SpringBoard memory allocation (iPhone/iPad)

Question

I have an application under development that uses a large amount of memory for images and OpenGL textures.

I have noticed that occasionally, in fact frequently on some devices, SpringBoard, the application which manages the home screen for the iPhone and iPad can take up excessive amounts of memory, sometimes twice as much as normal.

When this happens, it sends my application in to memory warnings and even crashes. My images do get released as soon as possible, but I believe that due to the sheer volume, it simply isn't good enough and still results in crashing...

I can't find much in the Apple docs about SpringBoard, but it's pissing me off.

Any ideas or pointers on figuring out what causes SpringBoard to be so aggressive?

Answer 1

Your application shouldn't crash in these situations -- it should shut itself down gracefully when the OS tells it to quit. Apple won't document Springboard very much because there's not much they can tell you about it that should affect what you do as a programmer, which boils down to "use as little memory as possible; don't leak memory; quit as quickly as possible when told to quit".

In short, if you're spending any more time worrying about Springboard's behaviour, instead of fixing the crashes in your app, you're not using your time wisely.

Answer 2

The answer was that MKAnnotationViews, despite being autoreleased, were pooling up in the memory footprint of SpringBoard, as opposed to my own app, and were not manifesting themselves very clearly in Instruments.

This is a fairly deceptive thing on Apple's part, particularly in that they allow you to autorelease and never use an object, but it will never actually be released... therefore it is technically not a leak in the eyes of Instruments and static analysis, but can still easily lead to memory related crashes.