iPadOS 15 is the buggiest OS Apple has ever released

[Marshall73]

12.9” M1 Pro with zero issues. I use it everyday for various things, safari, mail, outlook, openvpn, rdp, splashtop, books, etc. Been using it as a second display via sidecar and now with universal control. It’s far and away the most reliable device I own.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

This every thing has to be perfect and work 100% correct with no errors at all attitude is getting really old.

Far from it, I work with software development myself and i‘d have to be a hypocrite to expect perfection.

However, a bug such as all my safari windows becoming duplicates of one other safari window with all the tabs being replaced by the tabs of that window is major enough for me to be annoyed.

I‘ve updated to 15.4 today, so far so good and already noticeably better, hopefully that’s the trend going forward!

 

[Carlanga]

Have to completely agree. And I have an original iPad Air. These days primarily use it to play calming sleep sounds on a timer at night. My M1 12.9 iPP and Magic Keyboard has essentially replaced my MacBook Pro laptop. For what I need and use it for it does 99.999% of what the laptop does. If those posters above have a very inadequate experience with their iPads, it’s not because of iOS 15, it’s because they bought the wrong device.

I really like my iPad M1 but man I want simple things like printing two pages in one piece of paper and other basic stuff that is so limited on an iPad.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I haven't had any problems with my 11" iPad Pro on iPadOS 15.

 

[AdamNC]

People are so quick to blame Apple, or updates.... If a "major" problem exists it happens to every single user. Not a very small handful. 13 was full of bugs but I only had one issue. 14 was "junk" but only for a handful. 15 the same. Just because you have a odd issues doesn't mean it's the OS or the machine. It could be a corruption, a bad 3rd party app, user error, or any number of possibilities. My MBA is a prime example. I had never had the memory leak issue. I put on Asphalt 9.... Bam memory leak issues and kernel panics one week later.... I thought about it and said what have I changed? Removed A9.....Cleaned out the caches.... No more memory leak or kernel panics. Been stable again for a month. So was that Apples fault or A9's? Is your bugs Apple or things you have done or added to the device.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

People are so quick to blame Apple, or updates.... If a "major" problem exists it happens to every single user. Not a very small handful. 13 was full of bugs but I only had one issue. 14 was "junk" but only for a handful. 15 the same. Just because you have a odd issues doesn't mean it's the OS or the machine. It could be a corruption, a bad 3rd party app, user error, or any number of possibilities. My MBA is a prime example. I had never had the memory leak issue. I put on Asphalt 9.... Bam memory leak issues and kernel panics one week later.... I thought about it and said what have I changed? Removed A9.....Cleaned out the caches.... No more memory leak or kernel panics. Been stable again for a month. So was that Apples fault or A9's? Is your bugs Apple or things you have done or added to the device.

In my case most of the bugs I regularly encountered were within Apple software, most notably Safari, messages, and general iPadOS UI issues such as the keyboard messing up.

But I do agree, very often a lot of issues are caused by third party software and people are quick to go blame the first group they can think of, i.e. Apple instead of thinking that the third party software could be at fault

 

[AdamNC]

In my case most of the bugs I regularly encountered were within Apple software, most notably Safari, messages, and general iPadOS UI issues such as the keyboard messing up.

But I do agree, very often a lot of issues are caused by third party software and people are quick to go blame the first group they can think of, i.e. Apple instead of thinking that the third party software could be at fault

Do you have any extensions running? I had AdGuard on my wife’s IPad. It made her experience using Safari crappy. Uninstalled it. Did a soft reset. Totally different experience. It worked.

 

[Danfango]

I really like my iPad M1 but man I want simple things like printing two pages in one piece of paper and other basic stuff that is so limited on an iPad.

As always wrong device.

Granted there’s no reason that isn’t possible on an iPad but really the point of the thing is to have a constrained user experience without the noisy decision making mess and complex forms to fill in for all tasks. The touch interface doesn’t lend well to really complex user interfaces.

The print dialog on Adobe Reader on Windows with the sub-print dialog for the actual printer, then the printer property page is a fine example. After a decade I still can’t print an envelope the right way round on my laser printer using that. In fact it was a killer decisions to go “full apple” a while back. That and the fact that I had to reinstall the printer driver after every reboot ??

Also there’s possibly a bit of “you’re using it wrong” here. I use mine so I don’t have to print stuff. In fact I do a hell of a lot of document scanning with my iPad and tend to read everything on screen. The only thing I print really is postage labels, the odd letter and envelopes. YMMV of course but if you want flexible printing, dig out the MacBook.

 

[yabeweb]

Hello,

As title says. I mean it’s just unbelievable, we’re 3 months or so away from WWDC and iPadOS 15 is just an absolute mess.

I love using both my macbook and my iPhone and have generally very smooth experiences with both of them, but iPadOS is just a complete disaster. I genuinely cant go 10 minutes without experiencing a bug, whether it’s the constant messages scrolling by themselves bug, or multiple safari bugs whether UI based or tabs breaking, apps crashing, battery indicator freezing, and so many more that i’m not even going to spend the time to mention here.

Worst of all this is all happening on an M1 iPad Pro, i.e. what’s supposed to be the best of the best in tablet offerings from Apple. But we’ve been waiting so long for issues to be fixed and it just gets more ridiculous day but day.

iPadOS, not only being severely limiting and underpowered for the M1 hardware, but also a complete utter buggy mess, is single-handedly constantly making me reconsider selling the iPad. The only glimmer of hope that keeps me using the iPad is the hope that Apple will finally stop ignoring and neglecting the iPad and that they’ll get their **** together!!

Thoughts? Does anyone else here have a proportionally worse experience on iPadOS compared to the other Apple operating systems?

I think that the title has been used before for different iOS releases....

 

[I7guy]

We have a 10.2 7th gen and ipad m1 pro on the latest release. And while I can't say there hasn't been 0 bugs (or put it another way, little in the software and hardware world, imo, has 0 bugs) nothing that has diluted my enjoyment of the experience.

 

[SpecMode]

I think that the title has been used before for different iOS releases....

For virtually every release of every OS on the market, you will find someone who calls it the buggiest release of that OS ever — and they may be right! For their specific combination of device, OS revision, installed/running apps, and accumulated user/app/system data, some undocumented change in a system library will end up causing an avalanche of issues that may only be resolvable by a complete wipe and reinstall, or by waiting for some future update that magically fixes everything.

Even within the relatively tight confines of iOS and iPadOS, it's still possible for a user to end up in a situation where an update causes everything to go sideways, but it's important to note that this does not necessarily imply that there is a major issue with the OS in and of itself, that Apple's iOS/iPadOS engineers are lazy, or any of the various other things frequently stated on this and other forums — only that building operating systems is hard, and when you have a user base measured in hundreds of millions there will always be someone who finds (usually by accident) some way to break it.

 

[gwhizkids]

For virtually every release of every OS on the market, you will find someone who calls it the buggiest release of that OS ever — and they may be right! For their specific combination of device, OS revision, installed/running apps, and accumulated user/app/system data, some undocumented change in a system library will end up causing an avalanche of issues that may only be resolvable by a complete wipe and reinstall, or by waiting for some future update that magically fixes everything.

Even within the relatively tight confines of iOS and iPadOS, it's still possible for a user to end up in a situation where an update causes everything to go sideways, but it's important to note that this does not necessarily imply that there is a major issue with the OS in and of itself, that Apple's iOS/iPadOS engineers are lazy, or any of the various other things frequently stated on this and other forums — only that building operating systems is hard, and when you have a user base measured in hundreds of millions there will always be someone who finds (usually by accident) some way to break it.

This is exactly right.

 

[Mousse]

For virtually every release of every OS on the market, you will find someone who calls it the buggiest release of that OS ever — and they may be right!

I have always suspected this.? Gotta love the tongue in cheek cheekiness.???

 

[TheSynchronizer]

For virtually every release of every OS on the market, you will find someone who calls it the buggiest release of that OS ever — and they may be right! For their specific combination of device, OS revision, installed/running apps, and accumulated user/app/system data, some undocumented change in a system library will end up causing an avalanche of issues that may only be resolvable by a complete wipe and reinstall, or by waiting for some future update that magically fixes everything.

Even within the relatively tight confines of iOS and iPadOS, it's still possible for a user to end up in a situation where an update causes everything to go sideways, but it's important to note that this does not necessarily imply that there is a major issue with the OS in and of itself, that Apple's iOS/iPadOS engineers are lazy, or any of the various other things frequently stated on this and other forums — only that building operating systems is hard, and when you have a user base measured in hundreds of millions there will always be someone who finds (usually by accident) some way to break it.

I agree with all that you said. Perhaps I was a bit too harsh on Apple itself in my original post - it’s almost like I’m still in the mindset that iPads are just large iPod touches like they used to be.

I forget that these devices are now reaching fully functional personal computer levels, and complexity always introduces the potential of issues.

 

[thadoggfather]

I’m not sure how iPadOS would fare on my mini 5 still on 14.3

but 15.1 on m1 11” has been rock solid. Superior to 14.5

 

[Carlanga]

As always wrong device.

Granted there’s no reason that isn’t possible on an iPad but really the point of the thing is to have a constrained user experience without the noisy decision making mess and complex forms to fill in for all tasks. The touch interface doesn’t lend well to really complex user interfaces.

The print dialog on Adobe Reader on Windows with the sub-print dialog for the actual printer, then the printer property page is a fine example. After a decade I still can’t print an envelope the right way round on my laser printer using that. In fact it was a killer decisions to go “full apple” a while back. That and the fact that I had to reinstall the printer driver after every reboot ??

Also there’s possibly a bit of “you’re using it wrong” here. I use mine so I don’t have to print stuff. In fact I do a hell of a lot of document scanning with my iPad and tend to read everything on screen. The only thing I print really is postage labels, the odd letter and envelopes. YMMV of course but if you want flexible printing, dig out the MacBook.

Nope, sorry this is a PRO device not a regular iPad like what seems you are using yours as. There are manyyy simple things like printing two pages in one piece of paper, highlighting a whole webpage, saving a webpage properly etc etc etc. To me the iPad Pro is very limited in many simple actions. You saying wrong device is a bad excuse.

 

[AdamNC]

Nope, sorry this is a PRO device not a regular iPad like what seems you are using yours as. There are manyyy simple things like printing two pages in one piece of paper, highlighting a whole webpage, saving a webpage properly etc etc etc. To me the iPad Pro is very limited in many simple actions. You saying wrong device is a bad excuse.

It’s an iOS device. A tablet with limitations. You want it to have all the features of Mac OS because of the word PRO. It still is the most powerful feature filled TABLET you can buy. If Apple wanted a tablet with full computer abilities they would build a 2 in 1. It is also the best selling tablet across the board. People like you want it to do everything you want. Not ever going to happen. Get over it. Accept it can’t do everything you want but it can still do a ton others can’t.

 

[jonnyb098]

And 15.4 made things even worse. My iPhone 12 is a stuttering mess randomly now. Safari is SO glitchy and has the worst stuttering and animation/scrolling bugs Ive ever seen. Tab groups is littered with bugs too. We are at the 6 month point for iOS 15…..stuff is supposed to be BETTER, not worse!

 

[AdamNC]

And 15.4 made things even worse. My iPhone 12 is a stuttering mess randomly now. Safari is SO glitchy and has the worst stuttering and animation/scrolling bugs Ive ever seen. Tab groups is littered with bugs too. We are at the 6 month point for iOS 15…..stuff is supposed to be BETTER, not worse!

It's clearly not 15. It's your apps, and how you have things set up. Like it has been stated several times now a bug or poor coding would effect every single user. A error in code can not only effect a hand full or one user. Other apps, a bad setting, a corruption in a old file or anything can duplicate your problem. It's user error.

 

[jonnyb098]

It's clearly not 15. It's your apps, and how you have things set up. Like it has been stated several times now a bug or poor coding would effect every single user. A error in code can not only effect a hand full or one user. Other apps, a bad setting, a corruption in a old file or anything can duplicate your problem. It's user error.

In some cases you are correct, but when people say they have started from scratch restoring and still have “X” issue that persists thats not the fault of the user or an app or a setting. It’s a BUG!

 

[dandrewk]

It’s safari for me. Won’t render a website properly until you pull down and do a refresh.
This is one of the websites it happens on.

Also if you go back a page in safari, it always goes to the top of the page and not where you were.

I get that same behavior. On some sites, hitting the back button or hitting any link on the page just goes to the top of the page, with all history of the tap erased. I've rebooted with same results.

Do you have any ad/popup blocker running? I'm thinking about deactivating them to see if it makes a difference.

 

[sorgo †]

I agree with all that you said. Perhaps I was a bit too harsh on Apple itself in my original post - it’s almost like I’m still in the mindset that iPads are just large iPod touches like they used to be.

I forget that these devices are now reaching fully functional personal computer levels, and complexity always introduces the potential of issues.

Don’t let soulless corporate fanboys gaslight you into entertaining their toxic “user error” theories. The ones with the resources and output — Apple — should be held accountable for the user experience they curate through full (and supposedly careful) joint crafting of their hardware and software platforms.

It’s okay to criticize even if you love something. I say it is one’s duty to constructively criticize where and when appropriate.

Chalking up the slow decline of Apple software quality assurance to the unnatural, dehumanizing, and disjointed remote work rut is probably a more realistic argument.

 

[twdawson]

I get that same behavior. On some sites, hitting the back button or hitting any link on the page just goes to the top of the page, with all history of the tap erased. I've rebooted with same results.

Do you have any ad/popup blocker running? I'm thinking about deactivating them to see if it makes a difference.

I do but have disabled them and still get the same results

 

[dandrewk]

I do but have disabled them and still get the same results

Safari reloads current page and loses history

Anyone else experiencing this on iPadOS or iOS 15.4? Sometimes when I click a link on a website, Safari will just reload the current page and lose all its history, almost like the tab crashes. I tried turning off extensions and even clearing cache but that had no effect. Never had this before...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Carlanga]

It’s an iOS device. A tablet with limitations. You want it to have all the features of Mac OS because of the word PRO. It still is the most powerful feature filled TABLET you can buy. If Apple wanted a tablet with full computer abilities they would build a 2 in 1. It is also the best selling tablet across the board. People like you want it to do everything you want. Not ever going to happen. Get over it. Accept it can’t do everything you want but it can still do a ton others can’t.

Man these are basic things even android can handle many, is not a niche thing nor a pro thing to ask. You remind me of people that where defending apple for not having cut/copy/paste lol you also forget this iPad has literally the same M1 chip as the MacBooks and and other ‘full computers’ From apple. Can you tell me ipad can do that android can’t as a standalone device?