My apps refuse to stay open!

January 2, 2013 9:51 PM

I just bought a new iPad 4 in Japan (along with a logitech keyboard case), and I frikkin love it! It unfortunately, however, tends to crash at the most inopportune times - I do not want this to turn into a dealbreaker.

Hi there,

I bought an iPad 4 about a month ago, and it is so much more fun to use than my old clunker of a laptop. But it tends to crash whenever I have a large block of text typed out - text that I am unable to recover. It just wiped out a resume I was doing online, which was the last straw.

The app that crashes most often is Safari, but many other programs have the same problem (including Facebook). I'm not sure because I use it all the time, but it might have something to do with my logitech keyboard case that I bought with the iPad.

The Apple store is far enough away that I would prefer to get this issue resolved on my own, but I am running out of ideas. Anyone have any suggestions? Maybe another browser? If there was a way to recover what I've written without it disappearing, I would be open to that as well. Thanks in advance!

posted by Kamelot123 to Technology (9 answers total)

Response by poster: Points I neglected to mention - I am running iOS 6, and it seems to crash most often when I am typing in Japanese on the keyboard.
posted by Kamelot123 at 9:55 PM on January 2, 2013

Whenever mine crashes I just reboot/restart and everything is fine. Have you tried that?
posted by bendy at 10:28 PM on January 2, 2013

Response by poster: Bendy - yes I have. Doing so didn't seem to change anything.
posted by Kamelot123 at 10:36 PM on January 2, 2013

Call them and ask them what your options are. Perhaps you can mail it to them for a replacement.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:59 PM on January 2, 2013

Best answer: FWIW, the Facebook problem in particular may be nothing to do with your iPad specifically. I find the Facebook app very crashy at the moment, as do some of the reviewers on the App Store. On my iPad, it also has a weird glitch where the Backspace "key" (virtual keyboard!) gets "stuck" sometimes, making typing FB messages *very* annoying.

Does Notes also crash on you with data loss? If not, you could use it for a workaround (type into there, cut and paste to the browser etc.), though obviously that's less convenient than just typing directly into wherever.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:14 AM on January 3, 2013

Best answer: You can certainly use Google Chrome instead of Safari, it's a free app. You might also like an app like Drafts or a Dropbox-based notepad like Notesy. I would never write a resume in a web browser on any platform; heck, I wrote this comment in BBEdit and pasted it in, JUST IN CASE.
posted by bcwinters at 5:55 AM on January 3, 2013

Safari is generally very crashy. The thing I find that crashes it most reliably is pinch-to-zooming, or trying to anyway, while a page is still loading. Facebook is pretty crashy, too.

I use PlainText for any typing of significance -- it's stable, fast & saves to your dropbox account pretty much whenever you hit return.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:32 AM on January 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I have an iPad3, and my experience with it is that Safari is pretty damn solid, at least when viewing English language web sites. I'd try doing a restore of the OS from your computer, and if that doesn't work, get it exchanged for a different one.
posted by Good Brain at 7:27 AM on January 3, 2013

Just wanted to note that there is a known problem with Safari crashing due to insufficient memory because Apple's operating system past 5 seems to require alot more memory to run than previous versions. Safari is constantly crashing on me, particularly on photo and video heavy sites. There does not seem to be a solution as far as I'm aware. See here. Anyway, good luck!
posted by onlyconnect at 8:52 AM on August 10, 2013