If your iOS 11 device unexpectedly restarts repeatedly on or after December 2 | Hacker News Reader

If your iOS 11 device unexpectedly restarts repeatedly on or after December 2

support.apple.com

270 pointsrosstex149 comments

You know what would help shit like this?

Letting us downgrade iOS.

I get it. It means potential security exploits.

But at least let us make the choice wether we’d prefer those to shiny new, and different issues that seem to be growing in number.

Please? No?

Fine, I’ll wait for the jailbreak and collect the goddamn SHSH blobs or whatever, if that’s how far you’ll make me go.

My, how lucky you are that GarageBand iOS has no peers (namely its integration with Logic), or I’d downgrade to a dumb phone and start carrying a palm pilot again.

This comment is written on iOS 10. I just wish there was a way to turn off the upgrade nag screen. Nothing better than asking for your passkey in a modal while you're trying to get shit done.

You can delay it a little by going to Settings > General > Storage & Cloud usage > Manage storage and delete the downloaded update. It buys me about a week until it downloads again and starts spamming me to upgrade.

Tip: fill up your phone storage. Seriously, my ios 11 experience was so bad that I don't want to even have the possibility of apple automatically installing it here (or me accidentally updating it, since the update popup is extremely deceptive and screams dark ux).

Thanks, but the point is, the OS shouldn't get in the way of you getting stuff done. That's against Apple's intent which was "making technology disappear so that you can focus on what you're doing, not tweak the tech at your hand".

It's absolutely with the apple ethos of making you upgrade their crap when you don't want or need to. In this case if you have to upgrade AND they can cross sell you, up sell you product you don't want and then also sell access to you to third parties it's the apple living their dream. User experience, that's just bait, surely you've noticed that before now?

Security patches need to be entirely separate to performance degradation patches. You should be able to say no thankyou to your vendor gimping your product without them holding the "no security for you" gun to your head.

When you buy a device, security patches for that OS for 5 years should be a requirement for the device being fit for purpose.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I entirely agree with everything you've said.

For anyone not aware, Apple is extremely hostile to device longevity and 3rd party repair [1]. They have had issues with hinge design in MacBooks as well as the Bendgate crisis for the iPhone 6 series.

They bricked phones when people had other repair shops fix their home buttons (Touch ID sensors).

Apple wants to control everything, sell you a device with a short lifespan, and then force upgrades.

1 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=26cNHSilikI

Install the tvOS beta profile and it’ll never ask you again.

Do you happen to have a link - sounds pretty cool if that will work.

The original link is down.

https://github.com/TheMultiplix/OTA-BLOCKER-FOR-IOS

usual caveats apply, make sure that mobileconfig is really the mobileconfig you're looking for.

This comment is written on iOS 9. Still don't feel like I'm missing anything.

This comment is written on 8.4.1... If I need to use a hammer I don't want to have to upgrade it... And when I do upgrade it I don't want the head to fly off or the handle to break when I'm trying to drive a nail.

This comment is written on iOS 6.1.3 on my iPad 2. It might not be able to run most new apps now, but at least it doesn't lag. Plus, the OS actually looks nice.

You’re kind of right. Trouble started with iOS 7. That’s when the focus went from usability ( which, btw, includes performance) to shiny and disturbing animations nobody cares about.

And now i can’t even modify text properly because the drag n drop interfeers with cursor positionning.

I regretted upgrading my iPad 4 to iOS 8. Then I upgraded it to iOS 9 and regretted even more. Hopelessly - and wishing iOS 10 will solve the problems - I then upgraded to iOS 10.

Now there's no JailBreak for iOS 10.3.1 32 Bit devices, and the OS lags like never before. Really miss iOS 6...

Just to be snark, this comment written in w3m/0.5.3.

Yay, a pissing contest on who runs the most old unpatched iOS version. Full with local and remote exploitable holes in the web browser and what not. How can you possibly be proud of such?

6 was the absolute peak of their mobile design

What the hell is this???

A hammer analogy?

If it ain't broke don't "fix" it.

Car analogies only please.

(Ironically "if it ain't broke..." doesn't apply to Apple)

I use tools to fix problems in my life. Hammers are one of the simplest tools in existence. When breaking down complexities in my life and looking for solutions I find it helpful to employ design principles which are really just different philosophies to the test possible solutions. Ultimately in an attempt to gain some measure of control over possible emergence. My phone is a tool. It allows me to make and recieve communication events from people I value. In addition it has a number of other features that I find helpful in solving additional problems. That these additional solutions fit within the same small light weight device is of great convenience and subsequently value. However my phone is a tool. The worst thing for a tool to do is for it to fail during use. Tools break and require maintenance. To fail during use however is a serious problem for any tool. Injury and death are likely possible outcomes. More likely are losses potentially very serious losses that in turn could lead to injury or death. For most people their phone failing is of no grave consequence. I imagine these hypothetical individuals are not placed into positions of much responsibility. That however and not too sadly is not my situation. I seek stability, reliability and robustness in any solution I employ. I don't engineer or design with duct tape... I try not to at least, sometimes it fun though. However for critical systems any solution is not just another brick to be added to the solution super structure stack, every solution in fact becomes foundational. We tend to forget all the problems we've encountered so as to bring us to this particular point in time. As such we happily go along fixing problems or whatever and thinking the world has always been that way... Up until something breaks! I live light and move fast, my phone is part of a set of tools that I use to allow me to do what I do. Upgrading it is too much of a risk and time drain to be of much value. The cost of upgrading vastly over shadows the reward and every new shiny feature that breaks something I depend on just makes it that much worse.

In addition,I like my hammer comment for exactly the response you gave. It triggers an almost visceral response in people who are tech literate. Call it subtle trolling if you will, but it's trolling designed to make someone think.

Also, I'm not always a fan of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" it has it's place though. More importantly for me is to have well designed solutions that are easily maintained that work. "Iiabdfi" usually only applies to duct tape systems and it surely is a principle to remember when encountering them.

Yes, especially the last version of the last major branch. I would love to go back to iOS10.

I'll probably never update my phone to a new major iOS version until it's been out at least 6 months. If iOS11 is ever reaches the point where it's as good as iOS10 was, I'll install the tvOS beta config and prevent updates. At least until I'm able to take the time and research if the latest version of iOS12 is in good shape for most users.

An even better idea, and what I'm probably going to do, is to only update from and to the last version of each major iOS. Then you don't have to time anything at all and do any research/guesswork. Your device just works as well as it can, for the longest period of time. Everyone else beta tests Apple's software for you.

I really wish I were on 10.3.3 and had the tvOS profile right now. Never again.

I'd been an Apple fan and happy iPhone user for ~8 years until I updated my iPhone 6 Plus to iOS 11. My phone went from snappy to crappy. Apple support told me I couldn't go back to iOS 10, so I figured it was time to buy a new phone. My Pixel 2 came Friday.

My Pixel 2 XL comes tomorrow! Shipped a week early.

Nice! I am very happy with mine.

Are there any operating systems that offer an seamless, out-of-the-box downgrade option? When I first upgraded from windows 7 to 10 I remember wanting to go back and finding out that it was an incredibly convoluted process. Although I guess with iOS you just can’t downgrade, period.

Some Android manufacturers provide "factory images" allowing you to completely wipe your phone and reinstall any version supported on the hardware. Google is probably the best, maintaining an archive of every version released for the phones they sell.

You actually can downgrade iOS but only if you are inside the "grace" period that is about 1 month from the first release. After that point you can't downgrade anymore. In my case I always wait before updating because I have been burnt in the past, but this means that I'm outside the grace period. Even extending it to something like 6 months would be great.

When I upgraded a laptop from Windows 7 to 10, and then it wouldn't resume from sleep anymore, I told Windows 10 to revert and it took a long time but worked perfectly.

I can reinstall windows 7, xp, heck 3.11 just fine thank you

GNU/Linux

You can downgrade through iTunes. Download the IPSW and put phone in DFU mode and then Alt + RightClick on Update iOS in iTunes when it you plug the device in.

Only to the iOS versions currently being signed, which doesn't provide a huge selection. https://ipsw.me/ provides a nifty way to see what is available.

FYI, ipsw.me has been having some troubles lately, and the reported signatures might not be accurate.

@lostgame: Out of interest, what device size are you running GB on?

Want to upgrade my old phone to take advantage of GB's Logic integration, but I can't decide whether to get an iPhone 8 Plus or the standard model... Does screen size make a big difference on that app? (do you know...) Thanks

Nothing beats the iPad Mini / LTE model’s form factor and screen, and I use VOIP anyways.

iPhone 5s does. Not too big, not too small. RIP. Reaching the top corner on this 8 is horrible and I’m large, tall person.

I am not sure if I follow. The iPhone SE has the same form factor as the 5s, but mostly the innards of the iPhone 6s. Rumors are that there will be a new SE in the first quarter of 2018.

I am using an SE, because I dislike larger phones (though the 4.7" may still be ok).

I had this issue, but there's a hack called Reachability:

https://9to5mac.com/2014/09/09/a-look-at-apples-reachability...

For GarageBand? I think you’re misunderstanding the question.

Why didn't you get an SE instead?

When you keep your phone for 4 years each time, you need to get one with good specs, and I’m not certain that the SE is going to last as long as an 8. The camera is a huge factor too.

If you're willing to carry two devices, is there a reason you can't just have a dedicated GarageBand controller device (an iPod Touch or an iPad would do), and then get whatever dumb old devices you like?

The point is I shouldn’t have to, when my device used to work just dandy before I finally gave in to its incessant nagging to update.

Not one word of apology from Apple! The workaround involves turning off notifications individually for every app, and then turning them on after the update. If this were any other manufacturer, they would be burnt at the stake. But we somehow let Apple get away with it.

Would we? We didn't burn LG at the stake for bootloops. We don't burn Microsoft at the stake for updating Windows 1p in the middle of work. Plenty of Android phones have had problems. If anything I feel like Apple gets more flak for every little thing, it just so happens this week they've had two genuinely really bad ones.

Let's not forget that other than people being a bit mad, all those bulging battery packs from Samsung seems to be largely, and quickly, forgotten. I even saw a review of the new one that had a "Doesn't explode" in the Pros column.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-macbook-battery-exploded/ Samsung is not an exclusive offender with exploding things.

I forgot about that too. My dad had that issue on his MBP. Took it in and they did the repair for free.

That was my point though. People make a big scuttlebutt over these things, but they're quickly forgotten and don't doom a company forever.

Nobody made excuses for Samsung, which finally couldn't market its way out of being regarded as one of the poorest quality Android phone manufacturers that sells in the US.

I'll put the reaction to Apple's screwups on the same level as the reaction to LG's when I see a class action lawsuit.

The Verge just named the Samsung S8 the second best phone you can buy right now, after the iPhone X:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/24/15914934/best-smartphone-...

Two of the worst quality phones available, as we all now know. This only reflects poorly on The Verge.

Please name the phone that is in your opinion the best quality phone available, to calibrate this statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWiSIxVlI7w

Sarcasm?

The iPhone 4's antenna issues lead to a class action, resulting in claimants getting a free bumper case or $15.

The thing is there's lots of schadenfreude whenever Apple stumbles. Part of that is just being king of the hill for so long. But even before that Apple always chafed nerds because of how they came at computing (appliance-like) and the whole intersection of liberal arts and technology thing which targets a mainstream audience. That changed in the early to mid 2000s because of OSX and the Intel switch, suddenly a lot more nerds started buying Apple stuff. But Apple didn't really court them, they just switched because Apple's implementation details (NeXT underpinning and Intel) attracted them. A lot of nerds, including myself, had a change in outlook to Apple's perspective once they switched, but a lot of them still have your classic nerd outlook. That's the root cause of a lot of things (like the MBP teeth gnashing).

No, they're mad because they were sold the benefits of vertical integration, tight control, limited options etc leading to better user experience albeit at higher prices. The better user experience part is not holding up in recent reality and people are rightfully dissatisfied.

You've to remember people pay premium prices for Apple stuff. If I buy a $300 Moto whatever I'm much less inclined to complain if it breaks vs when I'm buying a $800+ iDevice.

This doesn't seem a little thing to me. I use Apple primarily because I don't want headaches. But apparently every major iOS release is getting always worse, especially if you have "old" devices (calling old a phone from 2 years ago is kind of a stretch). I postponed my update because I read about the crippling battery life problems, and now there is also this bootloop...

The Pixel and Surface book are reaching out to you with open arms and a slightly predatory smile on their faces.

But hey, animated poop icon. Apple's priorities are clear, or Tim Cook's anyway.

" If this were any other manufacturer, they would be burnt at the stake."

Nah. Look at Samsung: you can make a TV that spies on you, a washing machine that explodes, and a smartphone that spontaneously catches on fire. And then go take a look at how their stock is doing this year.

We've reached the pavlovian phase of western consumer culture: we'll just keep on buying and buying and buying, no matter what.

I think the difference is that these problems are magnified in the press but are still rather rare. It is first hand experience that breaks the pavlovian cycle.

Americans started buying Japanese cars because so many of them had direct poor experiences with American quality in the 70's to 90's.

I don't think that has necessarily happened with Samsung, yet.

> Nah. Look at Samsung: ... and a smartphone that spontaneously catches on fire.

they did get a lot of bad PR for that and it was running joke in the tech industry and it still is even though they have recalled the faulty devices.

That is the power of the Virtuous Circle that they have created for themselves. It shows the capacity for consumers to forgive, and where forgiveness is divine. This is in direct contrast to companies that have fucked up public trust, like Uber, Equifax, Comcast, etc where every single little thing is confirmation that they are the Devil Incarnate.

Sure, like Samsung was burnt at the stake for exploding phones. Clearly this is way worse.

The Samsung battery issue was a Black Swan event; unpredicted, rare and genuinely a surprise to the manufacturer.

A bootloop due to a date value is just sloppy.

> genuinely a surprise to the manufacturer

...which came as a result of sloppy quality control...

“somehow”, as if Apple hasn’t been saving us a million tiny headaches a day (vs linux or windows or android) via software engineering for twenty+ years.

Just gonna stay on IOS 10 for a while longer.

Most people (+80%) noticed nothing.

I never liked Apple products because of all the restrictions, but since Steve Jobs is gone (a few years later, actually), Apple appears to have taken a whole other route...

What is happening at Apple? I’m honestly worried for them. Is their QA department in disarray?

Is their QA department in disarray?

It's not a matter of one department, it's a matter of culture which starts from the top. Jobs insisted on perfection, and that permeated the entire organisation. Cook is satisfied with gimmicks and is contented to just coast on the reputation Jobs earned. He just doesn't have the personal stake Jobs had, he's a manager not a leader. Just like the iconic HP was never the same once Fiorina took over.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but not this part:

> "Just like the iconic HP was never the same once Fiorina took over."

HP was in trouble well before she joined the company.

Yep. Same with Yahoo! and Marissa Mayer. Women get blamed more frequently than men when a company is failing [0]. They are also more likely to become CEOs when a company is already in trouble [1].

[0]https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/female-ceo-blame_us_581...

[1]https://www.glamour.com/story/women-ceos-company-trouble

Marissa Mayer was a terrible CEO. Period. She was responsible for a string of 48 (!) (mostly) terrible acquisitions[1], banning remote working[2] and wasting company money on things like motivational books[3] or lavish parties[4].

She is getting more flak than the other terrible CEOs, but IMO it isn't caused by the fact that she's a woman. At least not directly.

Back when she was appointed as a CEO, media were treating her like a second coming of Jesus (which probably indeed was caused by her gender, she was a perfect role model for feminists). That set expectations bar really high, and when she failed to deliver, people turned against her.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...!

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/25/yahoo-chi...

[3] - https://www.recode.net/2016/2/2/11587472/marissa-mayers-big-...

[4] - http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-blows...

Could it be that the amount of bugs have exploded with the ever-growing complexity of their software combined with an unsustainable pace to guarantee solid, reliable software?

It seems like a house of cards right now, and it will only get worse as they keep having the next crunch time just to deliver on an arbitrary management deadline...

Most of the iOS ui SpringBoard bugs are due to them rewriting the codes in Swift. Many Autolayout bug. Music app can’t even align the play button at center. Also Craig Federighi is busy with Siri, and busy shooting down Note 8 in social media. I was annoyed when the text replacement bug took one beta to solve, where the Calculator bug took 5 or 6 releases to solve. And the third reason is they expect users will actively test iOS for them. With so many bugs surfaced in media and in released version, my guess is no one is telling them the bugs during beta. Another reason is iPhone X is iPhone fragmentation with different home screen UI. You’re are right this will introduce complexity to the code base. I’m thankful for the touchbar in MacBook Pro and the notch design in X, both I dislike. This make me realise the many good points in other platform. Sort of like bursting my Apple fanboy bubble.

Curious to know more about your claim that rewriting stuff in Swift causes a lot of bugs - got any sources on that?

Rewriting any mostly-working code in any language—even the exact same language—causes bugs.

It’s been that way since the 1960s.

It “has to be done” sometimes, but put that day off as long as possible.

That makes sense I suppose.

Seems improbable to happen right now; there isn't really a large amount of newly-added complexity. Compare to QA in the beginning of the iCloud Document Sync (Ubiquity) era, where every app and many parts of both iOS and macOS had new features: Ubiquity itself broke down frequently, but the QA and maintenance engineering going into it didn't seem to make anything else in those releases less solid.

You could go slower like everyone else.. with less features..

I believe in general those using devices would always trade security for convenience and new, flashy features.

I'm under the assumption that, for some reason, the rush and all things surrounding iPhone X caused QA to only happen a bit, and only on the newest devices (I have an iPhone 6S and an iPhone X, and the 6S is noticeably slower in a lot of cases, for example having to wait half to one second to type on the keyboard). I'm giving Apple a general benefit of the doubt and think that iOS 12 will be better since there shouldn't be any major paradigm shifts in the next series of phones, but it is a really bad image to see Apple not able to effectively QA these relatively simple bugs (how did they miss the notification issue? Is all testing done by hand?)

I don't think they even need a QA department for software, given how many people are donating their free time to file radars.

https://blackpixel.com/writing/2012/02/radar-or-gtfo.html

Considering that some people will continuously adjust their iPad clocks into the future to be able to play Candy Crush without waiting (sic!!!), this bug must have affected people, and was certainly somewhere on Apple's radar.

It's just that management then shrugs and sticks to yearly releases instead of working down this mountain of debt.

> (sic!!!)

GP is emphasizing the absurdity of the act, I presume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

The quality people got sick of living like a peasant in the high cost of living areas surrounding apple and took jobs elsewhere.

Its only a matter of time until every silicon valley tech company faces the same problem.

I created a separate account to write this comment, since it's going to be harsh.

I work for a Bay Area technology company with a decidedly mediocre engineering team.

My experience over the past 2-3 years is that the worst software engineers (at our mediocre organization) are being hired by Apple. This is totally anecdotal and the sample size is maybe five. But I just cannot escape the fact that Apple continues to hire our engineers that barely know how to program.

Hiring engineers in the Bay Area is hard. I'm sure Apple has a deep bench of talented engineers, but my own anecdotal experience tells me they have very much reduced their standards.

Hah. I can't help but wonder if Apple has started mindlessly implementing contemporary "software engineering best practices" (yuck):

- Everything must be Scrum or a similar sprint system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836734 - Move to an open office layout to foster collaboration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962663 - Kick out high-performing "heroes" like Scott Forstall - Instead, build teams of mediocre (but probably nicer) engineers. They can then lift each other up through positivity and pair programming.

This is of course a lot of speculation (and wishful thinking) on my part, and honestly it's likely that any process would be doomed to failure under Apple's self-imposed deadlines. But I almost want to get a job at Apple only to see what it's like on the inside.

It may also have to do something with scope. In 2000-~2010 Apple was basically and iPod + UNIX desktop company. The iPods did not spectacularly until the iPod Touch/iPhone, OS X had a relatively narrow scope: a UNIX system supporting a small hardware range, with a nice modern display server, and good object-oriented frameworks.

In the last years their scope has expanded immensely, both hardware-wise (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, now HomePod) and software-wise: AirPlay, CarPlay, Homekit, HealthKit, AR, Apple Music, Force Touch, machine learning, Siri, Handoff, Airdrop, Emoji with face recognition, etc. A lot of these technologies work somewhat, but are glitchy.

Of course, there are many times larger than the Apple of 2007, but managing an extremely broad palette of technologies is difficult. Especially when you want them all to produce something in-sync in the autumn. In some sense, Apple may have spread themselves to thinly.

I think think that we would be better served by an Apple that was more focused on core technologies and would let the third-party ecosystem focus on applications. Or perhaps completely separate divisions that would focus on macOS, iOS, and hardware. Or shipping features when they are done (rolling-release style) rather than one big drop every year.

At any rate, their current direction is hurting core, traditional use cases for Apple products. E.g. Preview.app/PDFKit has been really terrible the last two releases, to the point where I can barely use it for previewing my lecture slides, etc. Basic technologies like PDF rendering used to be stuff that they had nailed down extremely well.

I agree 100%. But that "only" explains why we are seeing so many bugs, not why Apple would possibly settle for average engineers (which is scary if true).

> let the third-party ecosystem focus on applications

I'm worried that this is exactly what Apple tried to do with tvOS, and since it hasn't worked out (Amazon is still MIA), they're now going to spread themselves even thinner by producing content and related apps themselves.

> Basic technologies like PDF rendering used to be stuff that they had nailed down extremely well.

I have yet to find a pdf viewer which does anti-aliasing right except acrobat reader. If you have two colored objects with a common edge on a white background, that edge will be lighter in color.

Why are they the worst? Without directly refuting your comment, it's hard to believe that Apple hired the worst programmers at your company, without knowing why you think they are worst.

This explains a lot and makes sense with what we are seeing on the outside.

WHY that happens is much less clear to me.

What is happening at Apple?

Bozo explosion.

Things have been getting worse for quite a while. It appears to have finally hit a tipping point.

they have to invent new things every year or a complex negative feedback starts because people, analyst and ultimately stock holder won't accept that an iphone iteration is just a little faster and has more battery

I agree that it is stupid that they have to deliver new things every year or they get negative feedback, but that doesn't mean they should deliver features that make their products worse or that QA should quit doing their job. Apple is a company with many many billions of dollars in the bank. There is no excuse for this. If their QA sucks, fire them all and hire 10,000+ new QA staff. They easily have the money to do that. If they pay all the new QA staff $100,000 each, then that's only $1 bn for the new staff and they'd probably pay a fair bit less to let the existing staff go. Apple has more than $250 bn in cash reserves right now. They can easily afford to do that. In fact, I think that probably should hire a few thousand new QA staff, firing the existing staff should be up to their discretion, but not hiring significantly more when it's clear that they have a QA problem, for a company with so much money, is not acceptable.

they have cash reserves but still they issued corporate debt in the US indicating that they're financially savvy AND they don't have free access to their overseas cash hoard. So hiring within US and spending 1bn will cost them a lot more. And if they leverage debt using their overseas cash...well that'd be another pandora's box as they're so big they'll probably move the prices of the entire industry along with every US corporation with funds outside the states...

Hiring more QA staff doesn’t mean more bugs will be fixed if the bottleneck is engineering output and deadline-driven features. The latter might be better fixed with a re-org.

That’s one explanation but if one company has the resources to innovate and keep up quality control it’s Apple. Especially since they have such a limited number of device models to support. I just hope this is a bad year and not an inflection point.

Such a limited number of device models to support?

iPhone 5S to X (plus iPads, Apple Watches, and the iPod Touch) is a lot. All with different aspect ratios.

That's not a lot. And they have $200B+ in cash.

As usual with large vendors nowadays, we are the QA department. From an in-house perspective, QA is a cost center. As far as upper management is concerned, it literally doesn't earn its keep... especially when consumers have shown they're willing to overlook and forgive one gigantic blunder after another.

Damn it... I literally just wiped my iPhone completely because of this problem and am now restoring it from scratch. I wish I had read hacker news first!

Did it twice! Lost data too. Apples software quality has taken a very noticeable dive the last year or two. Being an iOS developer used to be very comfortable. It’s now become a real pain in many ways. Xcode being the worst.

Xcode 9 is definitely an area where I feel like it’s going in the right direction.

Xcode 9 promised a lot, but for me it has been a big disappointment. SourceKitService still ends up in an endless loop allocating memory and needs to be kill -9'd every 10 minutes. Switching git branches with a storyboard open often trips up Xcode and just now crashed my Mac completely. Apple software quality is not what it used to be.

How has it become a pain? Been doing. Stove iOS for a while and now I'm learning React Native, it's fun.

Same. I’ve done 10 or so apps in objc/swift and now 4 in RN and even though I know native like the back of my hand I much prefer RN.

Jsx and the rendering model of react is 10x better than constraints in code or storyboards.

Getting android nearly for free is just a cherry on top.

Wow you picked up RN early!

Right, and the faster development cycle with hot or manual reloading makes it really easy to be productive.

I just need to figure out a few integration issues like navigation within our native app and localization using our current native scripts, but all the newness and uncertainty is really exciting.

Sorry I just realized my previous message autocorrected to nonsense.

I'm surprised this hasn't spread more in the traditional news. It's affecting almost everybody that has an iphone which is half the population. I had to tell many of my friends that were cursing over crashing phones. Is it that they don't want to be seen as fist line support for apple?

Me too. Multiple iCloud backup restores, a couple Apple Watch erase and re-pair cycles, many hours wasted.

Me too. What an absurd bug.

A similar bug (not as serious) is happening on macOS: https://robservatory.com/month-13-is-out-of-bounds/

Fuuuck. So sorry time. A few years ago I had an iPhone. I liked the iPhone. One day in the middle of the night the iPhone started flashing its screen at me. I woke up and tried restarting it. It didn’t work. The iPhone was in a loop of some kind and restarting it sent it back into the same state. Being as it was my only alarm clock, I tried to do what I could to fix the iPhone. Restoring it to factory settings via iTunes helped, by restoring from backup brought the issue back until it suddenly stopped a few hours later. This happened with some regularity every few months. Then my ex’s iPhone started doing that too. Then her iPad. Than our upgraded phones. Apple support had never seen it. And nobody else had either. Eventually I filed a bug with Apple and also reported it on StackOverflow. The issue was that one of my calendars was an Exchange calendar and it has some weirdness about representing events that repeat forever. iOS did not handle that situation well and it sent the kernel into some sort of panic state. After I actually talked to a support developer at Apple, they released an update that ended about a year of misery for me.

Oh and some of you may remember the time that non-recurring alarms just stopped working one day on all iOS devices.

I still have an iPhone for reasons. But damn, I’d like to have one version of iOS that doesn’t have quite so many bugs.

Jeebus.

I love Apple but Tim has got to tighten that ship.

Can the Vasa be "tightened"?

They could try shutting the cannon doors...

New iOS11 bug: Firing cannons introduces stability issues.

You are holding them wrong.

Craig Federighi for CEO!

The man who presided over the unfolding High Sierra disaster?

Not to get all "when I was your age we walked uphill both ways and we liked it," but I really do think the frenetic pace of software updates across the whole industry these days is insane. In web software I see companies releasing multiple times per day at the extreme, once a day being more typical, but still nuts. Things like iOS upgrades are obviously less frequent than that but still seem so hurried. Why all the rush? It's like the whole industry is on a massive coke bender. Seriously, let people use your software. The constant updating just creates a shifting sand under people's feet. I don't need every product I use to change every week or month, and in fact I find it quite irritating. Just let me use the product!

Sadly, the momentum has already built up and people are addicted to the rapid changes. I don't see this practice stopping any time soon.

A lot of people so ios 11 is no more buggy than previous versions, but i honestly disagree. iOS 11 has just been a mess. They say, wait till the .2 or .3 release and it'll get better. Sooo... that's 3 to 6 months of using a bug riddle OS just for it to get good. We're just supposed to put up with that?

I guess we are supposed to.

Calculator bug is reproduced on iOS 11.2

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15838308

Every week I have another reason to be thankful that I didn't upgrade to iOS 11. But those bastards keep downloading the update to my phone and then telling my that I'm running low on free space. Cannot stand the way Apple treats users.

the problem is even with how crappy iOS11 is Android phones suck more. I wish there was an better alternative.

Apple still won't let us change the default browser from Safari to Chrome/Firefox for links clicked in Mail or iMessage. Its very annoying.

I think I'll just hold my breath until the next Apple embarrassment.

I was just fixing this problem for my dad about an hour ago. He called me asking what was wrong. A resetting of settings was able to fix it as well without messing with any data or apps.

Interestingly, I copied and pasted the blurb in the newly released Amazon Comprehend and it detected a negative sentiment with 0.94 confidence (0.0 positive, 0.06 neutral)

Seriously? I'm really really pleased that I waited before updating to iOS 11. Apple, what are you doing?

Welp, time to sell! What a house of cards.

How about short? ;-)

They finally fixed the damn calculator.

I don't get all this anger towards "Apple". Ultimately, this and other recent bugs are human errors and we all make mistakes in our work - most likely due to a lack of time to do their job properly. I think that is the real issue.

Because when you pay 700 euros for a phone there is a certain level of quality expectations.

I agree. When you pay the premium for a high end X, whatever X happens to be, you expect it to be right. Probably the main reason I get so stroppy with these kinds of issues is that I'm time poor and the time I do have I don't want to spend faffing around dealing with them.

Perhaps I have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement (genuinely: there is no irony or sarcasm intended here), but one reason I pay for a premium object, device or experience is to avoid hassle and friction, so it's pretty frustrating when that's exactly what I get.

but one reason I pay for a premium object, device or experience is to avoid hassle and friction, so it's pretty frustrating when that's exactly what I get.

It’s the whole fucking reason I started paying extra for Apple products to begin with. If I were willing to put up with this kind of sloppiness, I have a variety of options for less money.

Apple built their (iPhone) reputation on "premium" quality and "just works" software. They embraced this. People paid for this. It is expected when one pays so much money for a device that is promised to be a premium device.

Recently, the quality has gone done. The software has more bugs. Apple apologists say wait until .2 or .3 and it'll improve. This takes 4-8 months. So, people are supposed to "enjoy" a crappy experience on their new iDevice for 8 months and then it gets better? I simply don't understand how anyone could argue this.

If it were a one-off issue, this would be excusable. However, this is not the first, nor yet the tenth, major issue to occur on Apple devices in recent months, something that is inexcusable for a company who's reputation is founded on high-quality UX and reliability.

Happened with me yesterday and deleted all of my Chrome tabs:(

Apple has officially jumped the shark.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15830149

Oh Apple :(

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