Q: iPad Safari crashing regularly

Thank you Christof60.

Apps - and Safari is just an app - are written to use RAM not disk in order to make the app as fast as possible.  Apple could  have different versions of Safari for different devices but

a) they would have even more complaints than they get at present

b) it would cost them money

c) they, like all other IT companies, want you to buy new product.

Safari caches (stores) the web pages in RAM - so the less RAM and the more web pages the more often will Safari refresh a page you are going back to.  What you are doing is probably the best workaround - copy and then paste back.

The "add file/picture" button issue I can't comment about - I don't use this.

External hard or flash drives - can't swear to this but it's probably a combination of wanting to have people use their iCloud - which will have been in development for several years - and not wanting to kill off their desktop/laptop business for as long as possible.

By all means buy a Galaxy SIII and an Android Tablet but I suspect that you'll find, in the long run, that those will be supported no better or for longer than your current Apple products.  I am not an Apple advocate - I have, and use, all sorts of equipment, Mac, Windows and Linux.  No product is perfect.

Are the Directors of Apple ego-inflated? Probably.  I used to be a Corporate Troubleshooter - fixing companies with big problems - and many of the senior management I met were ego-inflated.  In the case of Apple - judging by the overall success of the company - their egos are probably justifiably inflated ;-)  Does this mean there are no unhappy customers?  Of course not but the happy ones far outweigh the unhappy ones - but they'd better fix the maps fiasco pdq or that might change :-)

Hmmmmm - seem to have wandered somewhat off the original topic.

What I do not understand is why Apple does not admit there is a logical reason for the ipad crashes.    I appreciate the sound explanation by Joachim Hettich.        When I talk to their technical support or personnel at the local Genius Bar, it appears that that are not aware or not allowed to admit the real problem.       They send me on wild goose chase fixes; like doing a complete system reset, "do not restore from your backup", re-download apps one a time to find the possible culprit.     Theses are all very time consuming and have not corrected the issue.     It just gets me off the line or out of the store.

Thank you so much for that explanation.  I do know, however, that I am not going to go out and buy ANY tablet anytime soon.  Other people may be able to afford slapping down $200 (for an android tablet) - $800 (high end iPad) every two years, but I simply cannot. 

That, sadly, is just way too much money for me.  I will just continue to stick to my 5 year old computer that may be slow, but it is still chugging along!

I certainly do know that nothing is perfect, nor have I ever expected anything to be.  I would just like something to work at least 50% of the time.  I don't think that that is asking for too much!  LOL!

OK I spoke too soon about the Washington Post - still crashing Safari but now not as quickly as before.

@ jimsip3  It's not the iPad that's crashing it's one of the apps - Safari is the one being discussed here but others crash also.  This may sound like me splitting hairs but there's a big difference between being taken back to the home page and the whole operating system going down.  As I said before the out of memory app crashes can be caused by lots of different reasons so I suspect that the Apple support staff are going through a number of the more common possibilities in the hope that this may fix or aleviate the problem.  Why don't they explain the cause of the problem - I don't know - maybe that would be perceived as being critical of Apple which I suspect is a big no-no, maybe they fear a negative reaction from the customer and judging from many of the forums there are plenty of people who seem to get angry and agressive, maybe they just don't have time with each customer to go into long explanations, etc.

@ aimeefromtopsham  Come on - be fair.  I have these app crashes a lot and even if I occassionally do a hard re-boot to clear out memory my iPad is still working at least 99.99% of the time.  If yours is really not working 50% of the time then something much more serious is going on and you DO need to have Apple look at it.

I think at some point in this thread someone bemoaned the fact that they couldn't roll back their IOS to solve the issue.  I had this issue with IOS 4.  It may have become slightly worse with IOS 5 but not so much that I could put hand on heart and swear to it.  The effect of limited RAM will continue to get worse as time goes by.  Being a first adopter of new technology always had an element of risk - and I invested a lot of money in Betamax equipment many moons ago so I speak from experience.

I think I was the one speaking of rolling back the OS Joachim... I helped my son buy this iPad 3 yrs ago. Although he "had" to have the 64gb, I felt 32 or even 16gb was plenty... Turns out Dad was right. He never used more than 25% of the storage space.

Back to the rollback... When he graduated High-school a year early (with High Honors), his Mother, Step-Father, and I contacted everyone in the family to combine all gifts as $$ to buy him his dream laptop, a Mac Book Pro... After the graduation and his surprise of the Mac, he handed me this iPad later that evening and said "Happy Fathers Day Dad"... I had wanted an iPad but could not afford one. It came with iOS 4, not sure exactly what version, but for several months I used it without one single crash. After updating gleefully to iOS 5, I started getting the crashes in Safari. They continued to get worse, and from a few a day to 7-8 sometimes in a couple hours. As far as apps, I cannot recall one crash UNLESS I use the app with Safari open in the background. As long as I shut it down completely, Apps didn't crash. Fast forward to today... I now have a crash OCCASSIONALLY using Apps like YouTube or Facebook, but none of my other Apps. I've done every suggestion found here, even wiping (restoring to factory new) and even the fresh install of every app, to no avail.

About the only thing that irritates me more than the crashing problem are the putz's that make the stupid remarks like "what do you expect, Apple to support your device forever?", etc.... I can't think of ONE electronic device I've owned except the SE Experia X10 that I've owned that WASN'T supported for many years, and even though it was a bear to uninstall Vista to re-install XP for my wife on her laptop, I was able to find and install EVERY driver she needed, and even just recently bought RAM for her ANCIENT Toshiba Laptop (5 yrs old) and even ordered RAM for my ex-sister-in-laws Desktop that I built for her back in 1996... I can't believe she still uses that old piece of junk (HDD 120 mb), but as she says "it does everything I need it to"... So I don't accept that when you buy an Apple product, who remain so inclusive that we can't even change the battery without sending it in, and they charged $400 for a unit that at the time, cost them $34.00 to manufacture, and after 3-4 yrs are dropping support and updates for that system?

I'm just not one of those "throw it away and buy a new one" types, of which there are far too many in our population...

SO.... I guess I will just stick with this "ancient" machine until it quits working, and continue to be upset with Apple for selling the most expensive electronics, then dumping on the people who want to use them for more than a couple years...

But I sure appreciate your intelligent, polite, and insightful posts. Um, you ever try to work for Apple? I have a feeling that since Steve left them, they could use a few fresh faces in that company to "freshen up" their stale ideas and IMHO, pisspoor customer service....

Where to start?

Smartphones are typically supported for 1 to max 2 years across the industry.  Tablets are pretty new technology and are closer in design to smartphones than to computers.  Smartphones and tablets, unlike computers, cannot just have their disks wiped and a new or old OS put on them.  I do not know the reason for this but I strongly suspect that it has to do with the constant battle between device manufacturers and hackers.  If you're really interested search for "SHSH blobs" and "APTicket" and allow yourself several weeks/months of learning curve ;-)

Desktops are pretty much designed to be accessible.  Laptops less so - if you've ever tried to upgrade a Sony laptop for example you realise that they are very much designed not to be messed with even to the extent of massively locking BIOS options.  Tablets and smartphones use every trick in the book to make them as light as possible.  You mentioned the battery.  Are you aware that to save weight the iPhone battery has no hard outer shell and is more like a small plastic bag full of a very viscous liquid?  When you have put one in you need to ensure that it has very uniform thickness or else you run the risk of it overheating and even causing a fire.  Apple DOES expect customers to keep buying new models and enough of them do so for the company to be, at least currently, very successful.  As I mentioned in my previous post anyone who purchased an iPad Original was an early adopter and the first generation of new products is frequently outdated much more rapidly than later generations - sorry.

As for working for Apple - if you can get somone to call me I'm more than happy to consider it ;-)

Uuummm....  How am I not being fair?  I only said that I was not going to buy a new tablet anytime soon. 

I have actually taken my poor old iPad to Apple to have them look at it, only to have them tell me that they can't help me.  I have called them on the phone numerous times just to have them tell me that they can't help me, either.  I was told on my most recent call that they can't help me anymore because my two year Apple Care thingy is expired.  I think that I have been more than fair! 

I have to do a hard re-boot at least once a day and I have actually tried everything under the sun to get it to work.  I have done everything that had been suggested and have read this entire thread frontwards and backwards to see if I have missed anything.

The really sad thing is, it worked perfectly with iOS 4.

@aimeefromtopsham

That comment was in response to your comment about just wanting a device that works for more than 50% of the time and was meant to be a light hearted response to a light hearted comment - sorry it failed.

I am the one that should be apologising.    I am very sorry.    Don't be sorry that I didn't interpret it correctly. That was my fault. 

I was talking to someone about my iPad the other day when it froze and wouldn't do anything.  I told them that it actually makes a beautiful picture frame!  It had frozen on an image of flowers and trees.  It was actually a nice picture while it was frozen.  Then it crashed. 

Not to worry - it takes a lot more than that to upset me.

If you are technically inclined all Apple computer and mobile devices generate crash logs.  On a mobile device these logs are moved to the computer when you sync - this may not be the case if you are using iCloud they may then get stored there.  If you are syncing to a Mac you can find them under Users/<YOUR USER NAME>/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/<DEVICE NAME>  You'll find App Crashes and Out Of Memory Crashes.  I haven't looked at mine in a while, which is why I don't know if they now go to my iCloud, but when I did I was surprised at how many apps crashed and how crashes were happening well before I started taking notice.

I strongly suspect that these crash logs, although interesting to a geek like me, will not be of any practical use as they just demonstrate that Out Of Memory crashes are happening more and more frequently and, as we unfortunately can't put any more RAM into our poor struggling iPads, we're stuck with it.  There are still plenty of uses for it which don't make it crash - I, for example, use it as an ereader as I have Nook, Kindle, iBook, Stanza and lots more reading apps on mine.  You can also get several Photo Frame apps ;-)

PS using my Sherlock Holmes magic detection abilities I conclude that you are Topsham Maine USA and not Topsham Devon UK ;-)

QUOTE:There are still plenty of uses for it which don't make it crash - I, for example, use it as an ereader as I have Nook, Kindle, iBook, Stanza and lots more reading apps on mine.  You can also get several Photo Frame apps ;-)UNQUOTE

I still have several Palm devices that do all that, especially my Palm TX, but I didn't pay NEARLY as much for those devices!  I think your attitude is too complacent, and Apple loves that!  With that attitude they can keep on making toys that only last a couple of years and count on the fact that every couple of years your going to drop some big bucks on their latest toy.  I can't tell you how many gadgets I own that are WAY older than my iPad, and they are working just like the day I bought them.

You can say that tablet technology is evolving much faster than other electronic devices, but then why destroy my perfectly working device with an upgrade and not give me the otion of rolling back?  It's a WAY too convenient process, very likely done on purpouse to MAKE you go out and buy a new device, IF you want to keep playing with your device.  I for one won't play that dumb game.

This is really my point, which is a very good one but sadly will not make one difference in how Apple, or any tech manufacturer, runs today.

I can't count the number of times (literally hundreds) of times, when I was heavily into building/ fixing PC's, (1998-2005) and MS would roll out an OS update. On many older machines, the new "fix" for Win 98, 2000, or XP would start causing conflicts and crashes, usually due to older drivers not " updating" to match the latest Windows update.

But a service call was usually as easy as rolling back the update to the previous one and "voila", genius me had just miraculously (in the clients view) fixed what had been driving them crazy for a week. Of course, they had to turn off auto update, which I explained to them could mean security issues, but most were not in business, or a network, so the risk was low should they have a good firewall/virus program tat would keep updating with the old non-updated Windows OS...

That's all I expect from Apple. If I could roll back, and some apps in the future were not compatible with the OS version I had on my iPad, well, I would just live with it, or buy a new iPad.

Even my son concurred that prior to giving me this unit, he could only remember a couple times in 2 years that it crashed, adding "but if I remember, I had a bunch of apps running"....

And there is no way to roll back to iOS 4, correct? And keep it there?

So for me, instead of buying a new iPad (why they didn't add Siri to the iPad 3 is a whole other thread subject), I might just wait for the iPad "Mini", and have my iPhone and iPad combined into one machine..

@Tabori

That was a part of a light hearted comment for aimeefromtopsham but lesson now duly learned - humour - this forum - incompatible - noted.

If you read through my various posts you'll see that I have covered all your points, including the Apple business model, except for your Palm TX one - I have one, would I use it for web browsing, absolutely not, did I back in the day, only if I absoluteley had no other way, does the iPad Original give you a better web browsing experience, even with the ocassional crash, than a Palm TX ever did - I would say so.

@Christof60

If you didn't save your SHSH blobs, no way to roll back.  As I said before I'm not sure it would make all that much of a difference anyway as web/app developers are nowadays assuming more RAM and it will only get worse.

BTW I seriously doubt that the iPad mini will be a phone - from what I read online it would be much too big for that - but you never know.

LOL!  You have gotten it right!  I am in Topsham, Maine as opposed to our sister city in Devon!  The leaves here are changing quite nicely right about now.  

I do have the nook and kindle apps for it, so maybe I can use it for that.  Thank you for that suggestion!  That and the picture frame with pictures of my little one. 

Thank you for all of those suggestions.  It may have a life left as a frisbee, too!  Ha Ha!  Just kidding!  I wouldn't really do that.  Well....