Monday, May 2, 2011
Why Are Some iOS Apps so Crash-Prone?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "Apple Talk" @ 11:00 AM
I've been using my iPad 2 now for just over two weeks, and while I've been quite happy with it for the most part, I'm utterly dismayed at how often certain applications will crash. It's not uncommon for me to load up TweetDeck and have it crash three times in a row before it will finally load - and then it will spontaneously crash a few minutes later. I bought my most expensive app yet - FilterStorm Pro for $14.99 - and it crashed immediately the first two times I tried to load an image. The third time, doing exactly the same thing, it worked fine. I've seen similar problems on my iPod Touch - apps crashing, seemingly at random.
Based on my experience, iOS is the most "crashy" experience I've had in years on any operating system. The worst part is that when it happens now, I don't even blink - I just re-start the app. Because that's such a fast process, it's ultimately not a significant problem - yet I know that if the same thing were to happen on one of my Windows 7 computers, I'd be furious about it.
What is it about iOS apps that make some of them so crash prone? Shoddy development? Something about iOS resource allocation that causes problems?
