Q: ios7 keeps refreshing apps after switching
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Jan 21, 2014 12:42 PMby paulfromstone,Safari does seem to be better in isolation so far on 7.1 beta 4.
Maybe I also spoke too soon about the wider app refresh problem still being there - today on an iPhone 4 running iOS 6, I tried starting to create a diary entry, then opened every built-in app, including 8 Safari windows. When I went back to the calendar, it restarted and my new entry had been lost.
I'm starting to wonder if the issue's always been there, but it was just brought to light (for me) with the new Background App Refresh feature being effectively useless, at least on 512MB devices. Apps definitely use more memory on iOS 7 though, which at least increases the likelihood of the issue occurring.
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Jan 21, 2014 1:56 PMby chronicon helveticum,At various points in this thread I have picked up on suggestions that the refresh problem has always been there but it went over a threshold in iOS 7 that made it unacceptable to heavy users.
There is the likelihood then of us being told 'it has always worked this way' where, technically, Apple could be correct. I certainly was not aware of any issue before iOS 7 however, so the scale of the issue has certainly tipped towards 'Unacceptable'.
So where do we stand?
We have a problem that is, for some, hard to recreate and a problem that, perhaps, has been an unnoticed feature of iOS 6 (and iOS 5?) for some time.
What is indisputable however, is that iOS 7 has magnified the effect of this refresh issue to extent that many of us are finding our iPads and iPhones far less usable. If that is serious for us, surely it follows that it could become serious for many others and hence serious for Apple, particularly if awareness of the issue can be heightened.
I was starting to feel despondent over the last few days as reproducibility became ever challenging. Was it even worth trying to fight this thing?
Anyway, I propose to modify my document somewhat playing down the instructions to reproduce the problem. My argument, made in an earlier post, is that those not aware of the problem will probably not care about it enough to try and cause it. We will be trying to appeal to those who have seen some strange things going on but haven't quite figured out what it is yet.
I will post the - hopefully final - version within the next few days.
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Jan 21, 2014 2:10 PMby rick7,Helveticum, thank you so much for taking the initiative on this. As one of the early -- what's the word here? -- "noticers" of the problem on this thread, it's much appreciated.
btw, I can reproduce the problem every time by
- start an event in Calendar
- switch to Safari and open five tabs
- switch back to Calendar and watch the app reset, closing down the event without being saved
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Jan 21, 2014 2:27 PMby aflegg,The calendar losing its state is a bug in calendar not correctly responding to the message from iOS telling it that it's being shut down. Although it's indicative of the problem, reporting something like that will get resolved when the calendar correctly saves its state and restarts.
That won't help with the annoying memory management affecting apps which do save their state (e.g. the Kindle app, and anything else which takes a while to restart).
I'd also be explicit when saying "open X tabs" to specify which websites should be open. If it is memory related, opening a heavy page like slashdot.org will use more memory than "<html><body><h1>Hello world</h1></body></html>".
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Jan 22, 2014 8:24 AMby chronicon helveticum,I have completed the third and final version of the document describing our 'refresh' problem. You can find it at the end of this post or in the Word-formatted Google document shared as follows:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JS_6zRhdP6grxG-UMGnTcBRRIrswnX-XZbP2QZT-dL4/ edit?usp=sharing
Thanks to all who have contributed their perspective on the issue and to those who provided feedback on earlier versions of the document. I have tried to include the points raised from earlier revisions and have also added some caveats regarding recreating the bug. However, I have become less concerned about the reproducibily issue given that affected readers/viewers will probably recognise the problem immediately.
The document has become longer than I would have liked and I apologise if not every member of this forum feels their particular grievance has been adequately represented. However, these should be instances of the same basic bug.
I will now be forwarding this to iPad Today and MacWorld. I have created a simple editable spreadsheet in Google Docs:
This is our iOS 7 Refresh Bug Publicity Tracker. If anyone sends the document (or their version of it) to a tech site, it would be helpful if they could update the spreadsheet. It should be completely open to all so feel free to add any more columns that you feel may be needed. This will allow any of us to keep track of what others are doing and how they are getting on.
Now let's see what happens!
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 over 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 - on iPhones and iPads - to adequately maintain the state of apps that have been suspended when you swap to another app. When returning to that suspended app, the state of the app is not always fully restored. This worked fine in iOS 6. Some examples:
- 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.
- One user reports starting to enter a new shipping address in the Amazon app and then going to Contacts to lookup an address. On swapping back to the Amazon app, the user had been returned to their shopping cart and the checkout process had been cancelled.
- Others have reported problems returning to Google Maps when driving. 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 memory reset that does it. There have been suggestions that the older devices that only have 500MB memory are particularly vulnerable to the problem.
(Note that this 'refresh' problem has no relation to the 'Background App Refresh' option that can be configured in Settings)
In general, it is heavy iOS users swapping between many apps and switching between multiple tabs in Safari that most often see the problem. More casual users of their iOS-based devices may seldom see this issue or may not perceive this as a problem whereas heavy users will find that it dramatically affects their productivity.
Recreating the problem
It is likely that heavy users will have recognised the described problem immediately, even if they have not been able to accurately define it before, and probably don't need instructions on how to recreate it. Conversely, casual users may have seldom seen the problem and may not be interested in recreating it. Although both these points suggest this section may be redundant, for completeness I will go ahead anyway.
In a variation of Murphy's Law, faulty software behaves itself when you least want it to. With this in mind, it might be helpful to show some scenarios that typically display the problem.
Most of the problems that occur appear to based around Safari which, for the demo, should be set up with 6 non-trivial tabs, e.g. Amazon, BBC News, eBay, Weather, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. (i.e. not just minimalist Google pages). This is a typical setup for many users and will be referred to as the Safari Baseline. What interferes with the suspended apps is a sequence I have called the Safari Shuffle:
- Swap to Safari
- Switch between each of the 6 tabs, refreshing each tab as you go (using the curved reload icon if it doesn't happen automatically)
Here is a simple example using Safari and Calendar - standard apps on any iOS-based machine:
- Close all apps.
- Open Safari and Calendar
- Set up the Safari Baseline
- In Calendar start to create a new event. Partially populate the form and then swap to Safari as if to search for an address.
- Perform the Safari Shuffle
- Swap back to Calendar. The entry disappears.
Consider the following two more examples:
- Maps: Create a route; perform the Safari Shuffle; return to Maps; the route has been reset.
- Videos: Start watching a movie; perform the Safari Shuffle; return to Videos; the app has reset to the list of movies and you must reselect the film.
The Safari Shuffle is involved in the loss of state or the loss of data in numerous other apps but I have concentrated on a few Apple apps to avoid the argument over whether it is third-party apps that are to blame. Returning to an app after a Safari Shuffle can also result in an annoying delay while the app refreshes itself (an open book in iBooks for example) though this is not as serious as the loss of state and data described above.
Some users, including me, have found the refresh problem often occurs when swapping between two apps regardless of whether Safari is involved. Others, however, have found that more open apps need to be open and/or more tabs need to be open in Safari before the problem can be reproduced on demand and it may be that these users have the newer devices with 1GB of RAM, double the memory of older generation devices.
Why does the issue have such a low profile?
There are two main reasons why the profile of this problem is not greater:
- It is 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 frequently 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 on the Apple forum have been to Genius Bars for advice where we have been encouraged to carry out a reset-and-restore. In my case it was a last-resort DFU reset (Device Firmware Update). No Genius has yet to admit 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 satisfactory response back from Apple on this. Many of us have had no response at all.
It's not just older machines
Interestingly, according to a recent study, the iPad 2 accounts for 38 percent of all active iOS tablets and Apple continues to sell the iPad 2 so one would assume that iOS 7 would have 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 Air on iOS 7 exhibiting these problems and a bug-free iPad 2 on iOS 6. He then upgraded the iPad 2 to iOS 7 and now 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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- 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.
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Jan 22, 2014 9:09 AMby JustinSindelar1,I know I sound annoyingly redundant at this point, but I still think this is fixed in the current iOS 7.1 beta. I tried to recreate the problem following one of your recommendations (start new event, switch to Safari, open 5 tabs, go back to calendar, event will be gone) and I couldn't recreate the issue. I think that this has been patched in 7.1, and if you are still having problems that it comes down to a hardware issue (I.e. Low RAM)
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Jan 22, 2014 9:29 AMby chronicon helveticum,Can any others running 7.1 Beta confirm JustinSindelar1’s findings?
paulfromstone, you suggested that your tests of 7.1 Beta showed that the problem was NOT fixed. Were your tests more resource-hungry than JustinSindelar1’s perhaps?
JustinSindelar1: some users running 7.0.4 have sometimes found the problem hard to recreated, particularly on 1GB devices. Have you seen no evidence of it so far?
If it really has been fixed, I will be more than happy to scrap the document and wait until March!
However, what makes me uneasy is that Apple have not responded to any of our problem logs saying that it will be fixed in 7.1. Also, they appear to be claiming that the refresh behaviour is 'as designed'.
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Jan 22, 2014 10:34 AMby LosAngeles,I was very glad to view these postings. I am so upset and frustrated. I spent OVER AN HOUR filling out an online job application - names, dates, descriptions, references, formating everything, and I had to bring up the calculator app to convert my last salary to hours - click to go back to Safari... BOOM!
EVERYTHING WAS LOST and REFRESHED TO PAGE ONE.
I do not want to, but I am forced to go out and buy a cheap laptop to be able to do my job applications since Safari JUST WONT DO IT.
I cant believe I spent all this money to get an iPad - ON UNEMPLOYMENT - and it wont allow me to multitask without loosing all the information I entered.
Every application asks for different information and I MUST leave and go seak it on scanned .pdf's and the internet. I am so frustrated that I bought this device and it will not work!
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Jan 22, 2014 10:50 AMby JustinSindelar1,Alright here's what I'll do:
I have an iPhone 5 with 7.0.4 on it, as well as a 5th Gen iPod Touch with 7.0.4. I'll compare them alongside my iPhone 5s, which is running 7.1 Beta 4. I'll try and recreate the problem to confirm it's fixed. I'm excited for everyone to get their hands on 7.1 soon. Improvements are huge, and the faster animations are awesome. I could hardly live with 7.0.4! I'll let you know as soon as the tests are done.
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Jan 22, 2014 11:08 AMby paulfromstone,My early test of 7.1 beta 4 involved visiting many apps and Safari pages. This lost a incompletely-created calendar entry, so I deemed the issue unfixed.
I later discovered that doing a similar process in iOS 6 had the same result, which is why I back-tracked on my assertion.
I think Safari losing not-yet-submitted form data could be a separate, additional issue. I know that Safari in 7.0 was very buggy, and Safari seems to be a lot better so far for me in general in 7.1 beta 4.
What I'm unsure of now is that if iOS has always randomly terminated recently-used apps, or if indeed 7.1 still does. I think I need a few more days with it to be confident about 7.1.
The reason why I am unsure as to whether the issue has always existed is due to iOS 7 presenting you with an image of an app's last state when you revisit it, which makes it very obvious what the app's supposed to restore to - with iOS 6, I think you were just shown the app's "start up" image.
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Jan 22, 2014 11:24 AMby ERSinclair,@LosAngeles - I hear you man. I hear you. My biggest gripe is the safari refresh as you describe. With iOS 6, I could switch between tabs and never to my recollection did the web pages ever refresh. I used to be able to stay logged in to my favorite social networking site for days on end without having to re-enter my credentials, but today, it's likely to log me out the very first time I switch away from that page for any reason. I run an iPhone 4S. I'd switch to the settings screens to give you some memory stats, but I don't want to loose all of my typing here so far. A perfect example of the way this OS is crippling the way we use out hardware. I'd be confident in ANY Windows or Android device that I could switch apps, collect information, switch back to my original app and not loose any work. With Apple products, I have no confidence that I can successfully do what we all consider such a basic feature of our multitasking operating systems.
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Jan 22, 2014 12:10 PMby dfeivelson,This has been happening on my iPhone 4S since I upgraded to iOS 7 (ALL apps restart or refresh after going away from them for a certain period of time). ABSOLUTELY ******* HORRIBLE APPLE!!!
To my recollection as well, this never or only occasionally happened in iOS 6 and earlier.
Steve Jobs would have said, "YOUR WORK IS ****!" AND WOULD HAVE FIRED ALL YOU PATHETIC ***** AT APPLE!
CAN'T BELEIVE WE'RE ON iOS 7.0.4 OR WHATEVER AND STILL NOT FIXED!!!
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Jan 22, 2014 1:53 PMby chronicon helveticum,Ok, let's wait a few days for you and paulfromstone to reach a conclusion on 7.1. Let's aim for the end of the weekend for your best guess as to whether it's really improved.
Although we haven't got a lot to lose by kicking up a fuss at this point (and it would feel good to kick back after all the aggro that iOS 7 has caused us all) maybe we need to be a little more patient and wait.
It just might have been fixed ...
