Why does R2014a (and R2013b) crash at frequent intervals?

I have sent report after report (cumulatively it must be approaching 50 to maybe 100) about this to Mathworks, but have never gotten anything but an acknowledgement of receipt. It has been going on for the better part of the last year, and is clearly a Java problem, but has equally obviously gotten zero attention from Mathworks since it continued from R2013b to R2014a. Having Matlab crash in the middle of a work session, or crash when one suspends a work session and picks it up later, is seriously annoying as it requires reconstruction of potentially hours of work. When, oh when, will Mathworks do something about this problem?

I am running Mac OS Mavericks (and the same thing happened under 10.8). I keep Java up to date, so this is not due to old versions.

[per isakson]

Can you show anything reproducible?

I see Matlab crash every now and then while debugging. However, I hardly ever lose any work.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Under Home Tab -> Preferences -> Editor/Debugger -> Autosave, check "Enable autosave in MATLAB editor" and set the "Save Options" to Save every 5 minutes" or whatever time you want. At least then whenever it crashes on your iMac, you won't lose your editing work. If it crahsed in the middle of a run though, it won't help with that.