When rebooting an iPad, the applications stay open in the App Switcher. Are they not using up some memory, or are they all in a frozen state on disk?
As far as I understand it, if an app is programmed correctly after Apple's standards, the app will stay open but paused in the background until the system ask for more memory, whereafter the app should release the required memory, and essentially shut itself down.
After that, the icon in the App Switcher is really just a shortcut to the app.
A good solution, but unfortunately a whole shitload of apps aren't programmed good enough to fulfill Apple's standards, and are not releasing memory by themselves.
Therefore it's advisable to manually shut down apps you're not using at least a couple of times a week, and once in a while a complete reboot is advisable to be absolutely sure that the entire system is fresh and nothing lies in the background using recourses.
Baldur's Gate: EE uses a lot of memory, and have some memory leaks itself, I've read, so before running the game on an iPad I always force shut down every app before playing.
Especially the iPad 1 have trouble with this game because it have so little RAM, and will probably crash a lot. Save often, but I guess any BG veteran have always abided by that rule.
If your iPad is jailbroken, you can delete some Launch Daemons and other background processes to free up RAM. It's 99% risk-free and there's a lot of iOS things that, depending on your needs, you can get rid of-- files related to mobile internet tethering, crash reporting processes, airprint, chinese wifi character support, voice control, contacts, external accessory support, etc. I've done it before on my iPod Touch 4 and freed up 25 or so MB, which is fairly significant and could make a difference for Baldur's Gate.
@bytebrain closing apps manually is not necessary. All third party apps remain paused in the background and do not use any resources. The OS purges suspended apps automatically to free up memory--you do not need to do it yourself. This is the case with all apps, it is not a question of whether the app was programmed well or not. The OS handles it. There's a chance an app may abuse it's background privileges, but due to the App Store it's exceedingly unlikely and not worth worrying about. I'd close Skype and any other VOIP apps, but that's it.
@bytebrain closing apps manually is not necessary. All third party apps remain paused in the background and do not use any resources. The OS purges suspended apps automatically to free up memory--you do not need to do it yourself. This is the case with all apps, it is not a question of whether the app was programmed well or not. The OS handles it. There's a chance an app may abuse it's background privileges, but due to the App Store it's exceedingly unlikely and not worth worrying about. I'd close Skype and any other VOIP apps, but that's it.
I've read that article, as well as articles on other sites quoting it, and if you read the comments on the articles(s), you'll see dissent across the board with the statements he makes in the article.
That's what I was I explaining. Badly written apps DO NOT release memory to the system when asked. And there's a LOT of those apps.
I was jailbroken until BG:EE was released only for iOS 6.1, and I could see exactly how many recourses the apps used, and the majority didn't release memory when asked. iCab Mobile Browser constantly crashed due to memory issues for me unless I manually shut down apps running in the background.
I have an iPad 2 and an iPad 3, same problem on both.
The guy in the article quoted is grossly minimizing the problem with multiple apps not written good enough to take advantage of the memory releasing system on iOS.
It is a real problem, and it's the very reason why BG:EE crashes for so many people, who then report it running stable after rebooting or shutting down background apps.
Comments
"This build removes the iOS 6 requirement. It will run on an iPad 1, but I suggest a reboot first and save often. Memory is tight."
After that, the icon in the App Switcher is really just a shortcut to the app.
A good solution, but unfortunately a whole shitload of apps aren't programmed good enough to fulfill Apple's standards, and are not releasing memory by themselves.
Therefore it's advisable to manually shut down apps you're not using at least a couple of times a week, and once in a while a complete reboot is advisable to be absolutely sure that the entire system is fresh and nothing lies in the background using recourses.
Baldur's Gate: EE uses a lot of memory, and have some memory leaks itself, I've read, so before running the game on an iPad I always force shut down every app before playing.
Especially the iPad 1 have trouble with this game because it have so little RAM, and will probably crash a lot.
Save often, but I guess any BG veteran have always abided by that rule.
This is a good overview of multitasking on ios: http://www.macworld.com/article/1164616/how_ios_multitasking_really_works.html
That's what I was I explaining. Badly written apps DO NOT release memory to the system when asked. And there's a LOT of those apps.
I was jailbroken until BG:EE was released only for iOS 6.1, and I could see exactly how many recourses the apps used, and the majority didn't release memory when asked. iCab Mobile Browser constantly crashed due to memory issues for me unless I manually shut down apps running in the background.
I have an iPad 2 and an iPad 3, same problem on both.
The guy in the article quoted is grossly minimizing the problem with multiple apps not written good enough to take advantage of the memory releasing system on iOS.
It is a real problem, and it's the very reason why BG:EE crashes for so many people, who then report it running stable after rebooting or shutting down background apps.