoring it?

Using something like this makes no sense at all.

Hi Roy, I'm not 100% certain, but I think the missing memory maybe that given over to the graphics chip.

I think the missing memory

What "missing memory"?

The difference between the total the Roy is seeing in the application and the 256mb in the iPad.

I was under the same impression as Roy, that Free, Wired, Active, and Inactive memory accounts for the total amount of system RAM. I'm no expert but the System Memory tab in Activity Monitor on my Mac shows these 4 as a pie chart adding up to the 2GB total I have in my MacBook.

I understand that iOS doesn't have virtual memory like a mac, and I believe, though as mentioned I'm not 100% certain, that the graphics memory is shared. In which case in iOS the calculation would be Free + Wired + Active + Inactive + Graphics.

Message was edited by: roryobryan

RAM = Random Access Memory.

So RAM memory is Random Access Memory memory.

Sorry, feeling a bit obnoxious this morning.

The other posters are correct in that it's pointless to use an app like that.