Q: Ipad air low memory crash

Has apple recognized this as a problem? The problem I have now is I don't want to invest a thousand dollars 128 gb iPad air if it's gonna crash. If I wanted crashing I would have stuck with android.

Sorry for double post I can't find the edit.

Does anyone have an iPad air 128 gb with no problems? How many people do? Is it a hardware problem or is it software??

It seems that that amount of crashing will depend on how you use the ipad and how much (eg particularly safari) and from what I have read, luck too.

There are quite a few good comments on the testing if ios 7.1 beta 3 on reducing (not necessarily eliminating) crashes here. That is likely to be released beginning of March.

If you want assurance of almost no crashing (or close to) I would say wait til that gets released and see the feedback. And if buying from apple directly you do have 14 days to return it if not happy.

Looks like some sort of new ipad will be released first half of the year (pro?) and another ipad air will be released sometime - maybe late 2014 but maybe earlier if these issues get out of hand - it's been done before. Ipad 3 issues.

But let me say I'm one of the lucky ones (touch wood). I think I'm in the majority but still lucky as this problem seems to common for me.

If you're happy to wait it sounds like you should til ios 7.1. It took me a month to decide if I should wait but happy I did but like I said I might be a lucky one. Having said that the next release will definitely be better - how could it not??!!!!

That's my two bobs worth.

Well thank you for your response. It still seems pretty crazy to me that I'd have to worry about anything with a one thousand dollar device. The lesson here for me may be to not invest in the 128 gb cellular as I was planning to buy it for myself for my birthday which is this month. So since it seems no one can tell me if the problem is with the software or hardware, it really dampens the allure of the 128gb cellular top model.

"Apple has a storied history of just fixing things quietly, without any fanfare.  They're not covering anything up.  They will just release an update and this thread, like other threads over issues that were problematic for "some" users will retire."

They (like other companies) also have a history of keeping things quiet until after the Christmas sales season. ;-)  Perfectly logical.  (And mind you this is coming from someone who, albeit grudgingly, bought a second iPad Air as a Christmas gift despite full knowledge of the problem.)

"Always remember that this forum is like a hospital.  There are those of us who are here all the time trying to help people.  And then there are all the patients who come here for help.  It gives a rather skewed view to how the device is actually behaving in most users hands.  If this issue was as common as some here are saying, this thread would be waaaaay longer than it is."

Not necessarily. Viewing forum threads without posting is very common Internet behavior for many people.  And this and the other threads on this topic have tens of thousands of views. So, many people are viewing without posting. And probably many more have the problem but don't even bother to search out forums like this.

In the past, whenever I had an Apple device related problem that seemed to be a bug, I would typically do a Google search that wound up showing threads on it from this forum. That would tell me that others were reporting the same problem, Apple was probably aware of it, and a fix would be forthcoming soon in an Apple update. In years of this pattern, I never felt the need to register and post on this forum. The iOS 7 Safari crashes were the first issue I've had that prompted me to actually register and post here--the problem was so severe already back in September, and I searched and found no other threads addressing it. So I created threads to raise awareness of the issue, and the only reason I'm still posting here is because this particular issue still isn't fixed after almost four months.

I also think the degree to which people notice the problem will vary depending on their individual device usage behavior.  I notice constant Safari crashes because I happen to use my iPad constantly, for hours a day, in Safari.  By contrast, I certainly have the issue on my iPhone 5 but I notice it less because I spend a lot less time web browsing on my phone than on my iPad.

In short, each post here probably represents at least a few thousand people having the same problem.  And each view probably reflects many more people having the problem.  And many people probably have the problem but just don't know it because their usage habits make it less noticeable to them. 

Tulk I noticed you mentioned you see the same on your iphone 5, I have the iphone 5s and I see no problems such as those. sometimes I even have so many tabs open on the browsers i finally see it and closing it one by one takes me forever. i also notice at times I have a ton of apps open, pretty much every one. Still no crashes on the iphone 5s. So do you think this is a widespread problem with the software with ios7? since you seem to report the iphone 5 doing it, and ive seen others report they have had their ipad 4s doing it. Do you think its a hardware issue with the ipad air?

Edit: Also do you notice any safari page doing it or only specific ones?

I'm under the impression that there are software issues in that it is extremely crucial how efficiently it works with the hardware that is on the tight side itself. How much better 2gb of ram would have made it I don't know but I think regardless of that being added next time the software is under performing and was under tested methinks.

But hey, I'm no software engineer.

It's just a matter of time before we find out if for some users this ipad air is a dog of a product or ends up being that just at the time of release.

As mentioned I'm happy with mine (touch wood) but the next will definitely be better (that can always be said with technology, I know, but this case is special).

You might end up having no problems with an ipad air - who knows. But as I said wait if you can and if it suits or get apple to price match a good price and return after 14 days if you choose. You mentioned $1000 so I guess you might be in Australia - if so ask to match the big w prices.

I believe it is an iOS 7 problem because I noticed it very soon after installing iOS 7 on my iPhone 5 and iPad 2 way back in September, before the iPad Air was even released.  I made threads on it in both the iPad and iPhone sections here on September 27.  At the time, I was noticing it mostly on some sites that had embedded videos on them and thought that was the main problem.  I have since learned there is no such particular pattern--it seems that Safari can crash on any sit at any time, although some sites seem to be more likely to crash than others. But it's really random, and seems To get more random all the time.  Most of the sites in question usually worked fine in iOS 6--I still visit the same sites daily that I did for two years on my iPad 2 before iOS 7.

I bought the iPad Air hoping that the problem would be avoided--I assumed that iOS 7 would at least run smoothly on Apple's newest hardware.  No such luck--if anything, it is worse on the iPad Air, but that could just be my imagination since the Air is now the one device I am using most frequently now. I also feel like it's even worse in the current version of iOS 7, 7.0.4, than it was in 7.0.3. But, again, that could just be my imagination since I only had the Air for a couple days on iOS 7.0.3 before updating to 7.0.4. The one thing that is definitely NOT in my imagination is that, ever since iOS 7, Safari crashes on me multiple times per day on all three of my devices, which did not happen on the iPhone 5 or iPad 2 before iOS 7.  It is also not my imagination that the problem is not yet fixed.

I currently own a iPhone 4S, an iPad 3 and the Air.

I updated the 4S and the 3 to iOS 7 and all subsequent updates and can report that I/we have had no problems at all.

I purchased the Air on November 1 and almost immediately noticed an unusual amount of un-expectant crashes to home screen not previously experienced. My wife now uses the 3 for many hours a day and I still use it as well, because of certain data not transferred to the Air.

My Air is now "fixed" to my satisfaction as I previously reported. I have no explanation, other then to say that for me, because my other two devices work fine with iOS 7, I conclude the problems are related to the Air and possibly because of the new 64 bit architecture.  I know this contradicts what many others on this thread have said, but that is my experience.

Are there thread stats available that show how many different posters there are?

I'm guessing that this, and similar threads are candidates for he longest ever on a single issue with no solution.

It's funny how some people think buying a larger storage capacity model will solve the problems.

The root of the problem is the fact that iOs 7 has a memory leak in the Safari JavaScript Engine.

This explains why other browsers that are forced to use Safari's dark matter code crash.

I don't think having more ram would help either other than future proofing devices and draining more power.

Yes there should be more ram but it's clear iOS 7 is not a polished and refined product we've come to expect from apple especially for 64-bit devices we've all spent thousands of dollars on.

Well, I've bought the 128 GB LTE version of the iPad Air in early december and experienced a lot of crashes since then. Some of these crashes are caused by software bugs that can be fixed easily, like the crash of the Settings app when you press Brightness & Backgrounds twice.

I don't think the problem is caused by defective hardware, it's a software issue in the first place, although related to the amount of RAM available on the Air.  On my iPad there's very little free memory left even when nothing else is running but IOS. If I start a 32 bit app, it's not only the app that needs memory, there's also an extra amount of memory necessary to load the 32 bit versions of the system libraries in addition to the 64 bit versions loaded for the 64 bit apps. On the other hand, code written for a 64 bit CPU demands more memory in general, i.e. address pointers are now 8 bytes long instead of 4 bytes on 32 bit architectures.

If the developers focus more on the memory consumption of their apps, if they compile native 64 bit apps instead of 32 bit apps things will get better - to some extend. It reminds me of the old days when we tweaked our programs to provide as much functionality as possible while running on hardware equipped with only a few kilobytes of memory. At the moment the Air is a bit like a muscle car with all its bells and whistles and a high performance V8 engine but for some strange reason the fuel tank can only hold a few gallons of gasoline.

I guess the Air got the same amount of RAM than its predecessors because of backward compatibilty issues emerging when new apps would start to make use of the additional memory, in case the Air had been equipped with 2 GB RAM or more. I just doubt this was a wise decision because my user experience is pretty bad right now.   

My user experience is also pretty bad. For me, iTunes is just as big of an offender as Safari. It crashes multiple times a day. Granted, I'm on iTunes for hours at a time throughout the day (work related), but I don't think it should be this bad. It's highly annoying and impeads work, obviously.

I wiped my iPad yesterday and I got a soft reboot within minutes of the clean install. For the love of God, Apple, please get this sorted!

I am not certain that the issue is the JavaScript engine. My mail.app and music.app also crash, just a lot lessthan Safari. The process consuming the most RAM is almost always backboardd (the springboard?). I believe all these apps are compiled with 64bit support & they all also use iCloud to sync.

Beta 3 now out I will test some more