Whenever you hear about bugs and exploits being discovered in the iPhone’s browser, Safari, it’s usually the doings of some masterful meddler who devoted hours to unearthing any flaws they could find — not some user casually tapping around the application. Apple’s pretty good at keeping things locked down, and the iPhone’s got enough users that most of the nasty user-facing bugs have been flushed out. Well, except for this new one.
It’s not an incredibly common bug, and it doesn’t seem likely that it would hit most users – but for the iPhone users this newly discovered bug does affect, it could mean huge operator fees.
The flaw, as discovered by Estonian Apple Site AppleSpot: If the user visits a site which uses Motion-JPEG (most commonly used for security cams and live feeds) in Safari, Safari will continue to gobble up bandwidth even after Safari is closed. Safari is one of the few apps that Apple allows to process in the background, and Motion-JPEG streams appear to continue streaming, even if the stream is in another tab or in the “closed” application. Apple gives no indication that Safari will continue to stream – and considering that most applications on the platform aren’t granted such privileges, it’s unlikely that a lay user would understand the consequences.
As mentioned, this bug certainly isn’t one that springs up all that regularly; for it to affect you, you need to not only visit one of these Motion-JPEG streams in Safari, but also be on some sort of pay-per-megabyte plan. While it’s no sweat off the backs of anyone on an unlimited package (as is the case with a vast majority of US iPhone users), it could work out to MASSIVE wallet damage for anyone traveling internationally or who are signed up on carriers that only offer metered data.
The original discoverers of the bug claim to have been able to rack up over 740 megabytes in silently streamed data during one hour of testing. If the same thing had happened to someone without a data package, they say that one hour of unintentional data usage would have worked out to roughly 30,000 Estonian kroons in fees – or just shy of $3,000 dollars. Ouch.
[Thanks Ronald!]
How is this a bug?
The website refreshes…it’s not apples fault the person would have a crazy bill, it’s the user for not closing out the page.
Agreed…
agreed agreed
Yeah, this isn’t a bug – Safari is supposed to run in the background.
i do understand the argument that this could consume ungodly amounts of bandwidth and leave someone with a huge bill, but… I dunno. What about something like a page with Ajax in it that continues to refresh every 10 seconds or something? Or a page with a meta-refresh tag – wouldn’t that cause the same problem?
Say it’s the only page you’re on.
How do you close it?
Open a new dummy page just so you can close the one that is streaming data?
Safari always leaves one page open.
Whether or not this is a “bug” is irrelevant. Call it whatever you want, but the point is that this is an unintended flaw in the iPhone that has severe consequences.
Because Apple gives no indication that Safari continues to run and process the stream after the user hits the homescreen button, especially considering that almost every other app on the platform is force terminated.
it’s technically not a bug. it’s by design. it’s a horrible user experience, and thus poor design.
I have to agree with Tony, this doesn’t sound like a bug at all. Just something for people to be aware of… it would be the endusers fault if they accumulated any extra fees.
Hardly. The iPhone gives no indication that the app is still running. Are you saying people should have to close the browser window containing the stream before they hit the Home button to leave Safari? How would they know this?
Normally when you run an audio or video stream, it’s patently obvious – YOU HEAR SOUND. It’s also very useful. You can play streaming Internet radio stations with Safari and work in other applications and/or safari tabs.
So it’s the end users fault that when they close an application, it keeps running and continues to download content? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of “closing the application”? I say it’s the developers fault that their head is shoved so far up their ass that they would blame the end user for this.
To sum it up, your comment is complete bullshit.
How would the user close the page? If safari keeps running in the background by design, should the user have to go to some other page, make sure nothing is refreshing, then hit the home button? That seems pretty un-apple like.
The other question of course, is who has an iPhone without an unlimited plan? and if so, why?
because here in sunny AUSTRALIA thats all we can have :+(
Yes, not all providers provide unlimited 3G plans, mainly because they don’t have the infrastructure in place.
Bubz, you really have NO IDEA what kind of a stupid net world it is outside the US. Unlimited plans? You’re going to be in for a big wake up if you ever visit Australia.
Oh, and StaticSafe – it has nothing to do with infrastructure down here. It has EVERYTHING to do with $3 billion+ of profit every year.
Same thing up her in Canada, Rogers rakes billions in profits, by charging exorbitant prices for internet.
here*
Why do some of us have capped / metered iphone packages? Easy….we live in AFRICA!!!
So yes this is of a concern to us. I will definitely take note of this now. No wonder I have been getting my notification mid month that my data bundle is at 100%!
Design flaw!!!!
You may have missed this crucial part:
“Safari will continue to gobble up bandwidth even after Safari is closed”
That’s the bug.
How is that a bug? Doesn’t Safari run in the background? Yup.
Go to a website and stream some music, then close Safari. Guess what, it still plays!
Erm, no… no it doesn’t.
Because when I close the app, that means I want it closed. It doesn’t mean I wanted it open in the background. It means I want it closed.
Hopefully that’s clear enough for you.
Incorrect. No it does not. Safari closes = music stops. Trust me
apple fanboys attempting to defend this is making me laugh
I disagree.
The assumption is when you close your browser you’re not going to be consuming, and for some, paying for bandwidth.
Yeah, not sure how this is as a “bug,” it’s not anyone’s fault except the user’s.
The app continues to use bandwidth after it is closed by the user. How is this the user’s fault exactly?
Should the user have closed it “better?” With the inborn talent and skill at closing Safari on the iPhone to make it stop refreshing motion jpegs that you obviously possess?
Apple is capable of making mistakes. Accept it, your life will not change as a result.
“How is this a bug?”
Because it’s obviously an unintended “feature” with no legitimate purpose (why continue to stream image data to an application which is not open?).
How does your brain continue to tell your lungs to breathe and your heart to beat?
Moron.
grumpy :(
“Safari will continue to gobble up bandwidth even after Safari is closed.”
- Guess you missed that part.
The bug is that, even after you “close” Safari, Safari continues to suck down data.
it’s a bug when you close the application and it’s still using bandwidth. i’m not entirely familiar with iphone’s UI, but i imagine like any other OS, it gives you an option to manually shut down the program entirely. if it still uses bandwidth after doing that, then it’s most definitely a bug.
On the iPhone, there’s no option to “manually shut down the program entirely”, only the button to take you back to the Home screen which is what this issue is all about.
The only way to completely close Safari, is to hold the home button for like 5 seconds or using a third-party app.
Did you actually try this (holding the Home button for 5 or more seconds)? It doesn’t do anything.
@Darren – actually, that was the old method on firmwares 1.x and 2.x.
With the newest 3.x firmwares, the process is a bit more complicated. To force quit an application in 3.0, press and hold the sleep/wake button until the slide to power off screen appears, then press and hold the home button until the application quits (about six seconds).
Sorry, about that. I used to use that when I had 2.x. But now that I have a jailbroken device I just use SBSettings to force quit Safari if I want to.
You must have a pretty flimsy grasp of customer service if you think this is how things work.
Anything that surprises/confuses the user, and anything that happens without their intent, is a bug. If you don’t like “bug” call it a “user interface flaw” or whatever makes you happy, but it is clearly Apple’s responsibility.
I mean, they can take your view that it’s the user’s problem, but that would just lose them customers.
Wow, so you have just stolen the word bug and used it for your own means? That should help with communication ideas.
Thank Gaaawwwddd I am safe so far! =)
thats why you get the app that frees memory http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=292011358&mt=8 (itunes link)
it can terminate safari
Definitely a bug.
I didn’t know that they even allowed pay-per-MB packages. Do they only force unlimited in the US?
If you read the article, you’ll see that the bug was discovered in Estonia (which is not in US). Most of the world is not in US. And even US customers when outside US will pay heavily for each Mb of data they consume while roaming internationally.
In any case, you should be presented with a notificaiton considering the possible and rather dire consequnces.
It seems 50% of TC posters are clueless about tech, as well as reading comprehension. I think they think they’re on Digg.
Painful reading.
Uh. I agree it’s not a bug. However, a company that is so worried about Google Latitude being too confusing for users should be way more worried about this – you know, the poor retarded iPhone user. As a person with an iPhone and an above-average computer IQ, I could easily make the same assumption of Safari being closed when I “exit” it – semantics aside. It’s definitely newsworthy, if for nothing else but as a caution to cell users streaming video.
I don’t think this is a bug. This always thought Safari running in the background was a feature. Sometimes, I will load a podcast in safari, close safari and it will continue to stream. This is very useful.
Audio streams have sound. These, to my knowledge, do not. How are most users supposed to have any idea its still streaming?
It is fine to run in the background, it is *NOT* fine to continue to consume bandwidth without a clear indication to the user that this is happening.
This is not a bug. Sorry guys, I know you want to hate on Apple and stuff, but this is really stretching it a bit, no?
How the hell could anyone remotely consider this *not* to be a bug? Do Apple fanboys that devout really exist?
-No other applications ever run in the background
-Apple gives no indication that Safari continues to run in the background
-Apple particularly doesn’t tell you that Safari runs certain things in the background, and not others
-Even being aware of Safari’s potential to run in the background, you still have no way to discover if that’s true for sure
-Even if you *were* sure that it’s running in the background, it’s a pain in the ass to manually close the browser page instead of just clicking the Home button like you do for….everything else
A “bug” doesn’t have to be an explicitely broken piece of code. This is a completely broken UI model. It’s a bug. Apple should fix it as soon as possible.
iPod, Mail, Safari, App Store… All of those are able to run in the background. There isn’t notification that any of these are running, except for the iPod “play” symbol.
That said, it should stop the stream when closed, since there is no other way to stop the streaming other than loading a different page.
Mail runs in the background, SMS runs in the background, iPod runs in the background, the phone part is actually just an app that runs in the background, and Safari sort of runs in the background (cacheing).
My original impression was this is not a bug, but after reading through some of the contentions back and forth here, I think I agree, it’s an unexpected action that can consume battery and bandwidth with no knowledge (or warning) on the users behalf, therefore it should be considered a bug.
The idiots claiming this isn’t a bug are the same idiots who would not refund those charges.
Any case where a user seeks to create a desired action by doing a common task (hitting an “X” button or closing a browser) should expect it to be closed – PERIOD!
Application no longer functions!
Application should not need to be closed by yet another application designed to close applications!
Application should not have to have a key code entered, fingerprint scanned, eyeball confirmation technique to end application.
CLOSE MEANS CLOSE.
Some are too stupid to understand this, it would seem…
The HOME BUTTON on an iPhones DOES NOT explicitly mean CLOSE APPLICATION. It means “go to home page.”
Example: When you are in the iPod app and press home, you don’t expect the iPod app to CLOSE, you expect it to go to the background, which is exactly what it does.
I would agree that this is inconsistent, but to say the home button is a close button is not true at all.
Another example, while in a phone call, you press HOME to go out and do other things. It does NOT terminate the call because the button is not intended to be a CLOSE button as you seem to think.
In which case, they need to have a simple “X” in the corner or somesuch link to physically close the browser.
They don’t need an X, they need to make it stop loading data, so people with per-use data plans don’t get overcharged unknowingly.
This is a rare case because in most usage scenarios, you’d just hit the X on the URL bar in Safari to stop loading a page. Because it’s a streaming JPG (which is kind of a hack to begin with), I don’t think the UI actually shows the page as loading after the first frame is loaded, so there is no X to click. I’m guessing that’s why Apple missed this.
It’s not a bug but it is a problem which is why you HAVE to get an unlimited data plan for your iPhone.
The real issue is out of the US where this is not a requirement & obviously US residents that are roaming.
There has to be an indication that Safari is continuing to download data. So, no it’s not a big – but you can’t blame the user. How is the user supposed to know? Most people are NOT techies.
-No other applications ever run in the background
–Ipod does–
-Apple gives no indication that Safari continues to run in the background
–when you open up safari it brings you back to the page you were already on–
-Apple particularly doesn’t tell you that Safari runs certain things in the background, and not others
–Yes they do–
-Even being aware of Safari’s potential to run in the background, you still have no way to discover if that’s true for sure
–If you have a brain in your head you will–
-Even if you *were* sure that it’s running in the background, it’s a pain in the ass to manually close the browser page instead of just clicking the Home button like you do for everything else.
–….really?–
Yes really, how is this hard to understand?
If you have only one safari tab open showing one of these streams, to close it so that it stops downloading data you must:
1. Click the new tab button to open a new tab
2. Close the original tab while still in the tab view
3. Close the application using the home button
Go ahead and tell me that’s a reasonable thing to expect users to do (especially when it’s not documented anywhere nor is there any indication that *not* doing that way may cause a problem) I dare you.
Also, FWIW, your assertion that Safari remembering what page you were looking at is somehow a sign that it’s been running in the background is a red herring: Safari reloads the page when you re-open the app.
Wrong, Safari does not reload a page when you close and reopen it. I’m typing this in my iPhone and actually just left the app (midmessage!) and re-entered it while typing it. The page immediately reappeared without reloading and my enered text was preserved.
Even if you use Safari’s tabs a little bit, you will see that tabs can load in the background (and stay preserved).
This is exactly why I created Safari Tab Closer for jailbroken iPhones and iPods. Just press the tab button for a second and it’ll prompt you to close all the tabs, or to close them all and exit.
–when you open up safari it brings you back to the page you were already on–
And so does every iphone app that’s not written by an idiotic drunk monkey. Every app is given a chance to save it’s state before closing and to reload it when opening. Most do. That safari does something drastically different than every other app isn’t obvious.
Heck, I open up firefox on my desktop it magically reloads all my tabs from before I closed it. It must be running in the background. Sure I rebooted the os and unplugged the power cord in between but it’s just that magical I guess.
Wow. It’s posts like this that really bring out the hardcore mac fanboys.
There’s people defending this? Or even arguing it’s definition (that it is not a ‘bug’)? As if someone would WANT a motion-jpg running in the background (completely unviewable to anyone) consuming 500+mb/hr? If this isn’t a bug, it’s worst – the most retarded, obvious, ‘wtf’ software feature known to man (in which case, in my opinion, you’re making Apple look even more incompetent).
You don’t own an iPhone do you?
Have you played with one?
If you have any familiarity with it you would (or should) know how the basic functions work.
Big internet toughguy arn’t you?
Multitasking.
How retarded huh?
ugh, i read the rest of the comments. people are RETARDED. or, as i’ve been saying for years now, people who use apple computers are RETARDED.
a bug is when the program in question does not behave properly. if you manual force close an application down, then it should not use any system resources after closing. if it does, then it’s doing soemthing it’s not supposed to. From the article, I gathered this is eXACLY what’s happening.
Can someone please teach these mac fanboys how a computer works?
There are plenty of retarded Windows users as well.
Don’t generalize, not all Mac users are retarded.
You sound like a really smart guy. I like how you can generalize people by the type of computer they use. Despite a good portion of the population considering Apple’s products superior you can still call every Mac & iPhone user that. The fact that you just toss around that word makes you sound like an idiot.
And you, are apparently not a very smart guy. Whether the generalization at issue is correct or not, you most definitely CAN make valid generalizations about any self-selecting group. If you couldn’t, the entire concept of branding wouldn’t work. People are not born with a genetic predisposition to buy Apple products, they choose to. Any group of people who choose to buy the same product, are going to have certain commonalities which ended them all up at the same decision as to what to buy.
For example, it is safe to say that all Starbuck’s customers have similar tastes, not just in coffee, but in a number of different things, which is why Starbucks has been so successful at building their brand beyond just coffee. By the same token, it is very safe to say that Wal-Mart customers are very cost conscious, given that Wal-Mart’s entire branding strategy revolves around the low prices of all their items.
Apple’s brand is no different. There are any number of repeated messages throughout all of Apple’s marketing which give a clear indication of who they are appealing to, and what their customer base does and doesn’t like. Apple certainly knows how to generalize about their customers, otherwise they would not be as successful as they are at marketing to them. To pretend that Apple users are just a random collection of people, completely representative of the general population, is ludicrous, as they are all people who went out of their way to seek out and buy Apple products, which clearly means they have SOMETHING in common.
Sorry mate, it’s you who is retarded. This is not a bug but a feature with undesirable consequences. The feature is that Safari runs in the background after you click the Home button. This is useful if you want to listen to internet radio for example. There’s no way to “manually force an application down” (what a retarded way of putting it) on an iPhone, which is usually not an issue as there’s very few apps with the capability to run in the background. In this case, I agree that it’s very undesirable but not a bug.
It’s you making the mistake that the iPhone (or any other OS) automatically works the same as Windows. It doesn’t. Home != Close. Simple as that.
Bugs don’t necessarily imply brokenness; they can also be bad functionality that can harm the user or the user’s data in some way.
This is a bug.
I use this “bug” all the time.
I’ll start loading a page, and then hit the home button and send an sms, that way by the time I go back to safari it’s fully loaded. It’s called multitasking. If you’re not smart enough to use the phone don’t own it.
@sean – I know it did the same thing with AJAX in the original version 3 but I haven’t tested it in 3.1.2. I have several internal web-applications that refresh consistently that I had a user using on his iPhone and he noticed his battery was nearly dead after about 90 minutes. It was because he opened a web-app, logged in and then closed safari but the app continued to update the entire time despite his phone going to sleep. I added a line to my updater function to exit the recursion if the user agent was iPhone.
If you have a jailbroken device, just install SBSettings, and you can easily end processes.
@Tony – while I agree that it isn’t really a bug it is a little harsh to say that users experiencing this issue don’t know how to use the phone. The average user is going to think that safari will work like every other iPhone application and close when you go back to the home screen or another application.
A simple “fix” for this would be for the OS to monitor data usage in Safari and if it is still loading data say 3 minutes after the user closes Safari it should bring up a some sort of notification asking if you want to continue loading or close the page.
If MS did it, it would be a bug, if Google did it, it would be part of the beta process, when Apple does it, it’s a feature. Go figure.
Windows Mobile users have tons of issues like this, but the fans of that platform have come to expect it. That’s why all the number one apps for that platform are task managers.
All platforms have issues, it’s just curious how the *wisdom* of the crowd shifts in relation to the vendor.
Another vendor and a lynch mob chanting “class action” would be forming.
I agree the functionality should be changed, but this use case can be legitimately argued to not be a bug, since the app isn’t actually closed. This streaming JPG is a rare-case that causes a problem with that model.
I would argue the same thing if this was on WinMo, and actually, I think it does behave the same on WinMo if you put the browser in the background instead of closing it. The issue is that it’s not easily apparent that it’s running in the background as opposed to closed on the iPhone.
Actually, what is so ironic about this, is the whole “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” is a VERY Microsoft reaction to the whole thing.
I’m one of the guys who found this bug. Let me explain one thing. When you go to the website that stream Mjpeg and open that stream, then close Safari by hitting the home button and then open whatever another app that use internet, the Safari still continue to download data. The process can only be “killed” by opening Safari and entering different website address. Another thing that work is by choosing Reset Network Settings. Apple have told us that NO MULTITASKING is available on the iPhone. Apple has not given to us any warning that if you open this kind of website then iPhone still continue the stream. It is not about the thing that Safari remember what website you visited, it is about the continues stream and it can cost you lot of money. Maybe not in US, but most likely in EU.
You can force quit any application on the iPhone by holding the home button for an extended period of time (I don’t recall how long it is) but that should force Safari to stop the background processing pretty easily without jailbreak add-ons or something as drastic as resetting your network settings. Force quitting will cause Safari to close all tabs and not remember where you were the next time you open, if I recall correctly.
BTW, Apple has never said that the iPhone doesn’t multitask, Apple has said it won’t allow third party applications to multitask. Many of Apple’s applications multitask/background operate, as mentioned by several in this thread.
@distortedloop – You don’t need to force quit the app, just close or change the page.
Of course, and several have mentioned that, I was addressing the direct comment of the guy who said the only way to avoid this was to reset his network settings, and the folks who thought opening another page, or other such work-arounds were too much effort.
Guys, just test this and then come back and say what you need to say. For a start reset the data counter and test this “bug”. What you think what will happens if all users start to stream continuously over the 3G network (let’s say, i want to see what is going on at my home in live). Your network operator will switch you off finally as the 3G network have some limits…that will going to happen.
It’s not a bug but a case of inconsistency on Apple. If you press the Home button after opening most apps, the program that’s open gets closed and stops running.
Why doesn’t Safari do this?
Navid
Its to make life more convenient.
Its not consistent, but a lot of people like to multitask. For example, you might want to copy a link from Safari to Tweetie, you just press the home button and thats it.
If it quit, you might lose the page you were at.
So you can listen to internet radio or stream video in the background. I agree that it doesn’t make much sense when the video doesn’t have audio but it’s still a(n often useful) feature.
Btw, this “bug” will appear ONLY with MJPEG and not with any other format. So, call me a liar, but this is a bug and not any attended Safari “support”
Erm… I’m listening to internet radio right now with Safari “closed” on my iPhone. Thousands of people are using this “bug” every day. See here for example:
http://www.intomobile.com/2009/06/16/iphone-os-30-can-stream-internet-radio-in-the-background.html
So it’d be interesting to see how Apple and/or the carriers would respond to this if a customer (like here, in Aus) confronted them with a huge unintended excess data bill. I wonder how it’d play out in a law suit too.
As far as this being a problem, yes and no.
First of all why would anyone have an iphone without an unlimited data package? Yes, I know there are some countries where that isn’t an option, so why would you even get an iphone knowing full well that the majority of the features require data? As far as those in the US that have an iphone and do not have unlimited data, well then it’s their own damn fault. If they are that stupid then they need to quit their whining.
Second, I think this problem would affect those that are not so…. um…. smart. I mean come on, closing a safari window, this stuff is so basic and elementary that it makes me roll my eyes. How could someone not know this.
Third,
The thing is that when you use audio stream then iPhone will inform you that stream is started like here:http://www.mattraskin.com/blog/iphone/background-streaming-radio-for-iphone-30/
With this MJPEG stream you don’t see such picture and this will let user think that when he close Safari then stream stops. Unfortunately it didn’t. That is the case of this problem not the background streaming himself.
Luckily the iphone battery life is so little that the bill cannot be huge!
Right? :)
If I had one application out of 7000 others that doesn’t close when I press close, I’m not sure what to call that, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a feature.
Same bothers me in Skype by the way: when you have video going on and you click “close” the cam keeps sending picture. Bad design…
Wow, what I find truly stunning about this is the first three posters complete lack of reading comprehension.
The author even went to the trouble of using bold typeface to state that the application continues to use bandwidth after it’s closed and you three Einstein’s can’t figure out how it’s a bug because it’s the users fault for not closing the page.
No child left behind indeed. Good luck on your masters theses.
Simple: Add an option to allow/disallow streaming while minimized. Then show a pop-up if the user minimizes the browser when it it still streaming something, allowing the user to close the stream or continue (with a ‘remember decision’ option).
All fixed.
OK. My first reaction to all these “not a bug” comments was, Apple-tards fondling Steve Jobs nuts again in the face of reality. Singleminded dipshits who cannot admit Apple fucks up just as much as anyone else. And plenty of these comments are from such dipshits. Then I played around with my iPhone and thought about whether or not this was a bug. Safari is designed to stay open in the background like this. It’s a good thing if you are switching applications and you don’t want to reload a page. It’s bad because there is no intuitive way to truly close Safari and as a result, shit like this happens. So, it’s a design choice that creates bad situations that Apple chose. While I think it could be handled better I wouldn’t call it a bug. That being said, I can see and even agree with other interpretations. As for the gaytard who decided to go off on a tangent about reading comprehension – I did just fine on my thesis, thanks for asking. And back to the trolls that live in Mr. Jobs pubes, please STFU. There’s a whole world out there – your inferiority complexes rival Canadian’s.
Can this be resolved with an iPhone software update. Seems a bit random to me. The figures are crazy.
It isn’t a crashing bug but the described behavior is definitely a bug. It is a graphic example of the sort of problem Apple hopes to minimize by not allowing third parties to run in the background. On the desktop there is more screen space available so some can be used to provide a clue about what is happening but not clearly visible. With limited power and limited screen space there needs to be some innovative thinking applied to this sort of issue.
I can’t believe you iPhone people haven’t had MMS all this time… Here I was thinking my Windows Mobile phone was okay, then I found out the iPhone can’t multitask? What? LOL…
My Touch Pro has issues… But I’ve always been able to send picture messages. I can talk on the phone, check my email, and send a text message.. Nay! An MMS message!
There was a shootout on touchscreen phones recently… The iPhone was the only one that couldn’t multitask. As awesome as it’s always sounded, and the cool factor it implies… I’m SOOO glad I never bought an iPhone!!! The screens are nice, I will give them that! Multi-touch? Sweet!!
I’m going to keep waiting for a multi-touch/multi-tasking phone though..