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iPad Can we agree that Safari on the iPad Air is pretty unusable for composing forum posts

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saintforlife

macrumors 65816
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Feb 25, 2011
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When I try to make a post here on MacRumors I better just type it all in one go. God forbid if I switch tabs to copy a link from another tab and then come back to the my original post to try to paste it because just then the MacRumors forum tab decides to reload killing all my work until that point.

Are there any power users here that are annoyed by this Safari reloading on the iPad Air? Who cares if the processor is 64-bit when it can't handle a couple of open tabs without reloading? This is such a crappy user experience.
 
saintforlife said:
When I try to make a post here on MacRumors I better just type it all in one go. God forbid if I switch tabs to copy a link from another tab and then come back to the my original post to try to paste it because just then the MacRumors forum tab decides to reload killing all my work until that point.

Are there any power users here that are annoyed by this Safari reloading on the iPad Air? Who cares if the processor is 64-bit when it can't handle a couple of open tabs without reloading? This is such a crappy user experience.
Click to expand...

Have you tried a factory restore or closed out all your apps and rebooted your iPad? I ask because I have the iPad mini 2 (basically the same just 100MHz slower) and I have no issues with Safari tabs. Same with my iPhone 5s. Personally, I find issues like these arise out of no left over RAM and not the 32/64 bit architecture.
 
Yes, I do have that problem. I've adjusted my posting behavior accordingly. I either just write the post in one go, and come back and edit in the links afterwards, or I switch to ?Notes app to compose my post, then paste the finished post into Safari. Is it an annoyance? Sure, it is, but whining about it isn't going to fix it. I have better things to do than waste my mental energy getting worked up about something I can't change.

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iamMacPerson said:
Have you tried a factory restore or closed out all your apps and rebooted your iPad? I ask because I have the iPad mini 2 (basically the same just 100MHz slower) and I have no issues with Safari tabs. Same with my iPhone 5s. Personally, I find issues like these arise out of no left over RAM and not the 32/64 bit architecture.
Click to expand...

iPad 2s don't have this problem. It is a problem specific to the Air because of its 64 bit architecture.
 
saintforlife said:
When I try to make a post here on MacRumors I better just type it all in one go. God forbid if I switch tabs to copy a link from another tab and then come back to the my original post to try to paste it because just then the MacRumors forum tab decides to reload killing all my work until that point.



Are there any power users here that are annoyed by this Safari reloading on the iPad Air? Who cares if the processor is 64-bit when it can't handle a couple of open tabs without reloading? This is such a crappy user experience.
Click to expand...


Yes, its miserable.

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Night Spring said:
Yes, I do have that problem. I've adjusted my posting behavior accordingly. I either just write the post in one go, and come back and edit in the links afterwards, or I switch to ?Notes app to compose my post, then paste the finished post into Safari. Is it an annoyance? Sure, it is, but whining about it isn't going to fix it. I have better things to do than waste my mental energy getting worked up about something I can't change.

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iPad 2s don't have this problem. It is a problem specific to the Air because of its 64 bit architecture.
Click to expand...


3/4 had also. I suspect retina related. Needs more RAM. The garbage collection processes are incredibly aggressive to make sure you have ram for the next app or tab, and makes switching between apps or going to a new tab very responsive... But yes, you lose data :(

I want next iPad to have 2GB of RAM. With 1GB dedicated to maintaining Safari tabs >:)
 
Night Spring said:
iPad 2s don't have this problem. It is a problem specific to the Air because of its 64 bit architecture.
Click to expand...

Really? My iPad 2 and iPad mini 1st Gen however had this issue all the time, it hasn't happened though on my iPad mini 2nd Gen. Weird. Could be something with iOS 7 maybe since it is the first iOS version that supported 64-bit. Maybe 8 will improve it. I guess we will find out shortly.
 
saintforlife said:
When I try to make a post here on MacRumors I better just type it all in one go. God forbid if I switch tabs to copy a link from another tab and then come back to the my original post to try to paste it because just then the MacRumors forum tab decides to reload killing all my work until that point.

Are there any power users here that are annoyed by this Safari reloading on the iPad Air? Who cares if the processor is 64-bit when it can't handle a couple of open tabs without reloading? This is such a crappy user experience.
Click to expand...

I get the same issue on my iPad 2 running iOS 6. I just make sure to save my post and then add the links afterwards.
Sort of connected is how annoying it is you can only post 1 picture from an iOS device. I think this issue might be linked to the forum architecture rather than Apple though.
 
Even though I send this with an ipad air, I agree that serious forum posting is only possible with a macbook. By the end of the year there will be fanless 10 inch windows 9 core M tablets thinner than the ipad that will make browsing the internet equal to a laptop experience.
 
I agree 1000 percent!!! Nothing worst than writing up a nice long post and opening up a second tab and zip my post is gone. It makes me want to throw my iPad up against a wall (yes I know I have anger issues).
 
I don't see this behavior on my iPad Air. While typing this post I switched over to astronomy forum on a different tab and scrolled around a bit. Then I came back to this tab and my screen and text I had entered were still in tact.

Then I repeated the above but loaded a few pages on the other forum and made sure I did something on that site. Came back to first tab which is this site. Text and page still in tact. No reload.

What am I missing here? :confused:
 
We had many threads about it. Most people say the problem exists, while others are insisting that it doesn't happen on their machines.
What everybody should know is, that yes, more RAM would help, but only if Apple stops imposing a limit in memory usage for Mobile Safari. That is the reason for most tab reloads..
The iPad is great for light internet surfing..If you want anything more than that, get a Mac :)
 
Could it be that the forum post screen times out? I have an Air, generally open with 3 or 4 tabs. When I do a quick look up to copy/paste/verify my thoughts I can quickly open 10-15 tabs. While I'm doing this I keep in my mind that the typical forum post screens have a time limit. If it times out before you complete your post ( hit the submit button ) it can be lost.

When I write code that accepts a logged on users information via webform, I generally write in a 1440 'wait' period. If the user hasn't hit submit during this time I drop that connection. Lately ( within the last 8 months or so ), I've started using contentEditable so that each character is saved, no more submit buttons or lost posts. After 1440 seconds of inactivity the connection is closed, nothing lost.

Just thinking and typing, it may not be the iPad, but the code. On your Mac you are able to more quickly create a post thus never hitting the 'time-out' mark.
 
960design said:
Could it be that the forum post screen times out? I have an Air, generally open with 3 or 4 tabs. When I do a quick look up to copy/paste/verify my thoughts I can quickly open 10-15 tabs. While I'm doing this I keep in my mind that the typical forum post screens have a time limit. If it times out before you complete your post ( hit the submit button ) it can be lost.

When I write code that accepts a logged on users information via webform, I generally write in a 1440 'wait' period. If the user hasn't hit submit during this time I drop that connection. Lately ( within the last 8 months or so ), I've started using contentEditable so that each character is saved, no more submit buttons or lost posts. After 1440 seconds of inactivity the connection is closed, nothing lost.

Just thinking and typing, it may not be the iPad, but the code. On your Mac you are able to more quickly create a post thus never hitting the 'time-out' mark.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing. On the Mac, Safari has no memory limitations imposed by the OS. That's the sole reason for the issue..
 
960design said:
Could it be that the forum post screen times out? I have an Air, generally open with 3 or 4 tabs. When I do a quick look up to copy/paste/verify my thoughts I can quickly open 10-15 tabs. While I'm doing this I keep in my mind that the typical forum post screens have a time limit. If it times out before you complete your post ( hit the submit button ) it can be lost.

When I write code that accepts a logged on users information via webform, I generally write in a 1440 'wait' period. If the user hasn't hit submit during this time I drop that connection. Lately ( within the last 8 months or so ), I've started using contentEditable so that each character is saved, no more submit buttons or lost posts. After 1440 seconds of inactivity the connection is closed, nothing lost.

Just thinking and typing, it may not be the iPad, but the code. On your Mac you are able to more quickly create a post thus never hitting the 'time-out' mark.
Click to expand...

Nah the problem is with reloading tabs not the forum postings timing and etc. Issue could be in webkit, javascript, Safari or the amount of RAM. I'm lazy to take my mba for browsing, so mostly using iPad air but more and more I hating it for reloading tabs. Sometimes can't even keep 2 tabs. But noticed that it isn't issue with specific websites, something triggers and Safari maybe gets memory leak? Cause one day loaded 3 heavy websites- fine, next day can't keep 2 tabs and it keeps reloading....
 
If Apple included more ram they could raise the limit of memory allocated to Safari. Better should be good enough for me because I don't usually have more than two tabs open at a time.

To be clear, I will not buy another iPad from Apple until the stability and tab refreshing issues are great improved in Safari.

Sorry for all the shouting but Apple needs to get up to the industry standards on this item.
 
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I composed this on my iPad Air with 10 tabs open.
While composing I switched tabs multiple times and every time I returned to this tab, my post was there waiting to be finalized.
I'm also running the latest iOS 8 beta.
 
For how long this has been happening and for how many users this affects, you would think that Apple has solution for this in iOS 8.
 
My iPad is really unstable when using slow internet connections. On fast internet I have no issues. I get the occasional crash, but no more than my now dead mac mini used to have. My iPad is my sole internet device for a few months now, and I'm beginning to wonder if I really do need to replace my Mac Mini. The worst thing I can say about the ipad is that it is different from the mac with its own unique quirks. I didn't plan to make the ipad my sole computing device, but, here we are.

What is a power user? I don't know. I use my ipad air 6-8 hours a day ... for EVERYTHING. Internet, email, banking, bill paying, forums, maps/gps., remote control of Apple TV, ibooks, wemo, verizon mobile TV, etc. etc.
 
Night Spring said:
iPad 2s don't have this problem. It is a problem specific to the Air because of its 64 bit architecture.
Click to expand...
All iOS devices I've used have had this issue. That's iPhone 2G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPad 3, iPhone 5, iPad 4, iPhone 5s and iPad Air. The only thing that differs is the degree of severity. :rolleyes:
 
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