Q: iPad Safari crashing regularly

I agree with Philly_Phan about my logic was faulty. The Safari icon appearing did not mean it was still running, so I have to assume I only removed the icon. P. 23 could be more specific in the "Force an app to close" section that not all the icons are running and therefore not all are close-able; some are not running and only icon-removeable. Is there any way to tell which apps are actually running (or runable and suspended)?

I'm on thin ice here so don't take this as gospel.  As I understand it, generally the non-Apple apps are not running.  In the case of the Apple apps, some are running and some are not and, in at least one case, it's somewhat easy to confirm - Mail continues to run although in a quasi-sleep mode.  Yes, it's running but it's not doing anything except that it's listening for incoming messages if the server pushes them in (IMAP server).  Beyond that, the ice begins to break.

I too am seeing frequent Safari crashes on an iPad 1 with iOS 5.0.1.  Seems to be happening every 5 or 10 minutes. I have diagnostics and usage data automatically sent to Apple, so they should know about it.  Hope they fix it soon, it's annoying ...

Okay Apple now you are just costing yourself money I'm trying to buy a song on the iPads iTunes, it keeps crashing.

Crashing is happening more and more often. And, now apps are starting to crash - iTunes, numbers, huffpost. Very annoying apple.

My ipad1 crashes every 10 minutes in safari, mercury, or atomic web.  Oddly it's better in Opera.  It seems to be a JavaScript problem. 

For example, when I visit slashdot.org and click on the 'view poll comments' link on the right column on the main page, it crashes all three browsers every time, EXCEPT Opera.  The poll results make no use of flash, only JavaScript.

Apple, are you listening?

Why does apple even HAVE "support communities" --- can somebody at Apple just fix this flakey crap? Perhaps they could spend a few of the Billions they've made selling us iPads ?!! And hire a few software guys? Did forestall quit or what?

What were you told when you took your iPad to the Apple Store and demonstrated the problem?

You are not supposed to restore from backup. You are supposed to setup as new ipad. It will not work to restore from backup, because you are putting the buggy files back.

I am trying to help here.

If it was a software bug, it would be happening in a reproducible manner to every single ipad running ios 5 or higher. This simply is not the case.

So if restoring it to a "virgin" state doesn't help. Hardware is a possibility, because it could be the flash chips going bad or other hardware malfunction.

A DFU restore or even an ordinary restore has helped many people in this thread. Again, you must setup as new ipad in order for it to work.

For $30, or for free at the Åpple store, you can ask apple to look into this issue.

1-800-MY-APPL

www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar

Again, I'm sorry if I offended you.

Sam,

Your statement, "If it was a software bug, it would be happening in a reproducible manner to every single ipad running ios 5 or higher" is simply not true.

There could be a timing issue involved here, maybe a race condition.  Some iPads are within tolerance, some might be sitting on the fence.  Sometimes things work, sometimes not.

In any case, this is a real issue for a significant number of Apple customers and the good folks at Apple should be busting their butts to find the cause and fix it.  As a customer, I believe they should be as fast at fixing issues such as this as they were at swiping my credit card.

Cheers!

MrJoeyBlack wrote:

 

Sam,

 

There could be a timing issue involved here, maybe a race condition.  Some iPads are within tolerance, some might be sitting on the fence.  Sometimes things work, sometimes not.

Absolutely correct and that's a hardware issue, not a software bug.  That's why the iPad must be taken to an Apple Store for resolution.  They will, of course, try some standard "repairs," such as a Reset and Restore but, if the problem is still resident, I would ask for a replacement unit.

Just thought I would add my name to the list. Ever since I "upgraded" to ios5, Safari crashes several times a night. I didn't have any problems before this. I used to enjoy using my ipad now I find myself avoiding it because it is so frustrating. i really hope they can fix this soon.

I can reproduce the results consistently on several websites and have also been logging the error messages in the hope it will make someone take notice.

So all iPad 1 that were running perfectly fine under iOS 3.2 to 4.3 just started having hardware issue the day users updated to iOS5?

Software bugs aren't always easily reproducible. It could be that ios 5 is pushing the hardware further (requires more ram or cpu), beyond what was initially spec'd for 3.2 or that it's making things in a way that cause a driver to crash under certain circumstances. All ipads aren't created equal either, apple has several vendors for some components, so it could be that one component is manufactured differently, doesn't meet expected requirements or is just simply slightly different and the driver doesn't handle it properly or ...

Whatever, there are hundreds of possible reason that would cause perfectly manufactured hardware to crash just because of the software.

By the end of the day, I wouldn't call that a "hardware issue", the device was rock solid until I bumped it up to 5.0. The only thing that changed on that device is software, the hardware is the same, seems odd to me to be calling names on the hardware.

Restoring is not going to do jack, specially if the validation test is among the lines of "DFU restore, kill all apps, don't sync email nor use icloud, disable javascript and open google's homepage once".

I'm sure I can't get my ipad to crash if I don't use it, but I wouldn't call that a solution, would I?

I'm still firmly on my position "iOS requires too much ram", and start to think that maybe the new JavaScript engine could be either be buggy (hard to believe though) or responsible for the increased RAM requirements.

Doesn't change much, though. Disabling javascript? Yeah, right, that's going to be useful, the browser doesn't crash, but that's mostly because you can't browse any decent sized website.

There doesn't have to be any "timing issue" or "race condition" or any hardware problem. If there is a memory management bug it may appear almost randomly depending on:

• what the initial memory state of the iPad is (what web sites have been previously visited, how long Safari has been running, etc.),
• what web sites are visited,
• what links are clicked,
• what Javascript is executed (by user action),
• what videos or ads were playing,
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

These facts is probably responsible for why some people see the problem more often and others don't (or rarely do).

Tried power cycling iPad. Safari is still crashing.  Will try disabling JavaScript.

Was planning on buying an iPad 3 next year, but will hold off until this is fixed.