iOS update woes prompt gnashing of teeth for Apple fans Apple released the much-anticipated iOS 5 update for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches on Wednesday, an update that was almost immediately met with error messages by throngs of users trying to download it from the company's servers. The errors, according to accounts on Apple support pages and this Cult of Mac report, carried …
as an upvoter of both posts.
I think the OP downvoters may be knee-jerking fanboi's who, unfamiliar with important desserts of this millennia, mistook the post for some kind of hate against their particular love object(s). Perhaps a serving of crumble will cool their fevered brows?
thats crazy talk. that or they are terrible at planning.
i mean you don't do major works before a major release, why ever would you?
and Microsoft have a lot of experience dealing with update services. After all their schedule coined the phrase patch Tuesday. Heck I've seen companies plan releases around patch Tuesday for the sake of the tech staff their customers have, and I've seen another company freeze out all changes because bad weather was expected in the next 48 hours, planning isn't hard.
Overall a weak excuse, if its true then i imagine MS put more planning in a quiet patch Tuesday than Apple put into a major iOS release, let alone comparing MS releasing a service pack :p
Last night, after I finished reading all the itards tweeting about how wonderful Apple is for updating their software and how it took them ever so long to download, Windows told me that it was installing 8 updates, which it must have downloaded silently whilst I browsed the web. I brushed my teeth whilst it finished and didn't feel the need to tweet about it.
Another twitter topic of the itards was their new "imessenger" (they were downloading an app released a few years ago, thinking it was the new imessage service). They were all thrilled with it, and many were gloating that BBM went down on the same day apple released imessenger (BBM went down 2 days before and Apple didn't release imessenger, but these are iphone users, not intelligent folk). I didn't look for tweets from BBM users gloating up until this week that they have a messenger service whereas iphone users did not, but surely those tweets must be there?! It's weird how iphone users think their phone is the best whilst it lacks basic features and then gloat when it catches up. It's like they're total morons or something.
Surely you mean "in a run-down ill-managed motel/hostel in a very unpleasant part of town"?
Any hotel even remotely deserving of the name has a reception desk more than happy to give you a wake-up call at any time...
Never mind that pretty much all TVs in hotel/motel-rooms have some form of alarm built in.
and just unplugged my ipad now, 11pm. It only failed once, I just left it until after nine, tried again and it worked - better restore than the last few updates too, all the ebooks, mp3's and mags (ok, ecomics), I drag n dropped from various were put back as were my photo's, fairly impressed.
I'm surprised Apple weren't more prepared for the obvious onslaught that was going to happen, esp. with all the verifications the updates seemed to do. Going to play with it now...
couldn't they just have used Bittorrent? I mean I know it's not Apple's "thing" to have users communicating through non-Apple channels- or to even to hand the reins to anyone else- but surely it'd make a lot more sense to seed it for a few thousand people and host a tracker than trying to feed this frenzy?
After being told by iTunes that it was going to take 3+ hours to download on my 20Mb connection I immediately cancelled it and Googled for a torrent of the golden master instead. Didn't take long to find. 2000+ seeds, 6 minutes, a CTRL + Restore button push later and I was good to go.
Still took about 7 restore attempts to finally get Apple to verify the image, though.
Seriously, I am a relatively satisfied Apple customer.
But, unless you really fancy beta testing, you really have to be deep into the kool-aid to trust them enough to install an OS update right as it comes out.
I waited, and am still waiting, till Lion stabilizes. I suppose I'll pass on the iOS 5x goodies for a while. Let it mature.
I just don't trust any software provider enough to do otherwise. Apple is really no different.
Well - all things considered, 3 hours and much swearing later - restore completed successfully.
What really worries me is that the first restore bombed out without an error (and didn't allow any apps to launch) 2nd restore failed, but I could run up apps and check email (but music wouldn't sync) 3rd restore failed, but couldn't launch apps - but did have music! 4th restore succeeded, music is all there - and some apps don't work (but those same apps did work after the 2nd restore)
At least when other OS's decide to crap out, they do it in style, and tell you what you did to piss them off!
^Steve is looking down at us and laughing with glee ;)
A) the updates are Ginormous, 750MB for iOS alone.
B) it's not staggered by timezone, system updates for example are usually scheduled to run at a fixed local time.
C) Users have been waiting for this for a long time and lots of them hit the button as soon as it went live.
Updated an iPad, took two goes, iPhone will have to wait till morning as the missis is threatening to yank the mains so she can sleep.
The ones who have their Android directly from Google will have it on day one as well. It is just that the Android platform offers choice (Apple fans don't know the meaning of the word except when choosing fart apps), and as such, many vendors of hardware have to port the changes to their devices...
Alternatively, Google could release ICS to manufacturers a month ahead and set a launch day. You as user would never know...
I'm interested to know how Apple fans don't have a choice? They most certainly do, at the platform and the application level.
They *chose* iphone over other phones; but just because Apple has only 2 models is that deemed a restriction? So be it - look at all the other manufacturers then, FFS. Nobody put a gun to their heads to choose Apple. The phone itself is just a platform at the end of the day.
You also don't *have* to update to the latest IOS either - nobody is forcing you. You want to "choose" to stay on the old version? Knock yourself out.
You want to view/read/listen to your own media on an IOS device? You can. You want to by content elsewhere and upload to the IOS device? Guess what - you can. I don't see a restriction of "choice" there either.
There's also a player for practically every media type in the universe, barring flash - and if you *really* want flash (and it appears not many are that bothered, going by iphones sales figures)? Move to f*ing android then - see holding-gun-to-head statement above. So there's no lock-in there either.
Seriously - this whole Apple lock-in crap is getting really old. You should maybe focus on the issue of content DRM, which is common to both platforms, if that's what you mean by "choice".
I suppose the only valid choice is to follow your choice, neh?
News to you - it's a big ol techy world out there. You can choose from Android, Rim, M$, Nokia. And, yes, Apple. In full fledged computers you have Windows, Linux, BSDs. And Apple.
I don't mind Android at all and think competition is great. And, for the record, the Apple Samsung tablet suits are a bad joke from Apple.
Is everything Apple does absolutely to my liking? By no means.
My Apple lock-in is by design fairly limited - I've bought a few games iOS apps for the kids and 1 pricier boating gps app for my kayak. Still, only down for about $80 max - the price of 2 PC games. I don't buy from iTunes, specifically due to AAC lock-in - I prefer to rip MP3s, no platform restrictions, no DRM. Most of my laptops's programs are open source dev stuff.
HW lock-in isn't a big deal on laptops from my perspective - only really interesting thing is RAM and HDD and those are easily swapped.
When there is something _I_, and not necessarily the right honorable Petur the Great, perceive as more appropriate to _my_ needs and whimsies, then I will choose again and won't necessarily be Apple. I've changed platforms before.
Izzat alright by you, my dear Petur? Do I have your permission to make my choices? Or will you insist on calling me an iTard and cite fart apps, because that shows your rapier wit and big IT street cred?
Actually, if you're including iOS devices then I suspect that's not the case.
However, if we just look at phone handsets (which I think you meant) two-thirds of the mobile phone industry for the last quarter went to Apple - that's not just smartphones, but all mobile phone handsets. Marketshare isn’t everything.
I was/am on call, so I very specifically didn't update my iphone, as it could go wrong. Anything that could take my phone out of service for more than 15 mins could have cost me some hassle with the boss if I'd been called (and potentially missing out on a chunk of lucrative callout pay!)
So I've put it off until a time I'm not relying on my phone for anything.
Such is the pain of the early day adopter.
Given the track record of dodgy upgrades from Apple (and pretty much everyone else!), you wouldn't catch me jumping in on the first day (or two) with a device which I couldn't afford to be without when it bricks.
Hell, I've only just moved onto Windows 7, still have my XP virtualised in virtualbox though, no vista :-)
... the download size seemed rather excessive: 870MB. It failed—but I wasn't surprised as it was jailbroken once and hasn't been quite the same since.
After reading some posts, I noticed everyone was reporting the download size as being around 750MB, so I suspected a corrupted download and deleted the downloaded update file from inside iTunes' updates cache. Re-ran the update and it worked fine first time.
Took a long time, but remember that a lot of the syncing now is being done over WiFi: if you have only an 802.11g (or worse!) WiFi setup, "slow" will be an understatement! I have an 802.11n setup here, so it took a while—the process really does wipe the machine clean and trigger a full re-sync from iTunes, so if you have a lot of apps and content, they'll take a while to transfer.
The iPad also worked first time. The only weirdness was a bizarre glitch in the iTunes Store, which seemed to think it was in France. (I did originally buy my iPad in France, but I live in Italy now, and have done for well over 18 months. Nothing in my MobileMe account mentions France any more.) This fixed itself—I got a message requesting I switch to the Italian iTunes store and that did the trick.
Again, if you have a 64GB iDevice and it's usually stuffed full of music and videos, it WILL take forever to transfer all that data again over a wireless connection. You asked for untethered syncing, so you don't get to complain when Apple gives it to you. Your WiFi setup is your problem, not theirs.
Reports of ridiculously slow connections cannot always be laid at the foot of Apple. It's often the case that there is simply not enough bandwidth through a bottleneck between your PC and their datacenters. The Internet's current consumer grade infrastructure is nowhere near as resilient as its hype suggests.
Use an old iPhone 3G that one of your family doesn't want any more, jailbreak it and then never worry about updates ever again as Apple certainly don't care about your phone! Live the simple life as it's hard enough out there in techno-land as it is, why make it harder than it has to be?
I had the same issue 3 times last night. Failure was after backup of device.
After looking in the updater logs I saw internal server error so quickly worked out it was a Apple server meltdown - interesting thing though - 750MB file download - absolutely fine - a KB or so of data to send to Apple - bugger off.
This morning everything went through fine...
Oohhh shiny new OS :-)
I made several unsuccessful attempts to update last night, each time getting a message telling me "The iPhone cannot be restored because of an internal error". The phone was fine after each attempt. I left it overnight and then tried again this morning; went through without a hitch.
You just need to wait until America has gone to sleep.
@Hud Dunlap "Epic Fail"?? I think you should check your crappy ISP. I was downloading at 1.2M/bits at all times over Virgin cable. Your problem has nothing to do with Apple.
I see Apple are now following the standard Microsoft practice of using utterly unhelpful error messages. An "internal" error eh? Or an "unknown" error? With a cryptic number that'll mean nothing without the source code? Well that'll sure make troubleshooting the problem easy! Is a file locked? Has it run out of disk space? Did a checksum fail to validate? Did the download server reset the connection unexpectedly? Did the version on the device not match what it expected? Who knows... evidently not even the installer, given how the error is "unknown".
All that stuff is of absolutely no use, worth or interest to the average punter. If you happen to be the sort of power user who understands all that stuff, that's super but you're a looooooong way down the priority list of Customers Apple Cares About.
And I kicked the download off at about 6pm. Download was slow but that's because I live in the sticks. Complete upgrade and restoration took about three hours in total. The only thing that went wrong was that I lost all my application groups and had to reorganise my application icons, but not really an issue.
Not had much chance to play with the new OS but it seems a little zippier on the iPhone 4.
Does Apple still use the tagline "think different"? I guess not, because thinking differently is the last thing they want to encourage these days. I, however, do think differently; which is why I would have waited a week before attempting the upgrade, thereby avoiding the queues and first-day glitches yet to be ironed out. But it's also why I don't have an iphone.
I upgraded my iPhone 4 (actually, being a beta tester, I had to restore it rather than upgrade it). Took around an hour all told.. Yes, the download was a little slow but I was able to leave the Mac downloading the update while I went and had something to eat, so I wasn't bothered about that. The process took a while, but it did just work. I went back to my phone to find it had started the setup wizard. I did, initially, have some issues signing into my WiFi network, but the Speedtouch modem/router I have occasionally has a little period where it refuses to let any device join the network, regardless of whether the password is right or not. Usually, it cures itself, but if it doesn't, a quick reboot does. This time, it cured itself.
Regarding the user who says that the installer should give more detailed errors. Well, while it might be interesting for a geek to know that the installer was trying to write to a locked file, it wouldn't actually help the situation for anyone, and the error might actually frighten a less experienced user into thinking they'd done something wrong. I dare say the errors are logged, and if you took the phone into an Apple Store they could determine what actually happened.
Also, this is far from the only update I have dealt with that's had issues. Apple certainly aren't the only vendor either.
I remember way back in the 90's (when I first started working where I am now), we'd just completed a massive upgrade to NT4. Service Pack 2 for NT4 had just come out, and promised some nifty new features (can't remember what, but I remember thinking they looked massively useful at the time), so come release day, I was on Microsoft.com, looking for the download. Found it, and some 10 hours later the download finished (I assume it was 10 hours, that's what IE was estimating when I left for home). Installed it on a few machines to test it. After a few weeks, I'd found no problems so we rolled it out. It torpedoed roughly half the user machines we'd put it on.
I had some serious explaining to do, and spent a lot of time fixing the broken machines. I also learned to test everything thoroughly (although in all fairness, I thought I had NT4 SP2).
So, as you see, Apple certainly aren't the only company that releases updates that occasionally cause problems.
I dug out my iPhone this morning, but the battery was dead and it hadn't charged enough to turn itself on, by the time I left home this morning. So I left it plugged in and the iMac downloading the new iTunes and Lion patches...
In the mean time, my Android and WP7 phones are working fine! :-P
then you've had way too much kool-aid...
but he used the phrase to describe the availability of functionality, normally in reference to either lack of configuration required or the fact that the OS wasn't hobbled to sell an extra feature.
For all the talk of a walled garden, he never sold an OSX-home edition with half the functionality crippled. iphones don't do as much android phones, but there's no Apple upgrade pack they try to sell you which restores the functionality.
This is a major OS upgrade. Try comparing with a major MS service-pack release or XP-to-vista upgrade and see how good the "it just works" claim is, even when misapplied.
Full disclosure: I have an android phone.
The problem wasn't with downloading the update itself which went relatively smoothly if slowly, the problem occured because Apple insists on digitally signing each install with a unique key based on the device serial number. It was the servers responsible for generating these keys which were unable to cope.
I find this level of control on custom hardware overkill to be honest and one of the reasons I'll be jailbreaking my shiny new iPad just as soon as I get the chance.
I have now succeeded in updating an iPad and an iPod Touch. I'm not going to complain about the relatively slow download time which was to be expected on Day 1 of a major release but I would criticise the following aspects
1. Why on earth do I have to turn off my antivirus program (as advised on a MAC forum) in order to get the download to complete? If I left it on the download failed at the 99% point every time. This not only p***ed me off but added further unnecessary traffic onto the Apple servers because
2. there doesn't seem to be any way that the download process can pick up from where it was interrupted so the user has to wait while the whole lot comes back down the wire
3. The iPad loaded and restored itself without any hitches (eventually) but the iPod failed to restore my music from the backup. In both cases the messages that came up on the screen were of little use - I was convinced that the iPad download had failed and it was restoring the previous IOS and apps. A cheery message to say "you have successfully installed IOS 5 your apps and music files are now being restored" would have improved my sense of humour.
I think Apple should try harder to make their updates as user friendly as they claim their devices are
The download took about 2 hours for me. I could see that for much of the time it was poodling along at a little over 1Mb/s, but there were periods when Apple's severs were clearly suffering, as the the network utilization trace often throttled back to 0.1Mbps for prolonged periods, occasionally ramping up to 1Mb/s to keep my interest.
After the download iTunes presented me with unknown error 3200, which is a very poor message to show to an end user. I'd get the sack if I showed an error like that in one of my applications!
When things got a little quieter, the update did run smoothly. All my apps were gone, but they were available as "purchased" items in the iCloud, and it was a simple matter to re-install them from there.
One hopes that future updates will be a lot smoother, since that can all happen from now on without the cooperation of a PC.
I ditched my iPhone as it used to do this all the time, I now only have to contend with it every update for my wife's iPhone 4 and my mum's iPod. Incidentally, all of the iTunes machines were Windows based so it gives the fanboys something non Apple to blame it on (it's never Apple's fault is it?).
It always takes me mulitple attempts to update any iOS software. Last night I started at 6:04pm and it took me until 2:00am to get both my iPhone and my iPad updated.
Total joke. Whats more of a joke is that I am so used to this level of service and so borged by Apple products and services that all talk to each other (shared exchange calendars, Airplay on AppleTV, iMessage, iTunes library sharing, iCloud sync of content between all mine and my wifes devices. Wifi Sync of same with my PC) that the little glimmer of interest I have in a Nokiasoft Win7 phone is being snuffed out by fear of the unknown and inconvenience.
So I'll be upgrading my phone to yet another Apple product in the hope that the antenna on this one is better than the one sitting on my desk right now. If the only Apple product in my house was my iPhone then it would be getting the heave-ho but Apple have weaved such a type web of interconnectivity around my whole household that I can't escape even if I wanted to
Updating my Desire HD to CyanogenMod 7.1 a couple of days ago went without a hitch! Download, reboot into recovery mode (automated), reboot after install (automated), enter PIN and unlock code, check the version as you're certain it's not meant to be that easy and it must have failed...
Nope. It Just Worked.
The lass wanted to update her phone OS last night (I was like "??!?!?"). It borked with a msg about err code 3xxx. She googled it and was certain from the results the problem was at her end and nearly edited her etc/hosts file until I gave her a stern look. I asked her when iOS 5 went live presuming it was just this week sometime. 6pm. Today ^^
I told her I was 100% certain that gs.apple.com was just subject to an accidental DDoS, it'll be fine the morrow.
7am this morning - worked like a charm.
Surely world+iDog downloading a 750MB update from a single point of failure resulting in network congestion at their end isn't really news? Fanbois of various ilks have been killing the objects of their desire with love for ever...
I had no issues on my iPad or Macs, but did get an "internal error" on my iPhone 4 - 13019. Found easy fix on this thread - uncheck Sync music for the phone. This will allow the phone to back up and upgrade fine. Then resync music. The only hassle is the extra sync time to recopy back the music from iTunes.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2037047?start=15&tstart=0
iClud is a disaster to get to. Normal users really don't have a hope in h3ll to get there easily.
Download 300MB of SW, Upgrade to 10.7.1
Upgrade iTunes
Download iOS 5 800MB
Backup iPhone
Sync w/ .me
Install iOS 5
Watch iPhone reboot 3 times
Watch iPhone spend an hour reloading all music and videos
Watch iPhone reboot
Watch 10.7.2 download 300MB of SW
Watch Mac reboot
Watch iPhone reboot
Watch iTunes relaunch
Watch iPhone restore apps
Watch iPhone reboot
Watch iPhone sync
Go onto .me site
Tell it to upgrade to iClud
Reconnect all iOS Devices
Login to .Me, tick boxes
Have it f*** around for 30 mins moving from .me to iClud
Sync iPhone
Wait for warning iClud and iPhone/iCal out of sync
Resolve all conflicts
Sync
Figure out 5 different locations / uses of AppleID
Enable iPhone
Put passwords in all over place, system preferences, etc
Watch email quit working, it's forgotten passwords/certs
Run keychain access/ repair
Discover when enabling new iClud features other updates needed E.G. IPhoto
Download from f***ing iStore iPhoto upgrade
Install iPhoto upgrade
Disgusted doesn't begin to describe it. I'm sitting wondering who the h3ll from Redmond has been seconded to 1 Infinite Loop.
And then where the h3ll 5 hours went and how Apples going to fry over this.
Epic fail
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