Anyone know why they're skimping on the RAM?

Does the ipad need some super-special expensive DIMMs? Is it about power consumption?

A 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM costs a measly $40 bucks. I don't think the ipad target audience would care if apple added that to the MSRP.

It's almost certainly about power consumption; Apple absolutely loves being able to tout huge battery life compared to the competition, and one way they do that i s by being tighter on things like RAM usage.

It's also worth pointing out that the RAM lives in a Package-on-Package configuration right on the CPU die. They're not exactly buying mass market SO-DIMMs and sticking them in a bog-standard bus, so the cost per MB is probably higher.

The processor and the ram are stacked on the same chip. So they're kinda limited as to what they can put in there. I doubt that you could fit a SO-DIMM of any stripe inside an ipad case, nor would you want the power problems.

There was a teardown of the chip assembly done back when the ipad came out that has some good details: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-A4-Teardown/2204/1