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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."

36 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Hell freezes over. by o_ferguson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Guru Meditation: BSoD.

    --
    - In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
    1. Re:Hell freezes over. by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Funny

      But damn it, I'm jealous! I'm running Linux on my computer and Android on my phone and they don't have that feature! Damn.

      Always behind the curve, I am.

  2. How unusual... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:How unusual... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      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."
    2. Re:How unusual... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.......

      Because iPhone fanboys are also hipsters, and the blue screen is old enough to now qualify as "Retro". You're just not cool unless your device dies with a warm, blue glow!

    3. Re:How unusual... by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Funny

      Pffft. Everyone with an iPhone gets a blue screen. My phone is built with a CRT - they only make those at this one old Soviet factory that they recently found.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    4. Re:How unusual... by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Funny

      My home phone has a _string_.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    5. Re:How unusual... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      My home phone is a large fire and a blanket.

    6. Re:How unusual... by _xeno_ · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.
    7. Re:How unusual... by Columcille · · Score: 4, Funny

      My home phone is a piece of dried mammoth hide stretched across some sticks that I beat with a rock.

      --
      I love my sig.
    8. Re:How unusual... by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Funny

      You win.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    9. Re:How unusual... by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can effectively sandbox but for it to really work it requires a major change in system design and, a major commitment to a bug free OS, OS on chip. Offers far faster boot time, keeps the OS really secure but if it isn't bug and security issue free, then you have real problems. Software coders have always been as slack as hell compared to CPU engineers.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  3. Most unlikeliest? by ShaunC · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!
    1. Re:Most unlikeliest? by BluBrick · · Score: 2
      --
      Ahh - My eye!
      The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
    2. Re:Most unlikeliest? by donscarletti · · Score: 2

      OP was referring to "unlikeliest" being a superlative and thus cannot be used with "most".

      Still, if he was offended by the word itself, showing him a Google search full of instances of it is unlikely to help him "chill out".

      --
      When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
  4. Well by The+Cat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Well by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Arguably, the sheer lousiness of software is more striking because it (still, despite decades of work and the amount of money riding on some of it) crops up in the face of well heeled customers, whether retail buyers of expensive personal electronics or enterprise/gov buyers who are willing to spend nearly unlimited amounts on their pet contractors...

      With buildings, there is plenty of construction that's roughly on the standards of software (Just do an image search for 'Shantytown' if you doubt me...); but structural quality is mostly stratified economically. If you want a building that works, and you have the cash, you can have one. With software, the cities of the world would be a nearly random assortment of mostly shacks, some incrementally nicer than others, with a scattering of structures that were built in 3,000 BC and are in perfect condition, buildings that are constructed from graphene and carbon nanotubes; but have doors made of soggy cardboard stuck to the frame with chewing gum, and other such oddities.

      That's the odd thing. Plenty of kinds of engineering are hard and expensive, and sometimes subject to unexpected cost overruns and such; but we've gotten it to the point where if you live in a country with a functional society and fire codes and things, you can buy good buildings, aircraft that don't crash, and other nice things.

      With software... your mileage may vary.

    2. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Writing good software is an engineering task. As is building bridges, skyscrapers etc...
      Unfortunately CS courses are not about teaching software engineering. They're all about teaching the latest fad in computer language and off you go into the marketplace. And lets not even mention of the sunday-day programmers that barely can put 4 lines of code in javascript right.
      Put penal/civil responsabilites on those that code, and see how the whole industry changes for the better. Until that time you'll have shitty and not so shitty coders that write shitty code (hint just because it compiles doesn't mean it works correctly) because we ship code as is. It brings down your server room ? Not our fault. Just look at what software companies write in their EULAs. No other industry could do such a thing. We're not responsabile for anything. My ass you're not.

    3. Re:Well by gweihir · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There are people that can write solid, dependable, secure software and advance the state-of-the-art in this area. There are also people that can learn to do this with the right education. Both groups are small and highly intelligent. Most of them chose to go into careers where they actually have a career path, managers that do not tell them how to do their jobs and a salary in line with their talents.

      On the other side, most people writing software today are incompetent, or at best, half-competent. I have seen teams needing several months to write software that I can create in a week with significantly better quality. I have reviewed business-critical software for large organizations, where the programmers did not even understand the very basics. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/02/the-nonprogramming-programmer.html does _not_ overstate the problem.

      So we are very much capable of advancing software, but advancing software has been a game for competent experts for a while. Just look at what people are advancing other engineering disciplines, or mathematics or physics. More and more people of that quality are needed for software as well. But the culture is not there. Software is regarded as a solved problem, which is anything but true. But it drives down wages, cause bad working and career conditions and turns away many of the few people that have the required talent. Stupid.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    4. Re:Well by real-modo · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thanks for posting... saved me the trouble of posting nearly the same thing. Nearly. Quoting GP:

      Writing good software is an engineering task.

      I have, and still take issue at this assessment, and believe that the term Software Engineering is just marketing-speak. Programming is programming is programming. There is nothing engineered as engineering requires something tangible, like raw or refined materials, to be engineered into something. If "Software Engineering" is a valid notion, then authors and journalists and poets are Sentence Engineers, some philosophers are Epistemology Engineers, statesmen and congressmen are Law Engineers, movie directors are Visual Entertainment Engineers, stylists are Hair and Makeup Engineers, I sleep and dream every night, so I am a Dream Engineer and the misapplications go on and on. Basically, the term Software Engineering waters down the meaning of engineer to the detriment of actual engineers and anyone that speaks a language in which the word 'engineer' has any meaning whatsoever.

      Further, all that study true engineering usually take identical fundamental engineering courses for a couple years, and then course load begins to diverge as engineering students choose a specialty, such as civil, aerospace, mechanical, industrial, and the like. Then, after graduation, there is an engineering test engineering graduates must take in order to be licensed as engineers, in order to be able to legally work as engineeers. Software engineers do neither... they're not really "engineers."

      The life's work of a "software engineer" doesn't have a shape, doesn't weigh anything, and only exists in representations of 1s and 0s... their implementations and deployments are like tokens (in a type-token relationship) the same as an implementation of an author's work, a novel, is a book... and the type itself is only a concept and only exists conceptually. No engineering subdiscipline is so gaunt in the physical world, but are always working with tangible things... something you can literally put your finger on.

      Software engineering isn't even necessarily Computer Science, either, for the reasons you've already detailed (CS is a subset of mathematics, and programming... is not, no more than a cake recipe is math), and also because it isn't necessarily science. Software engineering is just programming, or coding, it is development of software, and no matter how complex or grand it becomes, it isn't engineering.

    6. Re:Well by Xest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's got nothing to do with software engineers, it's the classic project management triangle:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle

      We know full well how to write good solid software, developers can do that just fine, it's a well researched area that's pretty well understood.

      The problem is that no one is willing to pay for or wait for that software.

      You can't blame software engineering for the priorities society and project managers have decided to prioritise. It's not the fault of software engineering if users want a new shiny every year rather than a perfectly secure and stable shiny every 5 years.

      Some buildings are built quickly and cheaply from kids wendy houses and tree houses, to a tramps cardboard box or buildings in a shanty town. None of which last particularly well in the face of a bomb or natural disaster because none of which are engineered to.

      It's just the way project management works, the issue you take isn't a problem with software engineering and everything to do with the project managers and the priorities forced upon them by society and business needs.

      I'm not even sure it can actually be classed as a problem though anyway, if society has pushed things this way then it just means you're in a minority that has been outvoted by society at large in wanting something stable and secure rather than something new and shiny ASAP. It just means most people have different priorities to you and so the market has bent that way, that's all. Effectively it's just working as intended, unless you're suggesting software engineers should be responsible for somehow warping reality and laying waste to the project management triangle, something no other profession has ever managed to do, and in that case you're just being unrealistic.

  5. According to SJ... by bob_super · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... 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!

  6. Don't be surprised if by djupedal · · Score: 4, Funny

    . . .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.

  7. Warning RDF Collapsing! by meerling · · Score: 2, Funny

    Uh oh, looks likes Job's Reality Distortion Field is collapsing.
    If this keeps up, Macs may start turning into fruit or something. :p

  8. It is *not* a bug! by msobkow · · Score: 2

    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.
  9. also an apprenticeship system where you learn from by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  10. 64 bit CPU issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  11. Re:Obvious... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:How unusual... iSky showing through? by j-stroy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Could it be in the iCloud API? Native apps like Numbers store docs in iCloud.

  13. Re:Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  14. It's official. by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Apple is the new Microsoft.
    Just with a shinier surface.

  15. User apps are allowed to do real multitasking by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
    1. Re:User apps are allowed to do real multitasking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you notice, the app keeps speaking until he brings up the new (annoying, IMO) running app overview screen. It then stops despite obviously having text left to speak, he touches the app to bring it in the foreground, and it crashes. My money is on the text-to-speech stopping when the overview is brought up causes a bad state, then when the app comes up it probably checks whether it's running or not, gets bad info, and then goes BOOM. I would put good odds on it being either in the text-to-speech API or in the audio API.
       
      In my own work, I found iOS 7 introduced a major flaw in the audio where it no longer acts appropriately in a particular situation in the background and I had to write a workaround -- a hack, really, but it's the only solution that doesn't require months of work -- in order for my app not to get in a bad state where it can no longer run audio again.

  16. not only 5s or os 7? by LodCrappo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  17. Re:A Long time? by LodCrappo · · Score: 2

    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