iOS 13 Background Bug Frustrates Users as App Store Q3 Trends Emerge
A persistent iOS 13 bug continues to aggressively kill background apps, causing major frustration for both users and developers. Meanwhile, the app industry remains a massive market with record downloads and consumer spending.
The app industry remains a massive market, generating over $100 billion in consumer spending and reaching 194 billion downloads in 2018 alone. Consumers now spend 90% of their mobile time inside applications, surpassing traditional TV viewing. This rapidly evolving landscape makes it essential for industry watchers to track weekly shifts in technology, user behavior, and platform economics.
Apple releases iOS 13.2 with new features like Deep Fusion and additional emoji, but the update fails to fix a highly criticized background app bug. Users report that the operating system aggressively kills background tasks due to poor RAM management, which leads to lost Safari tabs, discarded emails, and interrupted YouTube videos. Complaints flood Twitter, Reddit, and Apple forums, with developers and consumers alike expressing deep frustration over an issue that dates back to the beta versions.
Apple does not officially clarify the root cause of the memory issue, though speculation points to the demands of the new memory-intensive camera system. Alongside this ongoing software struggle, the industry also focuses on broader App Store trends for the third quarter and newly announced revenue numbers from Apple and Google. Additional developments this week include new tools for tracking app history anomalies, updates on Microsoft's Xbox mobile streaming service, and news regarding Google's Motion Sense technology.