ios7 keeps refreshing apps after switching

Below is the text I will be sending to iPad Today. I am sure that there will be as many ways of describing the problem as there are members of this forum but it is a start. Feel free to copy, paste, bin or modify for your own use as you see fit.

Chris

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Given your involvement in all things iPad and iOS-related, I thought you might be interested in a serious iOS 7 bug that has somehow managed to escape the attention of the tech press. This bug is widely discussed in the following Apple forum (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5380124) and has reached 20 pages of discussion and references at least two other threads discussing the same problem.

The problem

The issue is an inability of iOS 7 to adequately maintain the state of apps that have been suspended when you swap to another app. When returning to that suspended app there is often a refresh that may take several seconds and/or may not fully restore the state of the app. This all worked fine in iOS 6. Some examples:

When coming back to iBooks from another app, iBooks emerges from the background only to close the open book, then open it again, sometimes but not always at the same page. (This is easy to reproduce. Open a book in iBooks then swap to Safari. Open about 6 pages and swap between them a few times, opening another couple of pages along the way. Swap back to iBooks.)

When returning to a Safari page after swapping to Mail to get some info, the page will often refresh taking the user to the top of the page. This is particularly annoying when returning to a partially filled form in Safari only to lose all the data.

Others have reported problems returning to Google Maps when driving where taking a call or swapping to another app will reset the route.

The list goes on with an increasing number of very frustrated users. The problem appears to be a memory management issue and if you reset or turn the device off and on again, it seems to clear the memory giving improved app swapping until things start to degrade again. This is why each minor iOS 7 upgrade has appeared to fix the problem for a short time - it's the reset that does it. There have been suggestions that the older devices that only have 500MB memory are particularly vulnerable to the problem.

Why does the issue have such a low profile?

There are perhaps two main reasons why the profile of this problem is not greater:

It's a hard problem to describe so users often fail to find appropriate forums via Google searches.

The problem manifests itself mainly with power-users, i.e. those users who fequently swap between apps. This will often be the case for those who use their devices for work. Many have reported that their devices are no longer fit for business use.

In general it appears to be power-users who are IT-literate enough to know how to describe the problem who are reporting it.

Apple's response

A number of us have been to Genius Bars for advice where we have been encouraged to carry out a DFU reset and restore. No Genius has admitted to encountering the problem before. The reset and restores failed to fix the problem.

Many more of us have contacted Apple support to log the problem. At least one has been requested to provide logging information but not one of us has had a response back from Apple on this.

It's not just older machines

Interestingly, according to a recent study, the iPad 2 accounts for some 38 percent of all active iOS tablets and Apple continues to sell the iPad 2 so one would assume that iOS 7 has been tested against such models and would be expected to run on them satisfactorily.

However, users have reported similar problems with the iPad Air and new iPad Mini. One user had an iPad 2 on iOS 6 with no problems and an iPad Air on 7 exhibiting these problems. He then upgraded the iPad 2 to iOS 7 and has the same issues.

Will it be fixed in the next release?

Unlikely. Initial reports on Beta versions of iOS 7.1, due for release in March 2014, suggest that Safari has been fixed so that the tabs maintain their states thus preventing forms from losing their data when swapping back to them. Apparently, however, the general 'refresh' problem is still there, i.e. other apps are often unable to maintain their states.

What has happened to Apple?

It used to be that Apple kit just worked. After Steve Jobs died, we have seen decreased innovation and an increase in the number of bugs in iOS releases. iOS 6 was riddled with problems including the infamous Maps debacle. iOS 7 has not been much better; it has been equally bug-ridden and has been associated with performance problems on older machines. Many of the iPhone users on the forum are planning to jump ship after their contracts expire. If it were not for the fact that there is still no viable alternative to the iPad Air, I would be looking elsewhere too.

It used to be that Apple was proactive. Now they appear reactive; perhaps the artificial deadline of including iOS 7 with the new phones led to sloppy coding and poor testing. Whatever the reason for Apple's drop in standards, it shows cynical disregard for its customers.

Will Apple become the next Blackberry? I certainly hope not but I do know that, along with many others, my confidence in Apple's ability to deliver quality software has taken a large knock.

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Bravo, Helveticum. I am beginning to believe that writing targeted, educated, literate letters to outside technology writers and columnists is the only way for us to get this problem solved. Apple doesn't give a hoot about these forums, they don't pay attention to their own genius Bars, and they don't listen to their own customers phone calls who call back following up on their issue with their technician who told them they'll work with our problem. (Hint: they don't.) Don't stop until you get an answer you want from the writer. This is how we're going to spend our next few months as computer activists who love their ipad and iPhones. Find some good tech writers who you like and respect and hound them until they get it.

Rick7, sometimes this refresh problem reaches new levels of annoyance. I was on the 7th hole on an awkward course of Super Stickman Golf 2 when an email notification of your response to my post came through. I read your email, returned to SSG2 and lost all my progress on that course. So here is an example of our involvement in the problem making things worse :-)

Helveticum, you should sent that in to MacWorld as well. letters@macworld.com

I sent a letter in to them the other day with the link to this discussion thread. Lets see if they will do an article about this issue for us as well.

Hi Helveticum,

Good work.

I propose to be organized and keep a methodology contacting the different magazine, web-magazine and tech sites.

As i have proposed to do this in my previous message asking someone to write a good technical report and explaination (as you did) i propose now to start spreading the information to several sites and paper magazine.

I also propose to do it otherwise everyboby will spread the information and we will loose control on delivering the information.

So Helveticum you wrote this, and i will spread it then we will report it here to be sure of which magazine and tech mag are serious about being honest to their readers and consumers.

Any help collecting sites, paper magazine contact adress, will help to diffuse the information to as much as possible in all the way.

I will for my part start by spanish and french sites and magazine.. so bring me all the most important english sites and german sites ... with these 4 languages we cover the most important places where apple sells their gears.

Maybe Chinese.... if there is anyone chinese here!...

Let me know what you think about it!... let's join force! ...

Greets

Phil

Helveticum, I hadn't previous heard of iPad Today and went to look for it. You're talking about the web-based TV show on http://twit.tv? Am just watching for the first time and it looks really good.

One thought I have about your excellent letter. You mention:

The issue is an inability of iOS 7 to adequately maintain the state of apps that have been suspended when you swap to another app. When returning to that suspended app there is often a refresh that may take several seconds and/or may not fully restore the state of the app.

I know that you've often reported this slow but eventual return to the original state after the refresh when it's iBooks that you're returning to, but from my perspective I rarely see this. My experience of our problem is almost always one of seeing my app completely losing its place and state, period. I'm just a little worried that people will read/hear this sentence and conclude that the primary problem is simply a slow refresh of your initial app after which you're properly left back where you had been. They might therefore conclude that the problem is not so bad.

I wonder if you might consider rewording it so that the idea of the refresh causing the app to entirely lose its original place/state after the refresh is given prominence in the sentence?

Fabulous that you've got this started -- thanks much.

You are right Rick7,...

Helveticum please reword your article so i can start spreading it worldwide.

I am ready for my part of the job!.. really motivated!... Go GO!!! ;-)

Thanks!

Phil

Helveticum, great write up. I'd suggest pointing out that in addition to affecting iPads, that this affects an even larger user base of iPhones.

Because of this problem, I cannot login to the apple support forum and switch to your email notification so that I can be taken directly to your message. If I login to the web page, switch to email, click the link launching the support web page and taking me to the message, I'm no longer logged in. So I can't reply. If I login at the top of the page, I'm taken to the forum home page. So I have to jump through som hoops to be able to get to the message and at the same time stay logged in. What I do is, click the link in the email. Then when the page loads, I copy the URL to the clipboard. Then I login. Then, I paste the URL back into the address field. What a pain. In the old days of version 6 and below, I could login to the support forum. Then, go to email, click the link and the page would load and I'd still be logged in and I'd be taken directly to the posting in the forum.

So I guess what I'm saying is that in addition to loosing any work I may have done, I get logged out as well.

Yesterday I had spend a lot of time typing an important email message when a call came in. I lost all of my work. No draft saved. Nothing. When I went back to email it took me straight to my inbox. Not to the message I had spent so much time typing.

Thanks for all the feedback and (constructive) criticism:

Scott: Good idea. I will email letters@macworld.com as well

Phil: I will take care of iPad Today (as I had planned) and MacWorld. You are welcome to propagate the info to any other sites. Your extra language skills are going to be a great help in getting this beyond the English-speaking world

Rick7: Good point re the loss of place and state etc. Perhaps my use of the iBooks example stems from this being the first example of the problem I remember seeing, but it seems that the iBooks example is probably one of the more benign cases. I will rewrite this. However, the iBooks/Safari pairing is a good, reproducible way to demonstrate the problem. Can you come up with another example that can easily be described and carried out using standard apps? I would like people to be able to demonstrate something for themselves.

ERSinclair: Another good point. I will more explicitly mention the universality of the problem. I gathered some data online that suggest that the total unit sales in 2012 and 2013 are 275 million iPhones vs 129 million iPads. So iPhones outnumber iPads 2 to 1. Staggering numbers.

I will try and get this done by the end of the weekend and post a revised version as soon as I can.

I am also aware that this flurry of posts and exchange of ideas is generating a lot of entries in peoples inboxes. Of course the casually interested could always disable notifications (Actions -> Stop email notifications).

[An alternative would be some sort of collaborative working party that creates a separate thread that other interested current thread members could check periodically. This would reduce notification overload and we could report back to the original thread at suitable milestones. Though perhaps this just complicates things!]

While I agree that the tech press is our best bet, another idea for spreading the word might be via social media. Twitter with link to here (I am not a great tweeter though). Facebook status update with a suggestion for iDevice users to repost. Google+ perhaps.

Chris

Can anyone come up with a example to illustrate the 'refresh' problem that can easily be described and carried out using standard apps? We want to show how apps other than Safari (which looks as if it might be fixed in 7.4) lose their place and status.

As Rick7 pointed out, my example using iBooks was a little weak in that it tends to illustrate a slow and painful refresh to its previous state rather than a loss of state (though it does sometimes lose it's state too).

The description needs to be concise, easy to understand and easy to reproduce, preferably using standard apps so that I can include it in the article described a few posts back.

This issue and Apple's inability to fix it promptly is the most important reason I recently switched from iPhone to Android. I just couldn't deal with the constant refreshing of apps and the literal inability to multitask. I was sad to give up on iPhone after many good years, but I couldn't let my productivity be hindered any longer by this.

Now I've got a Google Nexus 5 phone, and though I do miss some things about iPhone, overall I'm pretty happy. The suite of google apps (mail, documents, maps) works outstandingly. And best of all, the phone's multitasking is flawless.

I still have an iPad mini from last year and enjoy using it, but just like my old iPhone, the multitasking is useless. So if I'm doing any serious work I just do it on my Nexus phone.

I think that the Amazon shopping app might be a good example. I was shopping for an item to send to my son at school. I had the screen to enter a new shipping address in the Amazon app and then went to contacts to get my son's address. When I went back to the Amazon app, it had returned me to my shopping cart and cancelled the checkout process.

I tried twice and finally found a pencil and paper.

Pmgreene - good example. It seems the iOS has us multitasking instead of doing the work for us. Now we have to break out the paper and pencil as well as the idevice. This is as bad as the time there was no cut and paste way at the beginning. Hope they get this figured out. It starting to feel like windows... Constant reboot!

Thanks for the example pmgreene. I will download and try the Amazon app later.

However I was hoping to demonstrate the problem using the standard built-in apps so that anybody could try it out regardless of their app collection. And also note that "Apple's Weather, Stocks, Calculator, Compass, Phone, and Voice Memo apps, all front-and-center on the iPhone, are nowhere to be found on the iPad Air or iPad mini."

Any other ideas with these restrictions in mind?

We need to be able to convince people that this is not just a fault in the Amazon app, for example, but is present on Apple's own apps.

I may end up giving a short list, e.g.

- Amazon app losing its place

- Maps losing its place

- iBooks losing its place

(Though I do concede again that the problem is less severe in iBooks)

More examples? Remember that a reader should be able to recreate it.