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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."
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.
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
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.
I'm not an investing whiz, but can one bet on AAPL's stock tanking? I bet the insiders and big shareholders are preparing to, and if you are holding AAPL stock, so should you. Cash out your mutual funds and other investments while you can, cuz shit gonna take a big nosedive.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Unlimited data, text, phone calls in Austin, TX for $40 per month on a Samsung Android.
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?
The simplest explanation
I think you meant "stupidest."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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).
No, the stupidest explanation would be "You are holding the phone wrong." But that excuse has already been used by Apple in the past.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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
How can Apple's stock tank? They are the only players in the smartphone and tablet market for the most part. In fact, all they have to do is introduce a new device and they just created a new ecosystem. Stock goes low, out comes a phablet.
That's weird, I'm almost certain that I heard about a competitor to Apple in the mobile device space:
http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-market-share-2012-11
In the US, Apple's market share is stronger. According to Comscore, Android had 53% of the market in September, as compared to Apple's 34%.
In the short term, Apple has nothing to fear, they have plenty of money in the bank, but they need to keep coming out with innovative, game changing devices - incremental updates of their existing product line isn't going to fend off the competition. And they need to avoid more Apple Maps type blunders - don't ship a product until it's done.
It dips again, they make a server grade appliance similar to the XServe except with an iOS version running server apps
I don't know what the purpose of such an "enterprise grade IOS appliance" would be, but I think it's unlikely that Apple would try a push into the crowded Enterprise server market again.
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
except you need sales to fund the new product development... anyone can build new things if someone else is paying, but a viable capitalist enterprise must hand over a decent percentage of its income to shareholders, which limits the available funds for development/expansion
otherwise they would already be doing what you are suggesting
depends how genralised your assumptions are... i can assume you are a moron or i could assume you are young and ignorant, which therefore means you are a moron... the former has fewer assumptions but is no more useful than the latter, except that i do actually think you are a moron
hahahahaha "significant minority"... could possibly make sense but still sounds funny
In the short term, Apple has nothing to fear, they have plenty of money in the bank, but they need to keep coming out with innovative, game changing devices...
Tim Cook can't do it. He wears the black turtleneck, but he doesn't fill it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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.
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.
Don't forget about the big investors shaking the tree on sure events. Reference book "Escape from America", a moderately useful guide for expat gonna-bes. Investor saw news of revolution in Rhodesia, and realized that -- I think the metal was Molybdenum -- would rise sharply in price, so he bought heavily on leverage, and then watched the price drop 15% before taking off like crazy. The stop loss call wiped him out. He asked his broker what happened, and his broker said that the really big investors also bought futures, but first shorted the market to shake the smaller investors out into their pockets.
Two rules for investing: 1] if you don't know who the sucker is then it's you 2] don't.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
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...?
>In the US
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your point but the US is a tiny part of the global mobile phone market. You could have 0% US market share but have a ton elsewhere and you would still be rolling in money.
Surely you could have clicked through the article I linked to before making your irrelevant point, Apple is doing even worse in the global market... from TFA:
In the third quarter, IDC reports, Android sales accounted for a staggering 75% of the smartphone market. Apple sales, meanwhile, accounted for only 15%. Android is still gaining share rapidly, so Apple's share may shrink even further.