UPDATE: 7:05 a.m. EST — While Apple has yet to officially comment on the problem, a Reddit user claiming to be an employee of the company has revealed Apple was aware of the problem and working on a fix:
“Apple employee here (just a graphic designer so don’t have further info), called the internal help service and there’s a message saying they’re working on the problem with high priority, and that the workaround is as already stated (turning off Safari Suggestions).”
Original Story:
I called the internal help service and there’s a message saying they’re working on the problem with high priority, and that the workaround is as already stated (turning off Safari Suggestions).
Apple’s Safari browser is experiencing significant issues Wednesday, with some users seeing the software crash on Macs, iPhones and iPads when they tried searching through the address bar.
The reason for the glitch is not known and Apple has yet to address the issue but iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith pointed out that the problem could be related to Safari search suggestions. The developer said that turning off search suggestions in the settings menu was a temporary workaround that seemed to patch the problem.
Troughton-Smith tested the problem on devices running various versions of Apple mobile software and found that while iOS 8 and iOS 9 were affected, those running iOS 7 (which account for less than 7 percent of all iPhone and iPad users) were not.
According to StatCounter, Safari has 13 percent browser market share across desktop, mobile and tablet platforms, meaning millions of people could be affected by this glitch. Other than switching off search suggestions, using private mode also works as a temporary workaround for the problem. While the glitch is affecting many users, not all users are affected which could be a result of users having search results cached locally.
International Business Times asked Apple for further information but a spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
By DAVID GILBERT, International Business Times, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Jan. 27, 2016
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