News - Apple iOS Apps crash three times more often than Android Apps

[HEXUS]

Figures released by Crittercism tell a surprising story.

Read more.

[DDY]

Load of rubbish, only Windows products ever crash.

[crossy]

When an app crashes on Android, a moderately sized error message appears and the device beeps, offering the user an option to file a crash report, on the other hand, when an app crashes in iOS, it leaves one wondering if they accidentally hit the home button, as it fails both silently and smoothly

Is this because Apple figure that most of their users (nisi populus Hexus) are too dumb/busy/blissed-out to file bug reports?

Seriously though, I would have thought that Apple's (infamous?) "walled garden" would have ensured that the code quality was better => less crashes? Or does the bureaucracy inherent in the walled garden mean that the apps are updated less often, so more people are running into the same crash-causing bugs?

Before the iFan's get upset, I'm not poking fun or sneering - just going on my experience that my old iPod Touch didn't get anywhere near the frequency of app updates that my current Android-based gear does.

Horrible graphic by the way, but from what I've seen the source - Crittercism - doesn't seem to have an axe to grind except perhaps, like anti-virus companies, of magnifying the scale of the "problem".

[MD]

The difference is when an App crashes on iOS it crashes and the phone carries on - on Android an app has more of a tendency to take more than just itself out...

[Hicks12]

Interesting... this is the must frustrating thing i experience!

The lack of any user prompt or help is pathetic on Apples part and its exactly the same on their desktop OS, it makes me laugh when my friends IMAC "doesnt crash" because it never throws an error report but everything will crash/stop and it will goto desktop and be stuck with that silly circle for a few minutes till its recovered.

However windows users get the most useful information ever and its always critised... if a computer crashes then the user should be told it has, its basic help . Without BSOD i would be screwed, over the years i used to just search the key numbers/code on google and bam id have my solution, now i tend to read into a bit more and recall what error codes mean what, its brilliant .

Guess Android vs IOS is the same then, i know a handful of times my browser has died but all its ever done is prompt with the wait or force close for browser, if i click close it immediately recovers no issues what so ever. I havent experinced it on IOS but thats mainly because im poor and have no desire to spend more than £17 per month on a phone , however a friend who has the iphone never complains about hers yet ive seen on a number of occasions when trawling through texts it just freezes badly .

Any OS is going to have crashes but 99.99% of the time its the application being terribly coded... since building my new pc 3 months ago, ive had 2 BSOD and that was merely from my overclocking (testing voltages etc), suprisingly no software/driver issues... touch wood .

Its just ironic the "safe" approach apple takes isnt actually helping...

[Anusha]

I don't know about Android, but iOS apps crash everyday for me.

[Gkpm]

Crittercism is funded by Google Ventures so there's a clear conflict of interest here.

Also which apps would use this kind of middleware? iOS apps already get bug reports automatically. Why add an extra - intrusive - layer on top.

Sounds like they just get the really crappy ones.

[Andeh13]

Funny, now that I think about it Android is pretty stable as far as im concerned. A few hiccups now & then (but 6000 txt messages and 30+ odd apps) but nothing to ever make me doubt android!

[TheAnimus]

Objective-C, being the complete load of crap, that people only use because they have no choice on language might well be the reason their apps crash more...

[Gkpm]

Objective-C, being the complete load of crap, that people only use because they have no choice on language might well be the reason their apps crash more...

What's so wrong about Objective-C? Works very well IMHO and it's better than having to call native methods indirectly via JNI all the time for even basic things like in Android.

You don't get much more choice for Android apps either, it's either Java or C/C++ via NDK (if you're a masochist).

[TheAnimus]

What's so wrong about Objective-C? Works very well IMHO and it's better than having to call native methods indirectly via JNI all the time for even basic things like in Android.

You don't get much more choice for Android apps either, it's either Java or C/C++ via NDK (if you're a masochist).

Objective-C is better than JNI? I can't understand the debate, are you saying there aren't enough classes out of the box which represent in Java objects the API?

Objective-C has ghastly syntax, makes the simple quite convoluted and often lends itself to bad ability to read what the state will be.

Compared to something like Silverlight on the WP7 thou, both are ghastly. MVVM is just a much neater way of doing things, and less likely to have a serious bug as a result. Simpler relationship, the constant refinment of objects in a factory this aspect type pattern. You know its a good technology because microsoft pulled the plug on it

[Scribe]

What's so wrong about Objective-C? Works very well IMHO and it's better than having to call native methods indirectly via JNI all the time for even basic things like in Android.

You don't get much more choice for Android apps either, it's either Java or C/C++ via NDK (if you're a masochist).

It has none of the advantages of running in a VM but can perform as poorly as if it were (or worse in some cases). Meanwhile it offers nothing truly useful over a more widely accepted language such as C++ , simply a different way of working that's often unnecessarily resource intensive.

For me both the JNI calls and mixing C++ with Obj-C (which I have to) is a pain.

[Hoonigan]

I've only ever had iOS crash on me once, but I've had multiple app-crashes, it's easily fixed though. Close the app from the "multi-task-bar", wait 10 seconds and open it again.

The main problem I have is when I'm flicking through the music on my phone in the landscape mode, where you see all the artworks, it can hang for a second or two every so often.

iPhone 4S.

[crossy]

The difference is when an App crashes on iOS it crashes and the phone carries on - on Android an app has more of a tendency to take more than just itself out...

Not true in my experience* - and we've got two 'droid phones and a tablet in the house. (* did have a problem with Google Tracks not releasing GPS, but in that case the app didn't force-close)

Crittercism is funded by Google Ventures so there's a clear conflict of interest here. Also which apps would use this kind of middleware? iOS apps already get bug reports automatically. Why add an extra - intrusive - layer on top. Sounds like they just get the really crappy ones.

Not convinced that GV involvement = biased to Android, remember that as VC's they're only providing funding. As far as my brief perusal of the Crit's website goes, their USP is that they return those bug reports - in collated form - back to the app developer => you're not dependent on Google or Apple to do this, and if you're cross platform then all your reports are coming back via the same means.

You don't get much more choice for Android apps either, it's either Java or C/C++ via NDK (if you're a masochist).

Nope - a couple of seconds with Google also threw up http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid (C#) and http://code.google.com/p/python-for-android/ (Python) plus

Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) brings scripting languages to Android by allowing you to edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on the Android device. These scripts have access to many of the APIs available to full-fledged Android applications, but with a greatly simplified interface that makes it easy to get things done. Scripts can be run interactively in a terminal, in the background, or via Locale. Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript, Tcl, and shell are currently supported, and we're planning to add more.

which - I'll gladly grant - is really stretching the term "app development" atom-thin.

[3dcandy]

I must say my son has an ipod touch and a Dell Streak 7 and the ipod is more crashtastic than the Dell...

[Jay]

I hammer my HTC Desire HD and I have only had about 5 app crashes in the last 12 months