Recently, I’ve run into so many game apps that just plain outright crash as I get into the later parts of game.  This was truly annoying.  What’s wrong with the developers these days?  Why are they creating games that just kick you off when you get past the learning curve and start to truly enjoy a game?  Then it dawned on me.  I was still using a first generation iPad.  Sure, Apple dropped support for them when iOS 6 came out, but they DID support devices like the iPhone 3Gs still – and isn’t that even older.  Well, I recently traded in my iPad (1st generation) 3G 16GB for an iPad (4th generation) 32GB.  The difference was night and day.

Read on past the jump to see why a newer iPad may just be your answer to app crashes.

Apps that previously would always crash even though it was the only app open finally stopped after I got a newer iPad.  What’s the difference?  Why does mom’s iPad 2 still work flawlessly even though it’s only a year newer than my iPad (1st Gen)?   The answer lies in RAM.  No, you cannot open up your iPad and install more RAM…sadly the only way to get more RAM is by replacing the iPad itself.  Let’s compare the technical specifications between iPads and see why the iPad 2 should be the entry level unit for today.

These specs were taken from Wikipedia for the keyword “iPad”.

Woah!  Did you see that?  The iPad 1st Generation only has 256MB!  That’s HALF of the iPad 2/Mini which sports 512MB of RAM.  Of course, there are CPU and GPU differences as well…however those would relate to just how fast a worker can work.  The RAM is how much space a worker actually HAS to work.  So by running apps that are very RAM intensive, even a single app can and does cause the older iPad to crash.  Of course, much of your standard fare and business apps don’t use resources that heavily.  Hence they run fine and it’s the games that get you into trouble.  Especially some of those that are “unlimited” in approach such as “No Zombies Allowed” where you can keep on building new buildings until….well…your device runs out of memory!  As interesting a concept as it is to have “unlimited” gameplay, I would much rather developers created boundaries and be mindful of the various devices that people will be running their app on.  Create richer gameplay…but don’t leave it open for the customer to run your app into the ground – especially in the unintentional endgame.

With that said, for newcomers into the iPad world, please DO NOT get the iPad (1st Generation) – unless you get it for a bargain price and will only be using it for basic business style apps (including TeamViewer), internet, email, etc.  To date, I’ve found that Newegg.com and Micro Center offer the best possible prices on iPads.

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