iPad iOS 8 does not fix Safari Reloading tabs

[Ezhik]

From iOS 1.1.1 to today, every iOS device I had (with the grand exception of a jailbroken iPad with iOS 3.2.2 and a swap file hack) had this issue.

I learned one thing. It always comes down to the fact that Apple cheaps out on RAM. Oh, people told me so many excuses, from "Apple will fix it" to "You're just browsing wrong", but time passed, and the tabs still reloaded, text posts were lost, hedgehogs were angered.

 

[Count Blah]

From iOS 1.1.1 to today, every iOS device I had (with the grand exception of a jailbroken iPad with iOS 3.2.2 and a swap file hack) had this issue.

I learned one thing. It always comes down to the fact that Apple cheaps out on RAM. Oh, people told me so many excuses, from "Apple will fix it" to "You're just browsing wrong", but time passed, and the tabs still reloaded, text posts were lost, hedgehogs were angered.

And they will still come up,with excuses, and bend over backwards defending the reloads. Anything but actually pointing a finger at apple's desire to make this the default user experience.

 

[iOSaddict]

Considering how my quad core Android phone with 2 gb of RAM would reload applications all the time even when I just exit it for a few seconds, I would say increasing RAM is not always the best solution. Stop this myth.

 

[DJTaurus]

I am with iOS 7 and even with only 2 tabs opened when i leave one tab to go to another it refreshes.... i cant believe this is sth due to its ram limitations....

i am glad there is an app for forums like tapatalk cause posting in forums through safari is just pain in the a...

 

[Richardgm]

You know what I find amazing, I open one page on my iPad 2, go do something else for 5 seconds and return to Safari to have the page reload.

Yet I just opened Opera after a month and the page is still open and in the exact location I was browsing when I left the browser.

 

[endeebee]

Frankly, my suspicion is that this whole scheme of devices still being sluggish, having to reload and not being fully multi-tasking-able(be it on either iOS or Android) has mainly to do with generating more revenue by tricking most users into thinking that more ram will do it, and the next version will do it.

I own one of the early versions of the Macbook Air with only 2GB ram and it is no problem whatsoever to keep ten(10!!) tabs open in Chrome, without them having to reload and still watching a movie in VLC in a window next to Chrome..
Thanks to Mavericks I can also see that at that usage, Chrome tabs are not being paged or written to the swapfile yet; they are actually in RAM.

Besides, from a developers standpoint: Throughout all the time that Apple had to work on this issue (or feature) it would have well been possible to at least keep the state of the site in memory so that one doesn't loose one's work, despite the reloading (keeping the Javascript state and a key-value store of all the html input elements).

HW/SW development is expensive, and even more so at the average lifecycle of the engineers in Cupertino of apparently a couple of months, as a friend of mine who lives in the bay area got to know first hand.

 

[east85]

I still manage to use Safari mainly for autofill and adding stuff to my keychain but at the end of the day I use other browsers much more frequently. It's kind of silly that they've had this problem for so long.

 

[Count Blah]

I own one of the early versions of the Macbook Air with only 2GB ram and it is no problem whatsoever to keep ten(10!!) tabs open in Chrome, without them having to reload and still watching a movie in VLC in a window next to Chrome..
Thanks to Mavericks I can also see that at that usage, Chrome tabs are not being paged or written to the swapfile yet; they are actually in RAM.

.

Can you please explain your "proof" in more detail?

 

[endeebee]

Can you please explain your "proof" in more detail?

Well, I've never said it was a proof, just that it was my suspicion.
I was wrong in the respect that I said it didn't use any swap at all - in a test I just did I opened 10 tabs in Chrome, played a movie in Quicktime and ended up
with 50mb of swap being used, but the mb air not getting sluggish, nor having to reload any tab content when switching between them.
- There may be a short flicker when switching tabs, but that's a rerender,
not a complete reload that's making me lose my work.

Now I know that there's no iPad with 2gigs of ram, but if the aforementioned works with 2gb(my mac has a Core 2 Duo, hence 64bit adressing as well), then it should definitely be possible to keep at least two tabs open and fully loaded on an ipad.
That's why I'm suspecting it's by design, not by an actual shortage of ram.
After all they wouldn't be able to cash in on those enormous margins so many times if they had brought out a tablet that already fulfilled every
desktop feature(regarding performance and especially ability to multitask) from the start.

 

[Kryckter]

I still manage to use Safari mainly for autofill and adding stuff to my keychain but at the end of the day I use other browsers much more frequently. It's kind of silly that they've had this problem for so long.

It's getting bad, this with other small problems. But then again, I remove it from the dock and install a new browser and forget all about it,

Someday it will be fixed...

 

[richardbb85]

It's getting bad, this with other small problems. But then again, I remove it from the dock and install a new browser and forget all about it,

Someday it will be fixed...

same here, havent touch safari in weeks

 

[Kryckter]

same here, havent touch safari in weeks

Its sad too, this used to be my goto browser and I really enjoyed it... I am just glad there is good alternatives for the mean time

 

[richardbb85]

Its sad too, this used to be my goto browser and I really enjoyed it... I am just glad there is good alternatives for the mean time

yup, safari is pretty good cept the reload just ruins the whole experience for me.

 

[EdgardasB]

Safari reloading tabs isn't a big issue if we could mention Safari/Springboard crashes... I had some Safari crashes on 7.0.x but never had springboard crashes. Now with iOS 7.1.1 I get atleast one springboard crash a day not mentioning Safari crashes...
Tried restoring firmware, clearing Safari caches and history- didn't help. If iOS 8 won't fix it, will be forced to sell my iPad air and using MBA...shame

 

[bandofbrothers]

Safari reloading tabs isn't a big issue if we could mention Safari/Springboard crashes... I had some Safari crashes on 7.0.x but never had springboard crashes. Now with iOS 7.1.1 I get atleast one springboard crash a day not mentioning Safari crashes...
Tried restoring firmware, clearing Safari caches and history- didn't help. If iOS 8 won't fix it, will be forced to sell my iPad air and using MBA...shame

I would consider taking it back to apple if it's crashing that often.

The tab reloading is annoying enough but within current specs.

Crashing isn't.

 

[EdgardasB]

I would consider taking it back to apple if it's crashing that often.

The tab reloading is annoying enough but within current specs.

Crashing isn't.

I doubt that exchanged iPad won't suffer from same problem. Apple have said that springboard crashes will be fixed on iOS 7.1. However they didn't. So will wait atleast for iOS 8 public and if then won't help, will take to Apple service center.

Link- http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/535636/20140123/apple-ios-7-1-update-fix-springboard.htm#.U60KNRYdtR1

 

[redman042]

iOS 8 probably includes optimizations to help reduce memory footprint, but it also contains many, many new features which need to reside in RAM. I do not expect iOS 8 will make more RAM available for apps. In fact Apple is probably struggling to keep it the same as iOS 7.

 

[Charliebird]

I've yet to see a software update that fixes hardware. Honestly Safari is a BIG disappointment in my eye's on the rMini an iPad Air. Web browsing is only the most important application on iPad's and Apple screwed it up. Yes it works but it's a handicapped device. Apple really needed to shell out an extra 10 bucks and upped the ram to 2 GB's.

Three mad faces to you Apple!

 

[AlphaHel1X]

If you're adventurous, jailbreak your phone using pangu and install "nitrous" and chrome.

I don't have any reloading issues anymore, even with 5+ tabs open and multitasking with videopane.

Still wouldn't hate if apple decided to throw 2 gigs of RAM on the Air 2 though

 

[cababah]

Software can't fix hardware shortcomings (1GB RAM)

 

[Skika]

Software can't fix hardware shortcomings (1GB RAM)

While i agree with this on the Air case, this statement isn't necessarily true because through optimisation software actually CAN fix hardware shortcomings.

 

[s2mikey]

While i agree with this on the Air case, this statement isn't necessarily true because through optimisation software actually CAN fix hardware shortcomings.

Absolutely. Well written, optimized software can make even rather meek hardware look and feel good. Even if apple does put 2GB of RAM in the next iPad it will NOT fix the underlying problem with safari and it's sloppiness. More RAM is just a band aid on a big wound. Software optimization would be a real cure.

We shall see. Ironically, I don't have any reload issues or problems with safari. My iPad was accidentally made with 4GB of RAM, I guess.

 

[LV426]

It's definitely something with the design of Safari.

Agreed. It seems to be an Apple policy decision, and they are in control of Safari.

Many web pages tell the browser how long to cache the page content. For example, news website pages often say to the browser 'This news item is valid for the next half hour. Please cache it for this period and use your cache, rather than bother me, if you want to see this page again'.

However, on a device with limited RAM, like an iPad, cache is something of a luxury that comes at the expense of other in-memory applications. Apple believe it's more important that you can have as many apps in memory as possible, rather than indulging in using lots of cache. It's an understandable decision, because you can always see page content as intended, albeit at the expense of a re-download.

Where I take issue is that they also extend this policy to Safari running on desktops with oodles of RAM. That is just plain annoying. One of my favourite sites is a news website, and on my desktop I find myself opening each article in a new tab, so that the site's home page remains intact, because of this policy. If Safari honoured the cache settings as set by the news site, there should be no round trip at all when the back button is clicked.

 

[Charliebird]

Absolutely. Well written, optimized software can make even rather meek hardware look and feel good. Even if apple does put 2GB of RAM in the next iPad it will NOT fix the underlying problem with safari and it's sloppiness. More RAM is just a band aid on a big wound. Software optimization would be a real cure.

We shall see. Ironically, I don't have any reload issues or problems with safari. My iPad was accidentally made with 4GB of RAM, I guess.

I think the issue stems from over aggressive memory management software in IOS because there is only 1 GB Ram.


Reads this passage for ArsTechnica:

It's kind of interesting to hook an iPad up to Xcode, fire up the Activity monitor, and watch just how aggressive Apple's memory management is—the above screenshot is from a fourth-generation iPad running iOS 7.1.1. The biggest memory hog on any system is a browser with a bunch of tabs open, but iOS appears to limit the amount of active RAM that Safari can consume to just above 200MB (open more tabs and the virtual memory usage will continue to climb while active memory use stays about the same).

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/0...itasking-to-ipads-isnt-as-simple-as-it-seems/

 

[Count Blah]

Absolutely. Well written, optimized software can make even rather meek hardware look and feel good. Even if apple does put 2GB of RAM in the next iPad it will NOT fix the underlying problem with safari and it's sloppiness. More RAM is just a band aid on a big wound. Software optimization would be a real cure.

We shall see. Ironically, I don't have any reload issues or problems with safari. My iPad was accidentally made with 4GB of RAM, I guess.

Great. It doesn't happen to you, so it's not a problem.

I guess you never looked at the videos I posted with only safari running and reloads with two tabs.

More RAM would certainly help the situation, as the threshold for reload would be that much higher. And the nice quote from Charliebird would seem to indicate that raising the threshold might just be all that's needed.

But please keep on calling out people who really do experience this issue.