Apple iOS4 upgrade adds multitasking, folders... and pain As usual, the latest Apple operating system upgrade is stranding quite a few unhappy users with broken machines. This time it's iOS4, which was released for some older iPhone models on Monday. Apple's products often appeal to non-technical users and some are getting bitten when they try to upgrade. Whereas any half-competent …
"Whereas any half-competent techie would know to have at least a couple of backups before an operating system upgrade – and possibly a fallback plan, too – this hasn't occurred to some iPhone owners."
And any half-competent development manager would know to make sure an operating system upgrade worked before releasing it into the wild.
Do I backup my phone before upgrading it? Do I fuck. Got better things to do with my life. I just read El Reg and wait until the dust settles before going anywhere near an upgrade.
"And any half-competent development manager"
Ever been involved in software development? They do release apps (and by the way, it's the product manager's say-so, not the development manager) with known bugs, that's the nature of the beast, they just try and minimise the big ones and mak the small ones have work-arounds.
'Ever been involved in software development? They do release apps (and by the way, it's the product manager's say-so, not the development manager) with known bugs, that's the nature of the beast, they just try and minimise the big ones and mak the small ones have work-arounds.'
You're right up to a point... Yes it is the Product Managers say so whether a product gets released, and yes software does get released with known issues, but never ever critical bugs that can lose or corrupt customer data, or brick a device.
I'm a software test manager (no I don't work for Apple) and the reason why you never ever release something with known critical bugs is that if you know about these sorts of issues and you still release the software, it doesn't matter how tight the limitation of liability clauses your license agreement, you can and probably will be held liable for your customers loses.
As for Apple... given the very small size of their test matrix, this is very sloppy testing and I expect there is some smelly stuff hitting the fan about this one.
Things like this shouldnt apply to the iPhone/iPod as its a closed system.
Apple know the exact hardware, the exact settings that might exist and every application running on it is discrete.
Apple have exactly 4 devices to test, 2 iPods, 2 iPhones, thats it, theres plethora of user installed hardware, drivers or other things that interfere with the "OS" itself, just user data.
shouldn't, but it does ... look at all the bricked FreeSat boxes last Autumn. Makes you wonder how the hell this could get past testing, but maybe automated testing with a debug/JTAG isn't quite the same level of use as actually using the thing. Or, God help us, they tested in detail on an emulator and figured that'd be "as good as" the real hardware.
It's worth reading some of the iPhony support threads for light relief:
"....I think i'm just going to resign myself to the fact that Apple are toss, and i've lost everything i had collected for 3 years..."
"...can anyone help as I have a useless peice of equipment! "
"...im moving in a few weeks so could really do without this right now.
Seems to me like a new phone is in order from apple! "
"...They don't show these issues when they're bashing PC's in their commercials. ..."
sorry; shouldn't laugh at the suffering of fellow humanoids, but
bwahahahahhhhhaaaaaa
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2469544&start=45&tstart=15
"There are also some official issues with the new OS affecting users, such as the inability to handle wireless LANs whose top-level domain is ".local""
Sounds like a big oops to me. A quick check of my Apple notebook reveals that in "System Preferences" under "Sharing" it shows, under the box for "Computer Name", a line of text that reads; "Other computers on your local subnet can access your computer at [computer name].local"
I can only imagine the newb figuring that Apple had sweetly provided him with the perfect domain name for his lan and used it. Perhaps he didn't read the fine print at the bottom when one selects a service, such as FTP or Web, it reads "Other people can access your FTP server at FTP://[name].lan/..." Oh, any big corporations using .local? We'll soon find out.
As per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296250 and SBS2003/2008 setup, you are prompted to provide a domain name. In the example they say to use "xxx.local". I deployed well on 200 of these in my last role. Lots of small biz going to be pissed when their shiniPhone's stop working on the office LAN...
Before implementing any Microsoft "best practice" one should first engage one's brain.
This whole .local problem is a great example... it was recommended with Windows 2000 AD because M$ assumed that some admins (god knows who hires these people) would have such a hard time getting their little heads around split-DNS they figured it was best not to try, so they recommended using the .local domain.
By .NET Server (as 2003 was called then) the advice had changed to use .com for your external domain and buy the .net for your AD; allegedly this is what Microsoft does internally (@MSFT.NET for their AD/Kerb and @microsoft.com externally for email etc.). Obviously this approach has a big advantage, in that you can name your AD something that has nothing to do with your company (so takeovers, rebrands etc. aren't such a big deal) whilst still retaining the advantage of split-DNS.
Fortunately Microsoft now recommends that both names match, which is what sensible admins have been doing for years. Unfortunately nobody seems to have told the SBS/EBS teams this.
Hehe... funny how an iOS4 article has got a comment thread on it like this.
For the record my 3GS is fine after the update, although I did back it up first... once bitten and all.
Is the author an Apple-hating troll? I think we should be told....
FYI - plugged in my 3GS, "iOS4 available. Do you want to update?" Yes. Fifteen minutes later (after only one click) I'm back up with a fully functioning iPhone. But you really don't want to hear stories like that, do you?
quote "Is the author an Apple-hating troll? I think we should be told....
FYI - plugged in my 3GS, "iOS4 available. Do you want to update?" Yes. Fifteen minutes later (after only one click) I'm back up with a fully functioning iPhone. But you really don't want to hear stories like that, do you?:"
Seriously go to the apple forums looks like you were a lucky one, why is it every time apple update anything they mess it up?
The author isn't an Apple hating troll. Useless bits of information like "it works fine for me" doesn't help all those where it didn't work did it?
As well as an Apple, I have also had Windows machine and I've never had a problem with those. Does that mean it applies to all Windows machines? My Macbook Pro froze within 10 minutes of getting out of the box... and?
Everybody has an error rate. We should take note when the error rates are higher than normal. The issue also is that (and I speak as an Apple user) that through their advertising, they have built this smug perception of everything is rosey... so when things do go wrong, you can hardly blame those that report it.
It was fine for you this time? How sweet and totally unhelpful. I'm sure you'll be squealing like you're in Deliverance next time when the upgrade doesn't work for you.
"This time it's iOS4, which was released for some older iPhone models on Monday"
I was under the impression that the 3GS was not so old, like just about 12 months:
"Apple promised some time back that they would open their doors early for the release of the iPhone 3G S on Friday June 19 2009" ...from product-review.net site.
Though I guess any Apple product that not the latest bleeding edge version is old regardless of age.
I got a Nokia 3270 in a drawer upstairs. THAT is old.
Took close to a damn hour to upgrade my 3G. I've got some 5GB of stuff on an 8GB model, can't understand why it took so long. And afterwards, all my ringtone assignments are gone (just like after every other OS upgrade). Makes me wonder just what *does* get backed up, and what doesn't.
Other than that, upgrade went flawlessly.
This post has been deleted by its author
With any OS update push, there will be problems. They are however occurring to a vanishingly small proportion of the user base. This is usual and expected and in no way is it unique to Apple.
Also not in any way unique to people who jailbroke their phones or fucked with the carrier profiles to hack tethering, but it is obviously hitting them the most. Those folks get no sympathy because they should have known better than to apply an OS upgrade to a device that has been - at any point in it's life - placed in a non standard configuration without first backing it up properly. If they didn't know better, hey, here is the first hard learned lesson, welcome, we've all been there.
Same old same old, but because it's Apple, and because somehow Apple have overtaken MS in the "things that ignorant wankers like to shout hate into the internets about" race, we find ourselves here.
The only surprising thing about this story is that it wasn't written by Bill Ray.
"With any OS update push, there will be problems. They are however occurring to a vanishingly small proportion of the user base."
And you know the proportion is "vanishingly small" how? Let's see your data, Sparky.
"This is usual and expected and in no way is it unique to Apple."
But . . . "Apple, it just works." The schadenfreude non-Apple users is the result of the smug fanboi gits who tout how seamless the Apple experience is, when, as you rightly point out, it's not, and that's just the nature of complex technology.
...are most affected. I wonder if this is due to users panicking - I nearly did, but fortunately decided watch the rest of the footie. When I got back all was well.
3G updates appear to be done in the form of a bavkup > factory reset > restore settings from backup - and there is a *heart-stopping* (without footie to distract) pause between the factory reset and the apps/ music etc restoring.
Come off it Reg, Technology not working 100% as advertised for 100% of users?
Even a wooden stick doesn't give 100% uniform experiences for everyone!
How incompetent do you have to be not to notice the 'Backing Up ipod' progress bar on your iOS4 update app?
Every time I plug my iPod Touch into my Mac, itunes does a backup. Therefore it's a piece of piss to restore. I just hit the 'Restore' button!
It explicitly states 'it make take an hour or more to back up your device' - if people are too imputation to wait for the automatic and mandatory backup to complete, that's their problem for being too thick.
It does make me laugh how Le Reg keeps trying it's absolute hardest to find every little fault in an Apple product to justify it's venomous editorial and attract the anti-apple squad to the comments thread with more ill-informed, badly judged comments!
"Whereas any half-competent techie would know to have at least a couple of backups before an operating system upgrade – and possibly a fallback plan, too – this hasn't occurred to some iPhone owners."
That's fine, unless you have to delete the backup you just made for the mandatory update backup to work, and then have the mandatory update backup backup to the wrong folder (~/Library/iTunes/Mobile Backup instead of ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup), meaning that iTunes is unable to find the correct backup to restore from after the upgrade.
took a long while (but I was sensible enough not to sit there watching it), I did another sync immediately afterwards (which also took a long while as it seemed to reoptimise all my photos).
Calendar did appear blank but going into settings and out again/switching between show/hide seemed to do it (and the data must have been there on the phone as it was instant).
All very smooth. Changes don't seem that significant on the 3GS. Folders have tidied things up a bit. iPod is subtly different though can't actually see any new functionality. A bit 'meh' overall
..bit of a squeaky bum cheeks moment when it looked liked it was doing another backup before firmware finished updating but no data loss when finished. Only problem I had was after spending 5 minutes arranging apps into folders the next sync put them all back on homepage again, however should have used a bit of common sense and restarted iTunes and/or disconnected and reconnected phone first - iTunes was doing just what it should have done and imposed most recent 'correct' layout.
Haven't found any use for multitasking yet but nice to have all apps accessible from home page - and the universal spallchick works a treat!
My "high speed" DSL is only 1 Mbps, so it took a couple of hours to download the latest iTunes and then the iOS4, but the update for my 3GS went pretty smooth.
After the update, my user-generated Internet Shortcut ("Home Page") icons would not respond. I began to think that it might be an OS bug, but that seemed to be a bit much... Anyway, a simple Off/On power cycle fixed it.
I love folders. More apps.
"Before implementing any Microsoft "best practice" one should first engage one's brain."
I think that should be:
"Before implementing any Apple Update one should first engage one's brain"
OSX iPhone updates? Wait a week or so before taking the plunge or at least wait until Apples first 'update of the update' to fix all the problems they introduce.
Erm, why does attaching a phone to a computer must necessarily taint that very computer ? What kind of brain have those Apple engineers ? What do I do after I screwed the only two computers in my home by linking them to the damn phone, should I go out in the street and ask for help ?
It becomes obvious there are way too many imbeciles working in software engineering these days.
I have abandoned the iOS4 update to my 3G, after 30 mins the progress bar got to about 2%. Even though i did a manual back up through iTunes, it completed in about 25mins!!! Why is it taking soooooooooooooo long during the update??? More iPhone Fail here
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2469356&start=0&tstart=0
I did do the backups, none of them will restore. I've had to factory reset but if I then try and restore any backup it just locks the phone up. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh. I'm going to try this http://www.reincubate.com/labs/iphone-backup-extractor-how-extract-files-iphone-backup-windows/#/res/i/labs/iphonebe/3_wizard.png tomorrow and see if that works
It always amazes me the sheer eagerness that I observe in my fellow iPhone owners. The millisecond Apple release an upgrade it's downloaded and installed. As for a safety net, I thought that once Apple shipped an OS update they stopped signing the old one, so no going back to OS3. I'm gonna leave it a week to see what 'undocumented features' appear before I even think about running the update.
As always, The Register jumps on a few problems and acts like the sky is falling.
1. Every time you post one of these "Apple product is failing" stories, I ask the same thing - and you have never followed through: HOW MANY FAILED? There are tens of millions of iPhones out thetre. A few dozen or even hundred or thousand would be an insignificant number - especially since youc an reset and then proceed.
2. In this case, I'll also ask:" "how many of these updates failed because the owner had jailbroken the phone?" I'm willing to bet that many of them were jailbroken - which is the reason Apple doesn't support it - it can break things, particularly when you upgrade.
I know it's too much to ask, but PLEASE - how about some responsible journalism?
Smugness is inappropriate. Backup and restore is part of the automated process, and that's where my upgrade went wrong. And it wasn't impatience--I'm perfectly used to leaving stuff overnight to finish: in this case, it kept on crapping out with an error -34, about which all I can find is someone else saying that nothing can be found about error -34--maybe it's a sub-clause of Catch 22.
When you get out from under religious wars and the playground, the point of Apple stuff is that you give up some things in exchange for a smooth user experience. In this case, for me and apparently quite a lot of people, it's back to the days of Windows 9x.
A day isn't long to wait before doing the upgrade, but there are so many people wanting to bash Apple that I thought there'd be a big fuss if anything was going wrong. Hataz, FAIL.
I find the folders very useful (even if they do only allow 12 items in them)
I've now got everything on 1 page, which is handy.
The iBook reader is the best thing about this. Got a couple of books yesterday and can now read them on the subway on the way into work, without carrying a weighty tome around with me.
My battery used to last two days - I'm hoping the fact that it only lasted a day yesterday is to do with all the downloading and app using I was doing yesterday and not any issue with the new OS.
I'll get the new phone next month, after the furor has died down.
(If you'd asked me 14 months ago, I'd have told you I'd never have used this icon, but actually trying the product, rather than ridiculing it from a distance changed my mind)
Surely the one and only point of a strict app vetting is to make sure that the whole ecosystem evolves seemlessly. And what do we have here? A level of backward compat that would ashame even a Microsoft software engineer. At the very least the Beast from Redmond has an excuse: they cannot be held responsible for the strange behavior of 3rd-party apps. But in the present case there is NO 3-rd party app whatsoever. Everything is vetted by Apple, Apple gets the image rights for every single app that is available on the store. The developpers HAVE to surrender their image rights to Apple in order to get on the platform, it's part of the TC. Also, Apple holds the developpers by the nuts, with the power to remove an app from the store without justification. That is the whole point: Apple basically owns every single app available through the store, and it is a prominent part of Apple's marketting strategy (some might say "it's their only argument'). It just works, and you get a lot of apps that we vetted so they are guaranteed to work.
So WHAT? OS upgrades just break app compatibility, something that even Microsoft stopped doing a decade ago -even though they never got to control the ecosystem for fear of antitrust suits-?
Apple: it just works*
Apple: more evil than Microsoft even dared to think they might be in their glorious days.
* like Windows used to 10 years ago.
Heh heh... Of course here in England the fishing season has just started...
Lovely to see all those post by the generic 'Anonymous Coward'. Yes I use a pseudonym but at least that makes my posts recognisable.
The vast majority of iPhone owners have, as mentioned earlier, had no problem with the update. FYI no-one I know (and I'm currently working in IT for a VERY large international publishing company) has had a problem either. Not very scientific, but gives a flavour of the general consensus, IMHO.
No not smug at all actually, in fact I'm as wary of updates/upgrades as the next person, whether for Apple or Microsoft. But articles like this should be confined to the kiddie-scripting forums where there are plenty of ignorant, opinionated and pathetic attitudes to go round.
Come on El Reg, you're supposed to be 'reporting'. If it's an op-ed piece then at least put 'Opinion' at the start of the article.
(Report: give a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated.)
"Whereas any half-competent techie would know to have at least a couple of backups before an operating system upgrade – and possibly a fallback plan, too – this hasn't occurred to some iPhone owners."
Whereas any half competent reviewer would know that iTunes performs an auto backup before doing the install..
Of course there are problems with releasing major updates - there always are no matter whether they are from Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google etc etc..
For the record the upgrade worked perfectly for me - no problems at all
Can we get past the boring old hat apple knocking - its boring.
I've noticed the anti-Apple fanbois are out in considerable numbers.
I updated to iOS4 myself yesterday. The update went smoothly, although 35 minutes for an update is a bit slow in my opinion. Having said that, I'm not very patient. I haven't noticed any problems with the OS myself. WiFi works just fine, 3G is the same,everything runs smoothly and responsive.
I am under the impression that the battery drains a bit faster, even when no apps are running in the background.
...was getting iTunes to actually do the update. It seems that you need iTunes 9.2 for the update to work; earlier versions will offer to update your iPhone to iOS4 but not do so. The issue is that in some cases iTunes 9.1.3 won't update to 9.2; if this happens, the cure is to go to the iTunes page on Apple's site, manually download and upgrade (it's very smooth) and then do the iPhone update.
For a 3GS, the most useful feature is that Mail now supports threading and if you have multiple accounts you can view a common inbox rather than have to navigate between them. Also, the camera seems to shoot much faster now.
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