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Search Suggestions Causing Apple's Safari Browser To Crash on Many Devices (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Verge (and my wife) Apple Safari browsers are crashing left, right, and center due to Safari's search suggestions feature. "Simply disabling this feature will stop Safari crashing, or using the private mode option in the browser as a temporary workaround. Not everyone is affected, and this could be because some have the search suggestions cached locally or they're still able to reach Apple's servers thanks to a DNS cache."
But firefox autocompletion is pretty good, unlike the garbage that is chrome which is made to report as much personal data as possible while being slow as shit at local history autocomplete.
Not on Safari at the moment, but I've had no such problems.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
you don't need a SQL database to track your browser search history.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The browsers autocompletion tried to compete with his wife ?
Like it or not, it's true. But that's because most people always leave out the last part of that quote.
Apple, it just works. Until it doesn't.
Yeah, no kidding. If this happens 99 more times then I might as well be using Windows!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I am by no means an apple fan boy, but I think the most important aspect of what Apple did was to disconnect the cell phone from the carrier. It was their way or the highway.
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
When did they do that?
The original iPhone was so locked to at&t you weren't even allowed to use a different, non-iPhone, at&t SIM card with it.
It took Apple years to sell unlocked cellphones, and that was largely pressure from the EU where they weren't even allowed to enter certain markets until they did.
The only thing that's caused a disconnect of the cellphone from the carrier is the GSM family of standards, which finally, at last, has become a global standard that almost every carrier in the world is finally transitioning to (through LTE, GSM's 4G iteration.)
Meanwhile, Apple's seeking to undo that by advocating for the removal of physical SIM cards, locking devices to carriers just like in the old days.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Please explain why yeseterday it worked, today it doesn't.
On 1/4 of 400 iPads. On every level of iOS from 7 to 9. On iPads updated either today or last month, rebuilt today or last month, restored today or last month, no matter how old the backup restored from. Simultaneously. Suddenly. Today. And only on search suggestions.
Because, as a programmer, the only thing I can think of is that they are sending some unexpected junk in the search suggestion reply from the Apple server that isn't handled properly by the browser causing a crash.
Literally, this morning, a load of our pupil's iPads all started crashing on Safari search suggestions no matter how old, how long ago they updated, what iOS level, what apps were installed, or anything else. But they were all working yesterday. And 3/4 of them still work today.
It's currently suspected that some Apple server from some kind of round-robin response system has flaked out and produced bad responses that are being cached by those iPads. Restore from known-good-working-backup does not fix the problem and the first search suggestion can crash them again.
So stop being a smart-arse and research the problem first.
I am by no means an apple fan boy, but I think the most important aspect of what Apple did was to disconnect the cell phone from the carrier. It was their way or the highway.
Umm what? You've always been able to get sim free/network free phones direct from the manufacturer or stores, Apple just charge more.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I use DuckDuckDo and haven't experienced this on iOS or OSX! Is the issue Google sabotaging this browser?
FaceTime only works on Wifi? Guess someone forgot to tell my phone.
Perhaps the problem is one of people making rude suggestions to siri. Just because she's imaginary doesn't mean that she doesn't have feelings.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Maybe they're clicking it wrong.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Cook needs to let the past go and do what he knows big Steve would have done.
Deny the parentage of his daughter? Park in handicapped spaces? Screw Wozniak over?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The company survives today because of the Apple II which actually promoted the hacker ethos. After they killed it their other products and Steve Jobs took them towards bankruptcy . After his quite dramatic return , Jobs ( read Apple engineers) gave the hungry audience an incomplete but good looking and well performing computer and saved the day.
Idiot.
Jobs didn't take Apple towards bankruptcy. That would be John Sculley.
Jobs RESCUED them from the brink of bankruptcy.
Get your history right, idiot.
So if the browser didn't crash, but just produced an error that satisfied your pedantry, there's no problem with that? Because the server sent data?
And the browser doesn't necessarily crash. It's an unhandled exception, there's nothing to suggest it's exploitable or dangerous, it's just unexpected. The correct response is to fatal error and then get out of there. There's nothing you can really do. I suppose you could just throw away the error and carry on regardless, but that's hardly the point - and all the user would see is a broken search still.
And the BBC article was just updated. The servers were sending junk between two times. That got cached in the suggestions cache on the browser. They recommend you clear the cache now and try again.
Apple: It Just Borks.
I have never had Safari crash on me, but I've always been irked by the lack of ability to suppress autoplaying videos. Apple will not give us a Preferences checkbox for doing that, and it it won't support plugins that keep autoplaying videos from starting unless you specifically click on them. I'm assuming that the advertisers are insisting on this as a condition for deigning to give Apple TV some content. In Safari you can prevent all videos from playing by unchecking JavaScript and WebGL, but then you can't run videos when you want to .
But switch to Chrome, and there's a handy plugin Disable HTML5 Autoplay, which does exactly that. Right-click if you want a video to play.
"My Android and Windows devices don't have this problem."
Under Windows, crashing is built into the operating system.
Absolute balderdash. And it doesn't address the charge.
1. T-Mobile, formerly Voicestream, has been GSM since the mid 1990s. For what it's worth at&t/Cingular didn't switch until the early 2000s.
2. If what you were saying were true, there'd be no logic in locking the iPhone in the US anyway.
3. But even so, it doesn't explain why you needed a special SIM card for the iPhone, not merely an at&t one. Early iPhone buyers who were already at&t GSM users were not able to use their existing GSM cards in the iPhone - they had to instead activate the one that came in the box, giving AT&T unusually ridiculous control over their equipment choice.
Thankfully the next version of the iPhone ditched the weird SIM card requirement - but nonetheless, iPhones were still carrier locked for a long time afterwards.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No, take the license plates off of all the security vehicles. It's the only way to be sure that they aren't recognizable for the next step in the plan.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
All smartphones are locked to a carrier during the contract period, if the contract includes a subsidy. Now that this arrangement is becoming unpopular, new iPhones are being sold without a contact. Pay upfront, but no locking.
Indeed.
Are you agreeing with me (that Apple didn't change the relationship between customers and carriers, and indeed used SIM locking in a way that was extreme relative to other manufacturers) or correcting me on something?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yes! The bad response and garbage data from the search server is the PRIMARY issue here that uncovered a SECONDARY bug in the application.
It's simple fucking logic: Bad response from server triggers bug in the software, therefore the primary problem that is at hand is the servers barfing and sending bad data.
The secondary issue discovered is that the application crashes with an unhandled exception when sent bad data. It HAS to be a secondary problem since the program won't crash without being sent bad data, and there is no way for the program to CAUSE the server to send bad data ( in this case ) even after crashing.
Both are bad things, but as long as the search servers are sending good data the secondary issue isn't as bad, since it won't crop up at all. That isn't saying it shouldn't be fixed ( of course it should ), or that it is a trivial bug, just that as long as everything else works it won't be a problem.... just like it wasn't a problem up until now.
Damn, it is really stupidly simple cause and effect chains. How can people not see it plain as day?
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Get your history right, idiot.
End-to-End control ?
If you're a teacher it explains why UK education is in such a poor state. Get a bloody clue and don't ever teach IT classes.
YOU are correct. What I was trying to say is that "phone design" was separated from the carrier. From what I remember, I think Apple originally when to Verizon, but Verizon said "No, we want control of how the phone operates, features, etc" ATT was approached next and agreed that Apple would have 100% control of design of the device partially because Apple could bring such a highly demanded product to a carrier. I have to admit, the phone was revolutionaly from "almost" everything before it. It is similar to a situation where Apple goes to Comcast and says they want to build the next Set Top Box, but Comcast gets no control over any of the design and functional aspects for the box. It would be a win for Apple, and a win for the consumers.
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Get your history right, idiot.
End-to-End control ?
WTF does that even mean?