A lot of people have posted temporary solutions to this problem, but for the record I will make a few clarifications:
In terms of the app crashes...
A. Rebooting will most likely fix the prob only once (never worked for me).
B. Deleting apps and re-installing from iPhone will fix the prob for a day or two (then crashes begin again)
C. Re-syncing with iTunes is a hit-or-miss fix, but again if the apps work this is still a temporary fix -- they will crash again soon.
D. Updating firmware could give the OS more general stability, and is a good idea, but this will not completely fix the problem either. Crashes will still happen randomly.
E. Deleting apps from iPhone, downloading on your iTunes (COMPUTER), re-authorizing apps on iTunes (COMPUTER), then re-syncing to iPhone seems to be the most stable fix so far, but I am curious if others have experienced continued crashing even after going this route.
As for me, option (E) proved to be the most stable. From the day I purchased my iPhone (July 11th), AIM was always crashing. I went through all the fixes from (A) through (D) but AIM (as well as other apps) continued to crash. After doing fix (E), I have not experienced an AIM crash in 3 days and counting. I will post an update on this if I experience a crash, or if I find a better solution to the problem. But until then, my suggestion is try option (E)!!
Lastly, one thing I realized is that when AIM was crashing on me (e.g. taking me to the Home screen), I just re-tried to open it a couple times. After about 3 or 4 times of opening AIM and it crashing, it finally opened and worked fine. The trick is try to press an option on AIM when you can see buttons (before it crashes), such as pressing "Active IMs" or "Favorites." Just try to interact with the program before it tries to crash -- eventually, it will work. This is obviously not a great fix, but I think it is the quickest way to make an app work (even faster than deleting and re-intalling from app store).
Would like to hear comments. And people, I kindly ask that if you post a solution to this problem, you update the folks here whether your solution was a temporary fix or not. I think I speak for everyone in saying that we want a permanent fix, not a temporary one!
- Mindcraft