‘Error 53’ fury mounts as Apple software update threatens to kill your iPhone 6

theguardian.com

32 points·elfalfa··4 comments

After hearing Apple's explanation, it sounds like a good idea (in theory) that they're disabling access to the phone and data. Otherwise, LEOs could confiscate your phone, have the home button / TouchID sensor replaced and potentially gain access to your data (let's assume you refused to unlock it for them).

However, Apple (and AASPs) should, upon request, replace the parts with "official" ones and restore access to the phone/data. I'm not saying they should do it for free but it should be offered.

The people affected by this error are getting screwed and it's not even their fault -- that's the worst part. Apple just saying "sorry, buy a new phone" will just have the effect of turning these customers away from Apple products.

No, that reasoning is not enough reason to brick a phone! They could at the most disable the whole Fingerprint system and delete any stored data. Or, restore the phone to factory settings after the update if they wanted to be extremely sure. Then the user could decide if the fingerprint sensor is worth getting the phone repaired by Apple at escalated costs.

Yeah, you'd think Apple could warn people first. They could perhpas issue an update that allows temporary unbricking assuming they care about their customers.

Interesting but is there any good way around it? Apple needs to ensure the touch id sensor is valid. I mean perhaps they could simply display just touch id and nothing else (sounds like it does that at first but if you restart the phone it'll essentially kill the entire thing).

Seems like at the very least Apple could provide better error messages so their customers could understand why it's happening.

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