Q: ios7 keeps refreshing apps after switching

Welcome to the discussion - I wasn't aware that 7.1 was so close. As you say, there is no mention of the refresh problem being fixed in this release. This may imply that the current behaviour is so fundamental to the overall design that a quick fix is unlikely. What a huge disappointment.

Thank you Phil for your comments.

I desperately needed to use my phone today. All I needed to do was upload a photo to a web page. Camera crashed first time, and when I switched back to my web page, it reloaded, loosing my login and my my typed text and start over. So then in an effort to do this without multitasking, I tried taking my photo first and then logging in to the web site, retyping all of my info but when I went to select the photos I wanted to upload, the page crashed closing the browser. When I reopened the browser, it took me back to the page, not logged in and none of my text typed in. I gave up, used email to email the photos to myself and waited till I got home and did it on a Windows computer very first try. Too bad they did not get to the place I needed to get them to until it was too late.

Thanks Apple! You just cost me a lot of time and money. Not to mention all of the wasted data useage on my phone.

To ALL,

Those of you who think the local store is going to help you are being mislead. They have no special authority to include you in any Apple research program to establish the root of this problem. They have no more of an idea as to how to fix this than you or I. Remember, a few weeks ago that store clerk was working as a telemarketer trying to sell you new doors or windows or something. Either that or he might still be waiting on his last check from Mcdonalds. They are not programmers or specially trained on how to resolve such a problem.

Rick7 - In my experience as an Apple developer, real world user experience and data can help get to the crux of an issue far more quickly than attempting to replicate it in house. Crowdsourcing the phenomena helps with the triangulation.

You can ask them to walk you through the entire backup and restore process at the Genius bar in exchange for being their beta tester for iOS7.

There is a connection between retail store staff and Cupertino, so this is a good sign for the rest of us.

ERSinclair - yep: Windows: now there is an OS that, no matter what bad things one might say about it, at least has app-switching and multitasking down right.

On another note, I was just reflecting on the fact that there's one piece of this puzzle that - strange as it might be -- we still don't know: how many iPads and iPhones are there out there that don't have this problem vs. how many do? And since it seems to be less common (or less noticeable) with iPad Airs and iPhone 5's, are there, for instance, some people with an iPad 2 like me who don't have the problem? I really don't know.

We're unlikely to find out, rick7 There are 4 major groups:

1. They have the problem and search for it and find a thread like this.

2. They have the problem and don't quite understand it and don't know how to search for it (most of us here at one point).

3. They have the problem but don't see it as a major issue.

4. They don't have the problem so don't care.

The members of the first group are likely to be more technical and this group will therefore probably be smaller thus reducing the apparent size of the problem.

My gut feeling is that the problem is universal (if less noticeable on newer machines) but I suspect that Apple isn't about to launch a public survey to find out ...

Hi all. I'm having the same problem and for me this is a showstopper as I need to login again to apps when toggling between them which also means reconnecting to external devices and logging in again to things like this forum.

I am more than annoyed at this....I am considering dropping apple over it because it's next to useless...

@ashcooper75 - Thanks for commenting. Please ask all your Apple using friends to comment as well. 

It's amazing how long this issue is allowed to continue. Between this and the sudden chargers not supported issue, apple has really dropped the ball.

They should let us go back to 6 until this is resolved.  It's so bad I bought a nexus to use until this gets resolved. If it isn't shortly I'll have to dump the iPhone as we'll.

Absolutely Maddawg! I was one of the early posters although I cannot do much while traveling the world. But this bug is so annoying that I started now to look for alternatives. Likely an Asus Transformer T100TA hybrid or a small 8 inch pad by Dell or Toshiba - with WINDOWS 8.1. Yep, thats right, even if I have to wipe off Windows now and then, I am not ready any more to deal with that bug. It causes massive time loss and sometimes (for example when I write into a text field in Safari) also considerable loss of data. Not to talk about nerves... Android is no alternative for me, I am not giving my private life to Google. But I died the Microsoft death already so what does it matter... So Apple, do something or you start loosing customers!! I am ready to pay more for a flawless machine and OS but not something that has that kind of severe problem.

TOO MANY BUGS!!!!..

1) CHARGER BUG

2) MULTI-TASKING BUG (4 MONTHS)

3) BATTERY LIFE BUG (1 YEARS SINCE iOS6)

4) REFRESH APPS BUG (4 MONTHS)

5) iOS DOWNGRADE PROHIBITED (4 MONTHS)

I am sure that Apple blocked the iOS6 downgrade to be sure to keep everyone on iOS7 as almost no one liked the iOS7 design and functionnalities.

All my friends, family and customers around me want to go back to iOS6 !!! no one of them not even ONE like iOS7.

So imagine what's best for Apple? see everyone updater from 6 to 7 downgrading from 7 to 6 in a week or to block them in iOS7 to prove to Magazines, Blogs and new customers that iOS7 is the best mobile OS.

This is simply a big LIE... ios7 is not usable and they prefer to keep us trapped in iOS7 than see us back to iOS6.

A big SHAME!!!!...

Phil

Thanks, Suz Howells.  I'm curious to know: why exactly is it that user experience and data can help get to an issue more quickly than the developers working in-house?  I can't imagine that they don't know the issue as intimately as any of us.  The way we are seeing the problem is exactly as they must be able to see and experience it.  So it seems they should be able to fix it without us.  They've got to have enough of them to have a good-sized sample group.  I really don't get why they're enlisting users to help. 

On the other hand, I can totally see them asking users to beta-test any fix that they've made, but that's a different situation.  This problem with app refresh is not in any sense a randomly-occuring bug where a developer would need users' help in finding the exact conditions under which it happens.

Thanks for helping me to understand this.

I still hold to the same conclusion that I stated on a different thread about this exact issue which is that this is a botched feature. Clearly they had some need/reason to change how swapping between an active app and an "idle" app was working before (in iOS6) otherwise this wouldn't even be a discussion. If I had to draw any conclusions as to why they added this feature, my assumption would be either to save battery life or to free up memory for the active app because iOS7 itself is more of a resource hog than iOS6 was.

This problem is so easily reproducible that there is no way they actually need our logs to get to the bottom of it. It's not like trying to track down an unpredictable behavior pattern. For that reason, I believe that feedback we've been getting from the support team is just smoke and mirrors.

What I feel most upset about is that Apple hasn't taken any accountability for or really even given any acknowledgement of this issue (not that I've seen at least) and that they cut off the fallback strategy to iOS6 very prematurely. That was a bad move.

Their ability to just drop supporting your device at the drop of a hat is always what has made me very hesitant to purchase Apple devices. In their world I feel more like a sheep than a high paying, valued customer. Deciding whether or not to go with the Mini or an Android tablet was an especially hard decision for me because of that.  I don't think I'll be making that mistake again.

Hi Bardzo,

Same here.. i have already 3 ipad mini on eBay and 1 iphone 4s 64gigs and my two last iphone 5.

NEVER AGAIN I WILL BE THE SHEEP!

Move to Android with a Samsung phone first, just one to check if i like that and if this is not convincing me i will keep NOKIA which is very very nice to me.

again SHAME ON APPLE for keeping us trapped and jailed and for leaving millions of users with no official information on this problem.

USERS i invite you to leave apple for something else this is not anymore the top phone or tablet of the maket anyway and less with a mono-tasking operating system which need to be charged 2 to 3 times a day if you have a working charger of course.

Now i understand why Apple is behind Samsung ... the real big BOSS.

Phil

I'm not quite ready to give up on my iPad as I'm still clinging to some hope that Apple is going to fix this problem.  I am not even knowledgeable about what the best Android tablets are on the market at this point. Two years ago when I bought my iPad 2 I had been going back and forth about whether to get the iPad or an Android tablet. At the time I felt that I made the right decision, but this is sure depressing.

The output of various memory reporting apps suggest that if there's a botched feature, it's memory disappearing (it's neither used or free), and the app-restarting issue is a natural side effect of the lack of free memory.

My phone is currently reporting 25MB free, 232MB used - leaving 255MB mysteriously unaccounted for. On an identical phone running iOS 6, the unnaccounted memory is around half that, meaning more is free for use to hold suspended apps (it would be around 153MB free in this instance).

I've read one suggestion that the unnacounted memory is that allocated for graphics, but I can't find any Apple documentation to back that up.