This morning I was on the phone to Apple Support because my iPad 2 froze up. While waiting to be connected, it freed itself up. The tech support person said the freeze up may have been caused by having too many apps running. She told me how to quit running apps by double clicking the Home button, pressing and holding on an app at the bottom of the screen until the app icons wiggle, and then clicking on the minus sign on the app (apps) I wanted to quit. These seems awkward because I had more than 20 apps running. Is there a better way to quit an app?

No, I'm afraid that is the only "official" way to clear out the switcher, and FYI it is unlikely all 20 were running... Unfortunately that list is not only what is actually running, but it is also a list of recently used apps, even if the iPad has stopped them running. Quite confusing.

But, all is not lost, there is an app called XSysInfo in the app store which does have a setting which allows you to clear the memory (i.e. dump all running programs) when you start the App. So, by setting this correctly and starting XSysInfo, you can clear the RAM in one step... I think it costs about $2. Check it out if you want an easier way... But, I don't think this option takes the icons out of your switcher, so be aware. It will just free up you RAM.

Of course, once there is an iPad2 jailbreak it becomes trivial. There are lots of easy ways to clear the memory with a single step if you can jailbreak your device... Moot point for you at the moment though.

Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by f4780y

No, I'm afraid that is the only "official" way to clear out the switcher, and FYI it is unlikely all 20 were running... .

When I had the iPad 1, I used a system info app to watch RAM free up when closing apps. I rarely got past 5 apps before closing them stopped increassing the free RAM.

The other day, just for the heck of it, I did this on the iPad 2. I got to 18 apps before free RAM stopped increasing. I was amazed. To be sure, none of the apps were heavy weights; no art programs, big games, ect. Still there were far more apps than I'd have guessed would be frozen in RAM.

Apparenly double the RAM has more implications than just double the apps, which on reflection should be true. After all the system needs RAM too. If it used half the RAM on the iPad 1, then double the RAM would mean 3 times the space for apps.

Ok, enough barely on topic rambling.

No, your absolutely right. IOS takes a good chunk to run. Best I can manage free on my iPad1 is about 120Mb with nowt running.

I like in springtomize, you can set it to gray out apps that aren't really multitasking. Very handy.

Originally Posted by graywolf

I like in springtomize, you can set it to gray out apps that aren't really multitasking. Very handy.

I agree. Very handy. Switcher Mod also does that feature, but for free, for anyone that's interested...

I agree too!