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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."
Guru Meditation: BSoD.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
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), don't iDevices use a totally different design for their screen of death? Macs, certainly, both PPC and Intel, can be made to execute BSOD-level crashes; but the process looks totally different.
Sounds like somebody's grammar checker had a blue screen...
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
There is a great deal of evidence to indicate we are no longer capable of advancing software.
It has been remarked that if we built buildings the same way we build software the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
Take a look around. The government apparently spent $165 million on a web site that doesn't work.
There's no discipline in software development. It's slapped together to meet an artificial deadline. It's considered done if it compiles. It's shoved out into the marketplace so everyone can stuff their pockets and then all the developers are fired to make way for the new employees who will design the next piece of shit.
The only measure of how good software is depends on how shiny and "innovative" the user interface is. What the software actually does is utterly irrelevant.
For such a view/picture being displayed, I wouldn't blame the iPhone for restarting ! :)
... They're just looking at it wrong.
They didn't make a shiny golden backplate for you to waste your time looking at the screen, people!
. . .these turn out to be forced/silent restarts by Apple on the backend, due to a laundry list of reasons best left to others - don't ask how I know.
When I searched the Apple support communities for BSoD and even just "blue" I find issues dating all the way back to 2008 across all Apple products and OSs, but no cascade of BSoD reports recently. I've been using the iWorks suite on my iPhone for weeks and no BSoD yet. I feel deprived lol.
Uh oh, looks likes Job's Reality Distortion Field is collapsing. :p
If this keeps up, Macs may start turning into fruit or something.
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.
It's Apple's new "iBoot" feature, which automatically restarts the phone when it detects an NSA probe, acting as if you noticed the spies and shut off your phone as a result. The more frequent your reboots, the more interested the goobernmint is in you. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What attention to detail? The CPU itself is manufactured by their arch competitor, would you trust such a hardware?
also an apprenticeship system where you learn from pros in the field with real work. Not some professor reading from a book and / or loads of theory.
Siri, WTF just happened? Siri?!
The crashes appear to only (mainly?) affect the new 64 bit CPUs. It would appear that some parts of the API/apps use code hardcoded to 32 bit applications. If this is really the case, then it should be a matter of time before bugfixes are released. It's not ok for a phone of that pricetag, but it isn't a complete disaster either.
I have seen people blame objective C as the culprit as some other programming languages have abstraction levels high enough to make the code immune to bugs due to CPU type. The thing is that C/C++/objC can write code with great performance, which translates to longer battery life. It is possible to write code immune to 32/64bit bugs in all of those 3 languages, but it takes more skill from the programmers and increase development time and costs. It doesn't surprise me if 64 bit considerations was skipped intentionally before Apple announced 64 bit phones. Testing 64 bit software before the 64 CPUs became available was naturally out of the question as well and 3rd party developers was given access to new phones possibly way too shortly before the release.
This excuse works much better for 3rd party software developers than for Apple as we would assume insight knowledge of new CPUs, but maybe it was secret inside as well due to risk of spies or leaks. It might also be a sign that the software was rushed a bit too much. People also complain about power usage in iOS 7, which also hints immature software.
Microsoft: obscure error code with a generic description Old Apple: Bomb icon that says 'Error' New Apple: Plain blue screen, nothing else So simple and refined!
I would dispute that. I don't recall MS-DOS ever crashing itself. True, programs were allowed such low level access to the PC hardware that they could cause a crash, but MS-DOS itself was rock solid and even program crashes were rare. I'm remembering all of the old demoscene stuff that used weird, undocumented functionality and were still stable.
Could it be in the iCloud API? Native apps like Numbers store docs in iCloud.
Apple is worse than Microsoft. People like to slam Windows 9x for being unstable, usually rightfully so, but they forget that the Macs of the time were even worse. By the time OS X came out, MS had Windows NT 4, 2K and XP out, which were all very stable. Since then, every MS OS has been stable, including Vista.
On top of that, Apple freaks out when people want to customize or doing something "out of bounds" with their Mac. Microsoft has always encouraged people to do what they want with Windows.
Apple is the new Microsoft.
Just with a shinier surface.
some of the DOS extenders crashed time to time
Could be, but today I'm seeing that setting the text in a UITextView in a thread other than the main thread will cause iOS 7 to freeze irrecoverably. So the bug could be in a lot of places, I guess. They've changed a lot.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And thats a damn phone OS. I'm quite scared of how Mavericks will turn out. Or the OS X team is still competent as they used to be?
Apple has caught up with Microsoft.
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
App crashes used to be fairly frequent on the iPhone, while system crashes were much less frequent, but happened now and then. In recent years, system crashes have pretty much vanished, while app crashes have gotten a lot less common. I don't think I've seen a single system crash with iOS 7 on my 4s, which is unusual for a major OS revision. My new 5s does appear to crash a bit more. I see an app unexpectedly quit every day or two, and I've had 2 or 3 system crashes--more like the frequency of crashes I remember from the first year or two of the iPhone.
Here is video of an older iPhone and os making exact same blue screen/restart.
Seems to take different actions to trigger, but not sure this is a new bug.
From the comments sounds like it wasn't too uncommon either..
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KjyQLlEHomQ
-Lod
Your computer is broken. Have it repaired. (Or stop trolling... Sometimes it's hard to tell so apologies for giving a serious answer if so)
The typical Win 7 machine is impressively stable. I haven't seen a blue screen in years.
-Lod
My iPhone 4 seems to handle iOS7 pretty well. I've found that although the UI *looks* slow, the responsiveness is actually not that bad - for example, when entering my PIN on the lock screen, under iOS 5 and 6 sometimes there would be a bit of lag and it wouldn't register all the keypresses if I tapped the numbers faster than the phone was ready for. With iOS 7, there's even more lag in the visual and auditory feedback when pressing the buttons, but it registers all the keypresses correctly despite the lag, so even though it looks worse it works better.
And of course it's not just slow - everything looks worse. The new Windows 8-inspired theme looks stupid anyway, but on the iPhone 4 all the transparency effects are disabled, so it looks even worse, but it functions. There are some nice features and enhancements. I really haven't had any significant problems.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
For every one iphone there are approximately 4.5 android phones and there's a darn good reason for that. The overly-fragile, drug-trip colored UI-having, overpriced hardware created by suicidal semi-slaves at Foxconn isn't a good product. It just isn't! This isn't 1999. This is Apple 2013, get use to it. On the same note, sell any and all Apple stock you may have.
My work Windows 7 machine BSoDed all over the place not a month and a half ago.
Windows still BSoDs just fine, TYVM.
LETS POST IT TO SLASHDOT!!!!1!11!!ONE!
Seriously, how the hell is this news? Sure, a brand new phone crashing a lot is a pretty newsworthy item, but why does everyone go "Oh how "ironic"?!?!". It's not ironic, it's blue, much like the crash screen on a PSP or some Nintendo DS'. Just because Microsoft used it predominantly doesn't automatically make this a news item.
I'm sure if it came up with a Mac OS X kernel panic, or a screen of death of another colour, it wouldn't have made it on Slashdot....
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
I think your hardware might be dying
Or your box has more viruses in it than an AIDS sufferer
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Well, yes, and no... learning from experienced people is fine but care should be taken that the 'apprenticeship' does not turn into 'indentured service' as it does so often - have a look at other fields where this system is used to see what I mean. Often the 'apprentice' is just used as cheap labour to do most of the work for only a fraction of the pay while the 'master' takes home the profit. It also opens the doors for protectionist systems comparable to the medieval guilds where your ability to work in a given field depends on getting yourself accepted by the guild. If you go down this route you'll be up to your knees in ITIL (et al) without an escape route.
--frank[at]unternet.org
We really run Windows 95 under the hood. You guys finally caught us.
-Apple
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
No it could not. It could be anywhere but that. That is the one place it couldn't be. All software ever written has bugs except the iCloud API.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
They do still exist. I was setting up a win8 machine a while back and it kept blue screening. It seems that the manufacturer installed AV was fighting with Microsoft's security and would bring the whole machine down. I removed the AV and suggested only connecting to the internet for updates (system was a mission critical laptop running medical software)
Not trolling, I work in IT and i'm part of a team that services around 500 computer. I see the BSOD everyday. Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP even the occasional Windows 2000.
You don't deal with it daily in Windows 7. You deal with it daily on your computer with the bad RAM in it. Treat yourself to this.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
And for disambiguation, I don't own a computer with Windows or OSX on it. I have a laptop with Linux and this laptop with ChromeOS. None of which I have any issues with. My GF, on the other hand, went with a snazzy Windows 8 laptop and I am always fixing that damn thing. Along with other users I deal with that have Windows 7 and 8, I am always fixing their computers. The users that have iMacs? Never hear a peep out of them. The servers that run Linux? Often times forget they exist because never have a problem with them. But those windows machines and servers? Always get reminded they are there. Haters gonna hate, but that is what it is in my corner of the world.
Too
I prefer if my systems don't BSOD if they've been restored from backup. You know, a backup and restore that actually works, rather than bricking the device.
Software people normally educated in engineering, and the systems they build fail. Does that mean that engineering a software system isn't engineering, or that non-engineers failed to engineer it properly?
Novels, movies, hairstyles, etc are not systems subject to unyielding laws which must be accounted for, or the project fails. Physical systems, such as buildings, and software systems such as databases ARE subject to unbreakable laws which will cause or prevent failure.
Engineering is about applying a set of known rules which govern the behavior of systems to a specific design. You can calculate the shear load on a bridge member, based on a specific amount of vehicle traffic, and know exactly how thick your steel must be. That's engineering. You can calculate what the IO load will be on a specific storage unit, based on a specific amount of web traffic, and know exactly how wide your RAID must be. That's also engineering.
The two problems above are extremely similar, and there is a very similar process for determining the optimal engineered solution in both cases.
Most programmers don't use proper engineering methods, and most programmers don't produce reliable designs. That's because they aren't using properly engineering methods, not because proper engineering methods don't apply.
By the way, you're distinction about physical objects vs. conceptual systems is, in a word, wrong. The reason the Obamacare sites can't take the load has everything to do with the radial velocity of a rotating mass known as a "hard drive". The drive spins at 10,000 RPM. The system tries to read opposite sides of the drive 40,000 times per second. Engineering fail.
The first sentence of my post was missing two words. That should read "software people are not normally educated in engineering ".
Thus, they often fail at engineering systems, even if they are good at coding Hangman.
This list can easily go on. And again, I am not quite sure what magical section of the universe you live in where once the issue is resolved the user does everything they are supposed to with their computer, but I don't live there.
It's ironic because of Apple's long history of mocking Microsoft. C:\ongratulations Apple!
Thanks. Good read. I love computer history.
'bricking'? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
And for disambiguation, I don't own a computer with Windows or OSX on it.
Cool story, bro. Now tell us about how you don't have a tv.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Cool story, bro, but to you I gift you this: http://i.imgur.com/DPDXQqb.jpg
Really? Is that magical color-changing pony-friend metal they've made the case out of, or is it just the screen presenting a solid blue image?
What's a dotslash?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
MacOS 8.x wasn't too bad, MacOS 7.5.x however sucked donkey's balls. MacOS 7.6.x was ok.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
touché
Your computer is broken. Have it repaired. (Or stop trolling... Sometimes it's hard to tell so apologies for giving a serious answer if so)
The typical Win 7 machine is impressively stable. I haven't seen a blue screen in years.
As was XP.
It was almost always shitty drivers that bought down Windows. This is still occurring with Windows 7 but not as often as Windows comes with more default drivers which are more stable than the crappy vendor drivers of yore. I only need to install drivers for my wireless card and video card these days, I still put the mobo drivers on out of habit and they do improve the sound.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
MacOS (pre-OSX) was exactly as stable and reliable as MS-DOS/Win3.x in that all it took was a single poorly-behaved process to bring the system down either by refusing to yield or by spewing all over RAM. Yes, it's possible to have a very stable system as long as you are very careful about what software you run but that reliability is not a function of the OS at all.
Yet somehow it was a function of the type of programmers that each OS attracted.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.