Apple’s Safari Browser Subjected to Crashes Worldwide

If you’re an iPhone, iPad, or Mac user, then you might have noticed some problems accessing Apple’s Safari application on your iOS or OS X powered device — more specifically in regards to the web browser crashing on you unexpectedly Wednesday.

That’s because — well, we don’t actually know WHY the crash has been taking place, because the company has been mum on the details so far. However it acknowledged the issue in a public statement on Wednesday, claiming that the apparent crash lasted about seven hours, and was fixed by around 10:45 a.m. Eastern Time.

Support forums on Apple’s website initially pointed to Safari’s search suggestions box as the culprit — in the respect that typing out and performing a search of any kind seemed to be the probable source of the glitch. And while disabling the feature in Safari’s settings panel seemed to provide a temporary fix, for some, several users still speculated that the crashing issue could be the result of a server outage at one (or several) of Apple’s many data centers around the globe.

Even still, other users speculated that the crash could be the result of Apple’s latest iOS update, version 9.2.1, which was released earlier this week. However not everyone has updated to the newest firmware yet, and also, the outage affected many users of Mac computers, too, which kind of nullifies that hypothesis considering how Apple’s laptop and desktop computers don’t even run iOS.

As is generally the case when it comes to issues of pandemic proportion, people all around the world took to various forms of social media to express their frustration and offer their theories.

Twitter user @cassiecage, for instance, Tweeted that: “After the new update safari keeps on closing every time i try to type something.”

Another Twitter user, @stroughtonsmith, indicated that: “Merely tapping the address bar on iOS 9.x crashes Safari right now.”

Yet some, like Twitter user @phillipcaudell, for instance, seemed to be more helpful rather than just complaining about the issue: “Disabling ‘Include search engine suggestions’ fixes the issue. Guessing something got fudged on the server.” Thanks for the tip, Phil!

How about you? Have you experienced any problems with Apple’s Safari browser recently?
And if so, did any tips in the Apple Support forums work for you,
or did you simply hang out and weather the storm?

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