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iOS 6 Streaming Bug Sends Data Usage Skyrocketing
MojoKid writes "iOS 6, by all appearances, has a streaming problem. This is separate from the network issues that led Verizon to state that it wouldn't bill people for overages that were caused by spotty Wi-Fi connectivity. The issue has been detailed at PRX.org with information on how the team saw a huge spike in bandwidth usage after the release of iOS 6, and then carefully tested the behavior of devices and its own app to narrow the possible cause. In one case, the playback of a single 30MB episode caused the transfer of over 100MB of data. It is believed that the issue was solved with the release of iOS 6.0.1, but anecdotal evidence from readers points to continued incidents of high data usage, even after updating. If you own an iPhone 5 or upgraded to iOS 6 on an older device, it is strongly recommend to check your usage over the past two months, update to iOS 6.0.1, and plan for a lengthy discussion with your carrier if it turns out your data use went through the roof."
The simplest explanation is that all data you download is uploaded to two monitoring third parties. Previously, they only logged session statistics. Now they log every single thing you do - one stream goes to Apple for "anonymous statistics", and the other goes to some government agency looking for terrists and pedos.
The simplest explanation is most often the correct one.
I am glad that there are such rigorous QC controls in place at Apple to protect Customers from issues like this. I am also glad to see that the issue was corrected so quickly, with Apple being upfront with customers about the issue, and working with carriers to correct it.
It's examples like this that make it easy to clearly identify why using Apple products is such a good idea, for all involved.
Don't worry, it's all part of Apple Innovation. You must be using the phone wrong or something. You'll be able to buy a patch soon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And now time for 200 posts on how "I have an iPhone 5 and my data usage is the exact same as with my old 4S, therefore this is a lie and no one is actually having this problem".
Why should the carrier care, the fault lies here with Apple, so a discussion with your local collection of badly geniuses is what you need.
haha federal government truly unlimited data plan, don't care about data usage
i still have my grandfathered unlimited (for now), and i dont have a iphone, but if i did, i wouldn't care, and this is the entire point of unlimited data.
That headline is the mean interpretation of all Apple bashers, whereas the Apple fanboys will call it a glitch or a minor mishap.
Somewhere along the infamous, slippery path both may have delivered a relevant piece of an annoying truth.
Tinfoil hat time here. Why did it have to be a bug? Perhaps apple wanted to push for updated networks, or a carrier wanted more money and colluded with apple. Maybe not even to make money, but to have more 'evidence' for caps and throttling. Just sayin'.
Silence is a state of mime.
what about roaming? roaming in Canada is like $2+ a meg.
LOL! Yeah - I feel that. I don't get billed for usage. I pay a low and predictable flat fee every month for unlimited call/text/data.
I am aware though, that some people live in countries where there is much stronger corporate rule.
They're just holding it wrong.
Unlimited data, text, phone calls in Austin, TX for $40 per month on a Samsung Android.
This is not a problem. Apple users are expected to pay (at least) 3 times as much for anything. Since they already bought Apple, it means (by definition) that they have more dollars than sense. Even if the problem gets fixed, they should be expected to pay triple the going rate.
When it comes to telecommunications, the USA and Canada are third-world countries.
Signed,
a Canadian.
Probably this is a different issue with the reported issue, but I have noticed that iOS is bypassing the wifi network and flip to cellular data network every so often (and flips back again). This happens probably a handful of times in 1 hour. This is easy to check if you have a wifi AP with tcpdump or wireshark running on it. It's especially bad when you're running VoIP app that needs to register properly so that calls can be routed to the proper IP address.
Has anyone else notice this issue?
Soooooo glad I haven't "upgraded" to iOS 6 yet. Between the maps and now this, it sounds like a real piece of trash. I've been an Apple hater for decades - their PCs suck, but I will admit that their hand-held devices are amazing. They've taken a big step backwards in my book, with iOS 6.
Ive got iOS6 and just checked my usage is 90.6MB sent / 665mb received on cellur network....that is for 1 year this Sunday. So no it is not a problem at least on my end.
The podcast No Agenda actually broke this story months ago, they noticed ios6 devices stopping and restarting the download of their show multiple times.
It took a larger developer to whine for anyone to care about this.
Feel free to accuse me of lying, but my data usage is actually dramatically LOWER on iPhone 5 than it was on the iPhone4. I am now able to use Pandora, whereas I couldn't before on iPhone4/iOS5. I have also had no problems with iOS6 Maps---in fact iOS6 Maps uses WAY less data than the intentionally crippled Google Maps, which would download bitmap instead of vector graphics and chomp through my data usage like a monster.
I don't mean to argue that Apple isn't an evil company and I recognize that iOS6 has some glaring problems that affect a significant minority of people. But, the truth is, for a vast majority of people, all is well in iOS land.
The disconnect between the reality of the experience for actual iPhone users and the way it gets reported online is massive---it's like two different universes. Walled garden aside, the actual experience with the iPhone is quite good. Whether you buy into the walled garden or not depends on whether there are iOS-exclusive apps you value over your right to tweak and pirate (which, let's be frank, that's what the "freedom" of Android is all about in the USA---sideloading pirated apps and futzing with widgets. In China and other freedom-restricted places, I agree sideloading could have real freedom-related importance).
I've had my iphone5 for over a month now and havent noticed any "data leaks" while still on iOS6. i just checked my data usage on AT&T and it says ive used 1.38GB, 20 days in on my 31 day cycle. I've streamed Sirius radio daily for about 5 hours a day 3 days a week listening to Howard. And some youtube videos here and there and heavy web browsing while at work. http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/2420/photorz.png
Alright, here's a data point that might throw a monkeywrench into this situation...
I have an ipod, still on 5.1.1, that I drive around all day connected to a verizon wifi hotspot thingy with a 3GB data plan. Usually, I download the couple of podcasts I listen to at home before work, but if I forget, I'll go ahead and download it out on the road, they run about 40 MB or so. The only other thing I do is a few emails, a few google searches, and the occasional look at facebook.
In the past, I would sometimes get the 50% usage email and chuckle because the cycle ended the next day.
Yesterday I got the warning that I've already used 1.5 GB since the 10th. Going onto verizon's site, it looks like I'm using 3-5 times more data than I would expect at approximately the times I would be listening to the podcasts.
Maybe unrelated? But I've literally never used data that fast in the 2+ years I've been doing this. Even when I first got on Pandora and really listened to it a lot, I didn't start getting data warnings until I was 2.5-3 weeks into the cycle..
So, TL;DR This might be a problem with the podcasts app or some other phenomenon unrelated to ios 6 per se.
I'm just putting it into and out of airplane mode for now, kind of a PITA though.
First maps, then no YouTube app for the iPad and now this. Things aren't looking good for iOS post-Steve Jobs.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Ok, I have an extra iPhone just for development which I put on a pre-paid plan that charges 1 euro for every day you use the 3G network. I have used that kind of plan on Maemo/MeeGo and Symbian phones for years and I never had a charge while at home since I have a good WiFi network.
You are starting to see where I am going eh?
So, a couple of weeks after I added such a card on the iPhone, which was a bit more than a year ago (so we are talking about iOS 5), I disable the WiFi to do some testing with 3G. In comes a message that I have no credit to use 3G. I look in the message folder and for the first time I notice that I had received a message every day about using 3G, and after 10 such messages my 10 euro credit was gone. So I researched what the heck is going on and found other people were having the same problem, and it was really a problem for pre-paid plans like mine, the usual post-paid plan users just shrugged-off a few MB's of extra 3G usage per day. Anyway it seems (as far as people can tell) that when you are not using the phone and goes to some low power mode, it disconnects WiFi and connects via 3G, without any option for the user other than disabling 3G data beforehand! What other phones have as default behavior - ONLY use 3G if you don't have a WiFi connection - is not even an option! If another company did idiotic stuff like that people would be after them (at least for the extra 3G data charges), but I guess if Apple gives you a mouse with a single button, that's how mice are supposed to be...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
hahahahaha "significant minority"... could possibly make sense but still sounds funny
The United States of America is the only first world country on Earth. The rest are lowlife cunts.
And this is why your empire will turn to dust, infidel !
You only have to try the appstore app on an ipad to see how bad the design is, and how broken certain functionality is. For instance, if you display an app's information, then go to related and follow a different app, instead of showing a back button, the current pseudo-modal view is moved to the left, with the new one taking the center of the screen. But way, if there is no button back, how do you go back? You have to figure out that tapping on an unused but still visible area of the previous rectangle has the same effect of the back button. Touching anywhere else clears all navigation. Thanks apple.
Also, have you noticed the app store doesn't even cache anything at all? Every time I go into the app store it takes fucking 10 second to load and display anything at all other than a gray screen, simply because you know, Apple doesn't even know what caching is (and yes, their OS level cache for NSURLConnection is another nice clusterfuck).
My Samsung Galaxy S (Fascinate) does the same thing. Its a battery-saving behavior, but at least the Android phone had a setting to let the user control whether or not it disabled the WiFi comms when the screen is off for an extended period and the phone wasnt plugged in to the wall.
Go back two years when Android was really taking off and you'll see lots of user complaints about impossible overnight uses of their 3G data eating away their limited usage plan.
You can bet that Bell will do their usual crap and lock in the phones to iOS 6.
They are the worst with messing with roms and locking out updates hands down. And insist on locked roms.
For one they then have to port all their add on junkware in a hurry. Make certain that users have no clue as to how to change their settings to use GMail or something other than their home page. Change the UI to make it harder to default to wifi when available instead of 4g or 3g.
I am hoping someone up here in Canada sues their butts off over this software fault if they do not quickly push the fix from Apple!
Fortunately I did not fall for their "end of contract upgrade deal to an iPhone 5" that they are sending text messages and voice every other day. They are the worst company to be hooked into on a contract hands down and their data rates and policies verge on extortion!
Give Apple a break. They wanted to test IOS 6, they really did, but they didn't have time because they were too busy launching patent thug lawsuits.
Whoa, looks like Apple sent some of its thugmods around. Sensitive about that thug thing much?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
As someone who works on fixing all kinds of devices from Macs to PCs and iPhones to Andoid, let me say that most of the time iPhones DO work as intended but when they fail, they just make you want to throw them against a hard surface and light them on fire. When they break, they just break so spectacularly. Usually, they can't even be fixed until an update get pushed out. That's the real difference. With iWhatever, you usually are not going to be able to fix it yourself.
Even if you're on Verizon. AT&T's position is "We just provide the roads you drive on. If your car drives a thousand miles without you wanting it to, it's not the fault or will of the highway department." Never mind the fact that if carriers wanted to rip customers off, they would simply disable network access entirely, freeing up bandwidth for more important clients. No, it's a far more Romulan level of ploy to put bricks on everyone's pedals and then deal with everyone else complaining about degraded bandwidth. Three things will kill a lithium ion cell. Time, temperature, and use. And transmitting data constantly will result in two of those three, with time doing its own thing. And you can't replace an iPhone's battery without voiding your often-dismissed warranty. Curious indeed. It's almost as if Apple wants people's phones to burn out, so they have to buy new ones.
Try talking to Apple thirteen months after you've bought your phone. Then try talking to your phone service provider at the same time. See who tries to charge you for help.
Apple came out with an update some time ago so the only people who would still be on iOS 6.0 would be people who have jailbroken their devices. That is one of many risks you run if you choose to jailbreak. If you are not jailbroken then there should be no reason to be still on iOS 6.0.0.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Give Apple a break. They wanted to test IOS 6, they really did, but they didn't have time because they were too busy launching patent thug lawsuits.
Whoa, looks like Apple sent some of its thugmods around. Sensitive about that thug thing much?
Indeed, Apple thugs are definitely senstive about being called thugs. Here's a novel idea: don't be thugs and people might not call you thugs thugs.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
How much bandwidth is wasted by buggy software (and by "buggy" I also mean super-inefficent borderline stupid codig) per year...?