I believe this is because Apple prevents apps from using more than a certain amount of RAM on their iOS devices as I’ve seen people have this problem with iPads as well.
I love the idea of having a locally run AI App. Would an iPad Air be a good use of this?
Would depend on the model of iPad Air and the amount of RAM. The latest M3 Air is still limited to 8GB. That’s the same as my iPad mini (A17 Pro) and current iPhone 16 Pro models. So I’m guessing model size limit would be the same 4.5GB, although M series chips will probably beat A series when it comes to inference times. You’d likely need an iPad Pro with 16GB (limited to 1TB or higher storage options, I believe) or the upcoming iPhone 17 series (rumoured 12GB) to run a larger model on iOS/iPadOS.