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Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

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Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#21

Post by cloudwalking »

extension wrote: post #5

It really irks me when crashes are made out to be the result of user actions, or some inescapable act of god. Excepting the very rare hardware fault, crashes are caused by a programmer error . PERIOD. That is all that really matters from the user's perspective. There may be some way to work around the bug by tinkering with things, but nothing the user does can ever cause a crash. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if iOS…

I have been bitten twice by changes to the iOS SDK. An app that ran fine, without error, on one version of iOS would crash on a later version.

It's always something caused by a programmer, but not necessarily the app programmer...

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#22

Post by klodolph »

extension wrote: post #15
zrgiu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an Android app runs of memory it also crashes, with an OutOfMemory error.

So it does. Though it also has garbage collection, which likely prevents the kind of memory leaks that crash most iOS apps in the first place. And does it let the browser use swap? Because iOS doesn't, so web pages can crash it about as easily as apps can.

iOS and Android both have garbage collection, and it is mandatory for neither OS. (I would consider ARC garbage collection, and nothing is stopping you from running C code on Android.)

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#23

Post by tobefairanon »

cloudwalking wrote: post #21
extension wrote: post #5

It really irks me when crashes are made out to be the result of user actions, or some inescapable act of god. Excepting the very rare hardware fault, crashes are caused by a programmer error . PERIOD. That is all that really matters from the user's perspective. There may be some way to work around the bug by tinkering with things, but nothing the user does can ever cause a crash. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if iOS…

I have been bitten twice by changes to the iOS SDK. An app that ran fine, without error, on one version of iOS would crash on a later version. It's always something caused by a programmer, but not necessarily the app programmer...

To be fair, this is why you, as an Apple Developer, get the SDK in advance of the general public and is why Apple strongly encourages you to do your due diligence before the iOS version goes public. And they do release API diffs, too.

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#24

Post by gst »

klodolph wrote: post #22
extension wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it does. Though it also has garbage collection, which likely prevents the kind of memory leaks that crash most iOS apps in the first place. And does it let the browser use swap? Because iOS doesn't, so web pages can crash it about as easily as apps can.

iOS and Android both have garbage collection, and it is mandatory for neither OS. (I would consider ARC garbage collection, and nothing is stopping you from running C code on Android.)

That's just wrong.

Android has garbage collection, yes.

Since iOS5 there's refcounting available, but that's far away from garbage collection. Just add some circular dependencies and refcounting will fail. And no, that's not only a theoretical problem (as everyone who used Python's refcounting before version 2 can tell you).

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#25

Post by allenbrunson »

cloudwalking wrote: post #21
extension wrote: post #5

It really irks me when crashes are made out to be the result of user actions, or some inescapable act of god. Excepting the very rare hardware fault, crashes are caused by a programmer error . PERIOD. That is all that really matters from the user's perspective. There may be some way to work around the bug by tinkering with things, but nothing the user does can ever cause a crash. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if iOS…

I have been bitten twice by changes to the iOS SDK. An app that ran fine, without error, on one version of iOS would crash on a later version. It's always something caused by a programmer, but not necessarily the app programmer...

That's not really proof that you were doing things correctly. You could well have been relying on undocumented corner case behavior that just happened to be true in one version of iOS, but not the next.

Awhile back, a bunch of apps got updated with what the authors called "fixes for iOS5." I have an app on the store that works all the way back to iOS 3.0, and it needed no updates at all for iOS5.

Occasionally Apple does take away documented, working APIs, but it's rare. In general, I'd say an app needs updates for a new version of iOS mostly because the author assumed things that weren't true.

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#26

Post by zrgiu_ »

jsankey wrote: post #20
zrgiu_ wrote: post #2

I have almost never had an iOS app crash on me. I get crashes in Android apps almost weekly. I honestly don't know where those guys are getting their data, but I really don't believe it. It's true, it's a lot easier for developers on Android to fix bugs and quickly update their apps because of the lack of an approval process, but that also lowers the bar a great deal on the quality of apps (a lot of which never get u…

You honestly don't believe their data solely because it doesn't match your personal experience? You are just one user after all! Personally I see crashes on iOS a couple of times a week, and I hardly use third-party apps. Most of my crashes are Safari!

I work with an iPhone 4 and an HTC Sensation all day long. 12 hours a day I'm holding either phones in my hands. I have >500 purchases in my itunes account, and just as many in my android market account. That's what I'm basing my belief on.

It might have just been luck, but Safari absolutely never crashed for me, and pretty much the same goes for all my other iOS apps.

But... To be on the topic: I don't think their data is accurate because of the way publishing works on both markets, and of the lack of transparency in other important aspects (how many apps do they base their statistics on each platform ? what's the total users number they have on each platform?) which can reveal exactly WHY those statistics are the way they are for them.

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#27

Post by [deleted] »

klodolph wrote: post #22
extension wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it does. Though it also has garbage collection, which likely prevents the kind of memory leaks that crash most iOS apps in the first place. And does it let the browser use swap? Because iOS doesn't, so web pages can crash it about as easily as apps can.

iOS and Android both have garbage collection, and it is mandatory for neither OS. (I would consider ARC garbage collection, and nothing is stopping you from running C code on Android.)

[deleted]

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#28

Post by Aqua_Geek »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #19

I suspect that 75% of the crashes on iOS are from poor memory management due to naïve app programmers. Android app developers don't need to worry about memory management, because Java takes care of this automatically. I suspect with iOS-5's new automatic reference counting, iOS crashes will decrease.

I agree. ARC should help solve some of the memory management issues of "naïve" developers, particularly with its zeroing weak references feature. Then at least delegate callbacks from URL connections get passed to nil instead of the view controller that just got popped off the stack, for example.

At the end of the day, though, there's only so much you can do to save a developer from himself.

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#29

Post by zmmmmm »

I get loads of iOS app crashes. My wife routinely crashes the browser on her iPad. It is interesting though that unlike Android she never thought the apps were crashing, because they just silently exit and return her to the home screen without any message. She always just assumed she accidently exited the app herself. On Android on the other hand you get the ugly 'Force Close' and other unfriendly messages. I always wonder if this contributes to commonly held belief that iOS apps are of higher 'quality' (obviously other things like smoothness and design do too...)

Re: Do iOS apps crash more than Android?

#30

Post by bbbbbbbbb »

zrgiu_ wrote: post #26
jsankey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly don't believe their data solely because it doesn't match your personal experience? You are just one user after all! Personally I see crashes on iOS a couple of times a week, and I hardly use third-party apps. Most of my crashes are Safari!

I work with an iPhone 4 and an HTC Sensation all day long. 12 hours a day I'm holding either phones in my hands. I have >500 purchases in my itunes account, and just as many in my android market account. That's what I'm basing my belief on. It might have just been luck, but Safari absolutely never crashed for me, and pretty much the same goes for all my other iOS apps. But... To be on the topic: I don't think their d…

yeah, I tend to agree.

I have at work access to an iPhone 3GS, 4,4S with iOS ranging from 4 to 5. I also have 2 or 3 different handsets of androids to work on. I personally use an iPhone but all my coworkers androids just keep freezing all the time... (my iPhone 3GS used to freeze before but it was a long time ago...) On the other hand, since I've switched to the iphone4S, I can say that apps crash really often but I can't tell if it is due to iOS5(thank you Apple for changing really minor dumb stuff at every f'g new version without having a real deprecation rule as Android has) or my way of using the phone(I use way much more apps).

All in all, I can't really tell if iOS apps crashes more than Android but it seems that Android OS is still very buggy yet.

also, statistics are very little weak creatures from which you can extort any figures. especially,when you read this:

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Crittercism, which is backed by Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, AngelPad, AOL Ventures, Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures, provides crash reporting to app developers.

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