Recently I've started wondering whether I'm the only person who is starting to get irritated by random crashes of many different third party iOS apps. Anecdotally I estimate that at least a quarter of the apps that I have downloaded suffer from stability issues of sufficient magnitude to seriously affect the usability of the app.

Apple is often criticised for their ring fenced approach to the iOS platform. Their defence is that controlling the distribution of third party apps provides a central point of purchasing and a degree of quality control that ultimately enhances the end user experience. I personally empathise with that philosophy, but it's disappointing that the quality control clearly isn't working as well as it should. At this point in time it feels as if Apple's process of reviewing and testing of apps before letting them loose on the App Store is setting an expectation of quality that's just not being delivered.

I believe that the iPhone and iPad are fantastic when used with their original out-of-the-box apps, but to me the entire platform is starting to feel somewhat hit and miss when it comes to third party apps and this is something that Apple needs to address if they are to retain their lead in this product segment.