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Irony: iPhone 5S Users Reporting Blue Screen of Death
MojoKid writes "It's been a long time since many have seen a dreaded 'blue screen of death' (BSoD), but it's back and in the most unlikeliest of places. Oddly enough, some Apple iPhone 5S owners are reporting BSoD errors, though they're a little different from the ones you may remember seeing on Windows desktops. Rather than spit out an obscure error code with a generic description, some iPhone 5S devices are suddenly turning blue before automatically restarting. The Numbers app in Apple's iWork suite, a free program with new iPhones, seems to be the primary cause, though BSoD behavior has also been observed in other applications, according to complaints in Apple's support forum."
There are plenty of bugs in iOS, even for low-permission apps. I've been messing around with the mach parser, and I've found several ways to crash the device (other people have reported similar things). The interface between userland and kernel is just complicated, and sandboxing has never been and never will be a magic bullet.
That said, your second point is a good one, why would it suddenly turn blue when ever other crash just causes it to turn black with a rotating circle? Doesn't really make sense.......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sorry, but Apple used to be a lot more reliable. I'll admit that I don't know anything about their systems since the late 1990's, but they USED to be a lot more reliable than MS. AND easier to use.
I switched away from Apple not because I considered their systems poor, but over licensing issues. (Admittedly MS was worse, but Apple snuck in licensing modifications in a security patch, which I find unforgivable.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Aside from the whole 'a tightly sandboxed "app" taking down the system' thing (which makes one wonder if Apple's apps follow the same rules as everyone else's, or whether there is some Nasty bug in an API)
It looks to be a bug in their text-to-speech API. If you watch the video, he triggers the BSOD by starting the app speaking, then returning to the home screen (which stops the app, remember, iOS doesn't do real multitasking*), then restarting the app. So presumably it's a bug in the accessibility APIs that are used to do text-to-speech.
* OK, yes, it does, but you know what I mean in this instance, yes? User apps are not allowed to use multitasking, so the running app is stopped.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Could it be in the iCloud API? Native apps like Numbers store docs in iCloud.
User apps are not allowed to use multitasking,
User apps are allowed to do anything for around ten minutes after they are shut by the user (they may be killed sooner if they use too many resources or the foreground app needs all the resources).
User apps can also have periodic tasks that run in the background (in iOS7).
User apps can also run indefinitely in the background under some conditions, like for navigation or... for background audio. So it might be some hiccup in the text to speech system operating while the app it is attached to is running in the foreground. I would think anything reading text generally would keep reading even if you closed the application, though it would depend on the application and how it set up the audio session...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unfortunately CS courses are not about teaching software engineering.
Of course not. CS is a branch of mathematics. Software Engineering courses teach software engineering. Totally different disciplines.
They're all about teaching the latest fad in computer language and off you go into the marketplace.
No; as above, computer science is mathematics. Air-quote CS air-quote courses taught in community colleges and the like are misnamed, because "introduction to software construction" doesn't stroke the egos of either the teachers or their students.