Safari crashes on iPad after ios 5 update

After being an extremely unhappy and very disappointed iPad1 user for the last 6 months following the fatal upgrade to 5.0.1 and having been vocal about my masive irritation at Apple's complete disregard for its customers over this issue, I upgraded to 5.1 as soon as it was released. I can report that the iPad is alot more stable than it was, however, it does still crash whenever it feels like it. And this is not just with Safari for me, other apps also crash, so I am confused by the amount of dialogue on the 36 pages of this blog that focus on content rich websites being at the heart of the problem.

However, to put my current stability into context, I use the iPad a lot less than I used to use it before 5.0.1. Before 5, the iPad was a permanent fixture in my hand and was used for everything personal and business alike. Since 5, I have turned off every new feature (so would love to go bck to 4.3 pls) and I have stopped using it for business after I lost my work in progress once too often. I am still running with a very light iPad since I keep the minimum number of apps on the iPad and no longer use it for games, movies, photos as well as work.

This whole episode saddens me greatly as I would love to buy an ipad3 but out of principle I am seriously considering going against the grain and buying an alternative tablet (which by the way, now I've opened up my mind to a non-Apple device, all look very very appealing!!!!)

Apple, you had my unconditional loyalty, now I'm sad to say, you don't.

The issue I have had has been REDUCED by the upgrade. My experience was crashing of iCal, Reminders & Safari; if it did not crash, regardless of reset, closing "open" apps, etc, it was so SLOW that it may have well locked up. I now use Agenda to replace iCal, aNote to replace Reminders & Apollo to replace Safari. Your mileage may vary but for less than $5, I have no need or drive to get a new iPad. I have an iPad2 with 32gb wifi only.

While admitting to having the same problems with 5.0.1, mine is nowhere near as problematic (3 ipad2 users in my office have no problems at all!),

Mine crashes some time or other (ipad1), but nowhere with the same regularity. A mate of minw was so angry that he jailbroke it to go back to 4.3.... he has no problem at all... I am considering going down that road, not to get free apps, which I consider morally wrong, but to get the satisfaction of having the full system working properly.

I have purchased loads of apps, and I do not wish to go down the road of another tablet os... Thankfully, pages, ibooks, kindle, bluefire reader, stanza, proplayer(video) and an mp3 program (called downloader !!!)... give me no problems whatsoever...

here's a suggestion. Turn off multitasking hand gestures. After my upgrade to5.1 I did see significant improvement, but then I tried some apps that some else was complaining about, I.e. iTunes, and sure enough it kept crashing on me. I never use iTunes on the iPad, so I never hit this before. I then turned off the multi-taskIng hand gesture feature and I havn't had a crash since. maybe this will help others. I don't even know what that does, so I certainly won't miss it. This could be a red herring, but it sure seemed to make a difference for me.

I know this won't solve the problem for people who can't or won't upgrade. But I received a pre-ordered 3rd generation last week. Wow is all I can say about this difference (from 1sr gen). You can't tell just by the specs. It's the user experience that is so impressive. Techcrunch loads fully in a couple of seconds, never crashing. Everything just snaps to completion on the screen. Even my flash enabled browsers work better (Proton, Skyfire, Swifter). It's almost like having full flash capability without the lags.

I just wanted to let you know that to keep up with the complexities and variations of website mobile tablet design which are extraordinarily challenging, the iPad 3 gen has nailed it. Anything less than a 3 Gen will have ocassional crashes. Still, that being said, it would be an act of kindness on Apple's part to recognize that not everyone can upgrade and to provide a path back to iOS 4.x.

Marty of Walnut Creek

That is until next year, when the ipad 4 comes out. Then the litany will once again be, "the web has changed so much, you can't expect a year old product to keep up. You've just got to shell out another $800 for the ipad 4."

Don't get me wrong, apple makes sexy products. When they work I love them. I'm just getting worried about the when they work part.

Just for the record. All the bugs which I (and clearly many others!) experienced on IOS 5.0/5.01 went away with the 5.1 update.

No more constant Safari crashes on my iPad 1. In fact no more crashes at all with Safari. Sort of how it used to be, back on 4.x.

No more Safari pulling old web pages out of cache.

So it seems that all those suggested "solutions" which you can read about in this thread were irrelevant. The OS had bugs. Bad bugs. Now it's been fixed.

What I would love to see is a list of bugs from Apple itself explaining exactly which ones they fixed in the 5.1 release. Does anyone know where to find that? I looked but could not find any such list.

What bugs?

Mine still crashes, though much less frequently.

I'm in the same boat as you. Less crashes, but still have.

I am still experiencing crashes but also not as frequently. I would not say it is as good as it was with 4.3 but it is more usable than before 5.1. I still have all iCloud features off because I was getting bold after the 5.1 and turned some back on and immediately started crashing again. I still just do a shutdown when the crashing starts and that seems to help. I also haven't had the problem of loading cached pages since the last upgrade and I guess this is as good as it is going to get. I assume that most here have had better luck than I since the comments have virtually come to a halt after getting a few a day since last October. This still is not the tablet that I had before 5.0, 5.01, and 5.1.

Actually, there remains a few of us who, while seeing improvements in IOS 5.1, still don't have core issues resolved. For me, my iPads remained useless as I couldn't use them to access my corporate web sites without constant crashes even with IOS 5.1. The Javascript our web sites use is too much for IOS 5 to handle. I've given up and moved on to other solutions that work. It was cheaper than dumbing down our web sites and loosing product functionality to support IOS 5. As such, I don't visit this thread much anymore.

The machine is not as snappy as I remember it being with iOS4.x, but it is more stable now with 5.1 than with 5.0x.

Yep, I'm in the same boat. Spend 15 minutes with Safari or 5 minutes with StumbleUpon and you'll find a dozen sites that Safari "can't handle". Yet, I can view those same sites on my Samsung Epic mobile phone with no problem. Typing lag is still ridiculous and the iPad 1 has pretty much turned into a piece of junk for reading email on. I'm glad others are seeing results from 5.1. I'm still not convinced there were actually any iPad enhancements. I'd like for anyone to show me where Apple has acknowledged this as a real issue and shown in the release notes that a single update is intended to improve performance issues post-iOS5.

--Sean

Mine aren't resolved at all. And I am so sick of having to completely reset the stupid thing every five minutes. My iPhone 4s is doing the exact same thing. I really don't think that I am asking too much to have it be trouble free 50% of the time. I paid enough for it. Unfortunately, these will be the last Apple products that I will ever buy. I am not replacing them with anything. I will just do without. It is not worth the frustration and hassle since iOS 5. I'm surprised that I haven't crashed whilst typing this missive.