While Apple’s iOS devices represent some of the most intuitive computers available, the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad are becoming more sophisticated. Improvements in hardware components beget increased software capability with larger feature sets, which make supporting and troubleshooting these devices ever more complicated.
In 2007, the iPhone was released with iOS 1 (which was called iPhone OS at the time) and one button on the front of its screen (the home button) that accomplished two things. First, it quit the current application, and second, it brought you back to the home screen. This meant that if an app stopped responding, all you had to do was press the home button and tap the app’s icon again to relaunch it.
In 2010, Apple released version iOS 4, bringing multitasking features to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. In this version of the OS, hitting the home button still brought you back to the home screen but it didn’t quit the app. It simply closed the app window, leaving an app to finish its task; whether that was to continue playing audio, continue tracking your location or continue holding onto a VOIP call. The multitasking feature brought increased capability and increased complexity.
With iOS 4, pressing the home button looked a lot like pressing it in iOS 1, 2, and 3, but with one crucial difference—your app was still there, unresponsive, somewhere in the background. This means that in iOS 4, if your app stops responding, you must:
- Press the home button
- Double-press the home button to bring up the application switcher
- Hold down any one of the app icons in the app switcher until they start to wiggle
- Tap the minus badge on the app icon that you wish to quit
- Hit the home button again to stop the apps from wiggling
- Hit the home button or tap the home screen in order to tap the app you wish to relaunch
Overall, iOS is such a rock-solid operating system that issues are few and far between, and are still relatively easy to resolve. In most cases, if the six step process previously mentioned doesn’t get you back to where you want to be, try holding down the sleep/wake switch at the top of the iOS device for an extended period of time. Then, slide to power off, and hold and press again to boot the device back up to the lock screen.
If the issue still persists, try restoring via iTunes on your Mac or PC. Anything else is likely to be a settings or hardware issue.