Why is the maximum storage on an iPad only 64GB?
June 13, 2011 11:45 AM Subscribe
OK, Batman, riddle me this: If an iPad the size of a writing tablet can hold up to 64GB of stuff and my iPod Classic that fits in the palm of my hand can hold up to 160GB of stuff, why can't an iPad hold up to 160GB or more of stuff?
My wife and I have been having this runaround argument with her wanting an iPad and me saying it's not worth it because you get a ton more functionality - most importantly, storage - out of a notebook or laptop PC. The funny thing is, I kind of like the iPad - it's a neat gadget, but it only seems to be a neat gadget to me. I've got an iPod that holds ALL my music (11,000+ songs) and ALL my podcasts (4000+ of them, too), and I find it difficult to justify the expense of spending $830 on an iPad 2 when it can't hold everything at once that I want to store on it. Is there a physical dimension that's holding memory storage down below 64GB right now, or am I missing something more obvious?
My wife and I have been having this runaround argument with her wanting an iPad and me saying it's not worth it because you get a ton more functionality - most importantly, storage - out of a notebook or laptop PC. The funny thing is, I kind of like the iPad - it's a neat gadget, but it only seems to be a neat gadget to me. I've got an iPod that holds ALL my music (11,000+ songs) and ALL my podcasts (4000+ of them, too), and I find it difficult to justify the expense of spending $830 on an iPad 2 when it can't hold everything at once that I want to store on it. Is there a physical dimension that's holding memory storage down below 64GB right now, or am I missing something more obvious?
The iPad uses flash storage, which is much more expensive than the HD based storage used in the iPod Classic.
posted by jeather at 11:47 AM on June 13, 2011
posted by jeather at 11:47 AM on June 13, 2011
Best answer: Yes. Big iPods (well, the 120GB iPod Classic) use tiny hard drives with moving parts. iPad & iPhones use only solid state memory which for the time being is more expensive per GB.
posted by GuyZero at 11:48 AM on June 13, 2011
posted by GuyZero at 11:48 AM on June 13, 2011
It's all about money. The iPod has a hard drive, which on a $/GB basis is a lot cheaper than the solid-state memory in the iPad.
In theory, Apple could build an iPad with a hard drive. But I don't think iOS has been engineered to support hard drives. Both battery life and performance would take a hit. Apple clearly sees the iPad as the Computer of the Future, and mechanical disks as the Storage of the Past. So it's not going to happen.
posted by adamrice at 11:49 AM on June 13, 2011
In theory, Apple could build an iPad with a hard drive. But I don't think iOS has been engineered to support hard drives. Both battery life and performance would take a hit. Apple clearly sees the iPad as the Computer of the Future, and mechanical disks as the Storage of the Past. So it's not going to happen.
posted by adamrice at 11:49 AM on June 13, 2011
The iPod classic uses a hard drive, while all the other iPods and all iPad models use flash memory. Flash memory has a number of advantages over hard drives: it's much faster (in terms of how long it takes for X amount of data to be transferred to or from the device), it's less prone to damage (from magnets or jostling or mechanical breakdown or whatever), and it uses much less power (because there is no physical disc to spin). Apple opted to use flash memory in the iPad for all of these reasons. The only real disadvantage of flash memory is that it is (currently) much more expensive than hard drives with the equivalent amount of storage; an iPad with 160GB of storage would be a pricey beast indeed.
posted by aparrish at 11:51 AM on June 13, 2011
posted by aparrish at 11:51 AM on June 13, 2011
Consider this: My iPad Gen 1 doesn't have an external video feed unless an app specifically supports it. Gen 2's do. Hardware issue? No. I can jailbreak mine, flip a setting, and I'm good to go. So before trying to apply logic to your question, consider it from a business perspective. You don't want people choosing one device over another - you want them to purchase both. That's why Apple isn't selling a more expensive version with more space. You'll have to wait for that to be rolled out as a "feature" before you can get it.
posted by jwells at 11:52 AM on June 13, 2011
posted by jwells at 11:52 AM on June 13, 2011
I'd go one step further. Not only is the flash memory expensive for a solid state drive, but Apple has no incentive to sell the expanded memory. They are pushing for iCloud, which will be a fee-based service that explicitly benefits from you not having large storage space on your device. I would not imagine seeing a 128GB or 256GB iPad version in the future because of the cloud.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 11:52 AM on June 13, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by Mister Fabulous at 11:52 AM on June 13, 2011 [3 favorites]
Your iPod is good at carrying lots and lots of data, but isn't so good at presenting anything other than audio to a single source. In this, it excels. But try showing a slide presentation, watching a movie, surfing the web, or playing a game on it, and you'll see the appeal of the iPad. My iPad has more or less replaced my laptop.
Adding a hard drive to it would probably make even more expensive right now, and expand its waistline so much as to make it a step back, rather than forward.
If wife wants an iPad for the stuff an iPad is good for, it's cheaper than a good laptop, and better than a cheap laptop.
posted by Hylas at 12:08 PM on June 13, 2011
Adding a hard drive to it would probably make even more expensive right now, and expand its waistline so much as to make it a step back, rather than forward.
If wife wants an iPad for the stuff an iPad is good for, it's cheaper than a good laptop, and better than a cheap laptop.
posted by Hylas at 12:08 PM on June 13, 2011
from a business perspective
It absolutely does not involve a "business perspective" unless you mean that "putting that much NAND flash memory in a device would make it cost so much that nobody would ever buy it."
These things run on NAND flash memory, which is very expensive. This has nothing to do with Apple - everybody else's tablets, cell phones, and devices like it are just like this. Running an iPad off of a hard drive would be the slowest, worst thing possible.
The old iPods work because they only play music. They have ~32mb of ram (not flash) and they can spin up the HD to buffer a few tracks and play from ram. If you want to see how short the battery life would be of an iPhone or iPad, pull out an old iPod, put it on random, and skip the track every few seconds.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 12:10 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
It absolutely does not involve a "business perspective" unless you mean that "putting that much NAND flash memory in a device would make it cost so much that nobody would ever buy it."
These things run on NAND flash memory, which is very expensive. This has nothing to do with Apple - everybody else's tablets, cell phones, and devices like it are just like this. Running an iPad off of a hard drive would be the slowest, worst thing possible.
The old iPods work because they only play music. They have ~32mb of ram (not flash) and they can spin up the HD to buffer a few tracks and play from ram. If you want to see how short the battery life would be of an iPhone or iPad, pull out an old iPod, put it on random, and skip the track every few seconds.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 12:10 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
YMMV, but I've found I don't use my iPad for listening to mp3s at all (iPhone/iPod is much more convenient for that type of thing, in my opinion), and for video I use Netflix streaming or occasionally sync 1 or 2 movies at a time. So for me space hasn't been an issue at all.
There's also the option of converting your mp3s to AAC when syncing so that they take up less space. I do this with my iPhone and I'm able to fit 3x more music on it compared to my 256k mp3s -- and when I'm listening in my car I can't tell the difference anyway.
So what I'm saying is, your perceived need for tons of space on an iPad may not be true with the reality once you buy one. I only got the 16 GB model and I'm still only using 20% of the space on it. On the other hand, my 16 GB iPhone is 98% full all the time.
posted by buckaroo_benzai at 12:15 PM on June 13, 2011
There's also the option of converting your mp3s to AAC when syncing so that they take up less space. I do this with my iPhone and I'm able to fit 3x more music on it compared to my 256k mp3s -- and when I'm listening in my car I can't tell the difference anyway.
So what I'm saying is, your perceived need for tons of space on an iPad may not be true with the reality once you buy one. I only got the 16 GB model and I'm still only using 20% of the space on it. On the other hand, my 16 GB iPhone is 98% full all the time.
posted by buckaroo_benzai at 12:15 PM on June 13, 2011
I also think that people in general are using much less local storage for things so there's not a huge demand for iPads/iPhones/iPod Touches with more storage. iCloud is part of the trend but it's been developing for years. Instead of having a few gigs of PST files buried in a cryptic folder on your hard drive, everything lives in Gmail. Rather than keeping 100gb of MP3s, you just use Pandora. If you want to hear a specific song, find it on YouTube.
posted by The Lamplighter at 12:16 PM on June 13, 2011
posted by The Lamplighter at 12:16 PM on June 13, 2011
My wife and I have been having this runaround argument with her wanting an iPad and me saying it's not worth it because you get a ton more functionality...
FYI, your questions is a bit confusing. You say your wife wants the iPad2, but then you say it doesn't fit your needs. So figure it whether it's for you or her and recommend the purchase based on her needs, not yours.
Also, with the release of iOS 5 in the Fall, storage will be less of a problem, as a lot of things will be hosted in the cloud as opposed to the actual device.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:22 PM on June 13, 2011 [7 favorites]
FYI, your questions is a bit confusing. You say your wife wants the iPad2, but then you say it doesn't fit your needs. So figure it whether it's for you or her and recommend the purchase based on her needs, not yours.
Also, with the release of iOS 5 in the Fall, storage will be less of a problem, as a lot of things will be hosted in the cloud as opposed to the actual device.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:22 PM on June 13, 2011 [7 favorites]
Also, you need to compare the iPad to the iPod Touch, since the both use the type of storage that others have mentioned, i.e. flash. Note that largest size on that iPod is only 64gb.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:25 PM on June 13, 2011
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:25 PM on June 13, 2011
They could, if they felt like it, offer ipads with more solid state storage and charge more for it - there's certainly not a size constraint keeping the amount of flash in there below an arbitrary limit. Setting aside any particular technical constraint, the biggest reason we don't see more storage in the iPad line is the same reason we don't see more storage anywhere else in their product line. They've discovered that people don't actually need it. The vast majority of people have less than 64 GB of music. I can't dig up the ref right now, but there was some nice consumer survey work that showed that most people have < 10 GB of music. So you (and me) are outliers as far as Apple is concerned and you're unlikely to see them spending much effort to support us. So even if they could go higher (and they could, although it would get rapidly quite expensive) they don't have much of an incentive to because most people don't need more storage. This is going to be exacerbated by iCloud deployment in iOS 5.
You can see this in how little they care about the "classic" form factor ipods. They haven't been updated (software or otherwise) in almost two years, way longer than their other active products. And when they have updated them in the past, they don't get the WWDC/Special Music Event treatment that iOS devices get. There haven't even been any rumors about the line for two years.
Incidentally, the fact that those devices don't run iOS is another indication of their dead-end status. Apple clearly doesn't view them as a major market segment anymore. I suspect they keep them around because serious music people still like them and they sell enough every quarter to make it not worth EOLing them, but not enough to make it worth spending engineering effort on them.
posted by heresiarch at 12:41 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
You can see this in how little they care about the "classic" form factor ipods. They haven't been updated (software or otherwise) in almost two years, way longer than their other active products. And when they have updated them in the past, they don't get the WWDC/Special Music Event treatment that iOS devices get. There haven't even been any rumors about the line for two years.
Incidentally, the fact that those devices don't run iOS is another indication of their dead-end status. Apple clearly doesn't view them as a major market segment anymore. I suspect they keep them around because serious music people still like them and they sell enough every quarter to make it not worth EOLing them, but not enough to make it worth spending engineering effort on them.
posted by heresiarch at 12:41 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
They are pushing for iCloud, which will be a free-based service...
FTFY.
But yeah, HDs are cheap, Flash is more expensive. I wish the iDevices came with more onboard memory, too.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:23 PM on June 13, 2011
FTFY.
But yeah, HDs are cheap, Flash is more expensive. I wish the iDevices came with more onboard memory, too.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:23 PM on June 13, 2011
Other folks have given you the hardware answer but I will tell you the user side.
I can fully attest that 8,036 e-books and all of the Dummies Books in PDF have not even placed a dent in my 64GB iPad. Most things are streamed e.g., Netflix or stored for easy access e.g., Dropbox. Even with extensive travel I am only loading a few movies so again, space is not a pressing issue.
posted by jadepearl at 5:34 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
I can fully attest that 8,036 e-books and all of the Dummies Books in PDF have not even placed a dent in my 64GB iPad. Most things are streamed e.g., Netflix or stored for easy access e.g., Dropbox. Even with extensive travel I am only loading a few movies so again, space is not a pressing issue.
posted by jadepearl at 5:34 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
Manufactured incremental obsolescence.
posted by Bachsir at 9:36 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Bachsir at 9:36 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
"My wife and I have been having this runaround argument with her wanting an iPad and me saying it's not worth it because you get a ton more functionality - most importantly, storage - out of a notebook or laptop PC."
I love to read in the evenings while my partner is watching television. I switch from the office (big Dell, 2 large monitors) to the sofa and spend five minutes cursing under my breath because the (Windows) laptop is a pain in the butt to use as a "portable" device and I ended up getting a laptop table just to be able to use it while relaxing on the sofa with the dogs. The power cable needs an extension cord, I prefer to use a mouse... in short, I'm trying to replicate the desktop experience on the sofa.
Then just over a week ago I got an iPad 2 as a surprise gift. I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it is. I'm not a gadget junkie --this is the first Apple product I've owned (no iPod, mp3 player etc) and the first portable device I've owned since the iPaq back in 2001 or so-- but in those 8 days I've realised that storage, tech specs and so on are meaningless, it's all about the freedom.
Freedom to choose from a huge library of tech and fiction ebooks no matter where I am. Freedom to open up Safari to quickly research something. Freedom to pick it up (with one hand!) and get coding. It has changed the way I see portable computing and no laptop or netbook can come close to it.
Reading this back I realise that I sound like an Apple fan girl but I won't be rushing out to get All Things Apple from now on (have you seen the prices?!), I just sit in awe at all the things I can do now with this tiny, wonderful device.
Go get her an iPad!
posted by humph at 12:29 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
I love to read in the evenings while my partner is watching television. I switch from the office (big Dell, 2 large monitors) to the sofa and spend five minutes cursing under my breath because the (Windows) laptop is a pain in the butt to use as a "portable" device and I ended up getting a laptop table just to be able to use it while relaxing on the sofa with the dogs. The power cable needs an extension cord, I prefer to use a mouse... in short, I'm trying to replicate the desktop experience on the sofa.
Then just over a week ago I got an iPad 2 as a surprise gift. I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it is. I'm not a gadget junkie --this is the first Apple product I've owned (no iPod, mp3 player etc) and the first portable device I've owned since the iPaq back in 2001 or so-- but in those 8 days I've realised that storage, tech specs and so on are meaningless, it's all about the freedom.
Freedom to choose from a huge library of tech and fiction ebooks no matter where I am. Freedom to open up Safari to quickly research something. Freedom to pick it up (with one hand!) and get coding. It has changed the way I see portable computing and no laptop or netbook can come close to it.
Reading this back I realise that I sound like an Apple fan girl but I won't be rushing out to get All Things Apple from now on (have you seen the prices?!), I just sit in awe at all the things I can do now with this tiny, wonderful device.
Go get her an iPad!
posted by humph at 12:29 AM on June 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
I think your question has been answered, but wanted to chime in that you can use Home Sharing (while on the same network) to stream any music/podcasts/movies/TV shows from a Mac's iTunes library to an iPad. It works quite wonderfully. I don't even store any media on my iPad, I just stream it from my iMac.
Of course, this doesn't help when you're away from home, but do you really need 11,000 songs and 4,000 podcasts on you at all times? If yes, well, you've got your iPod for that.
posted by Tu13es at 5:18 AM on June 14, 2011
Of course, this doesn't help when you're away from home, but do you really need 11,000 songs and 4,000 podcasts on you at all times? If yes, well, you've got your iPod for that.
posted by Tu13es at 5:18 AM on June 14, 2011
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