Apple Blocks Lawrence Lessig's Comment On iOS 7 Wi-Fi Glitch

destinyland writes "A glitch in iOS7 has cost "a significant number" of Apple users their Wi-Fi access, according to ZDNet. But they also report that Apple is now censoring posts in their "Apple Support Communities" forums where users suggest possible responses to their loss of WiFi capabilities (including exercising their product warranty en masse). "We understand the desire to share experiences in your topic, 'Re: wifi greyed out after update to ios7,'" read one warning sent to Lawrence Lessig, "but because these posts are not allowed on our forums, we have removed it." Lessig — who co-founded Creative Commons (and was a board member of the Free Software Foundation) has been documenting the ongoing "comments slaughter" on his Twitter feed, drawing attention to what he says is the Borg-like behavior of Apple as a corporation. Lessig "is now part of an angry mob in Apple's forums who upgraded to iOS 7 and lost Wi-Fi connectivity," ZDNet notes, adding that as of this morning their reporter has been unable to obtain an official response from Apple."

Comments

Pretty common support forums policies

[Sockatume]

Apple is really strict about not letting people give out certain kinds of technical advice or speculation on their support forums, on the not-unreasonable basis that things posted there have Apple's tacit approval. When I hung out on Nokia's support boards it was similar.

Re:Pretty common support forums policies

[crmarvin42]

Are you sure that is what they were objecting to? Honest question, BTW.

I've been having wifi issues since upgrading to iOS7, but only intermitently. I could not connect to wifi at all for the first 2 days, but now it connects most of the time. About once a week I have to power the phone off and on to get wifi working again. I saw a thread on the discussion pages during my first 2 day outage (maybe the same one, maybe not) that was telling everyone your wifi chip had physically been damaged by the update and to go to the Applestore for a new phone. Presumably my wifi chip hasn't been physically damaged because it works the vast majority of the time, and if they are telling everyone something that is demonstrably false (in Apple's opinion anyway), the I could see why Apple might intervene.

Re:Pretty common support forums policies

[aslagle]

Obviously, this is anecdotal, but when my wife upgraded, she had the greyed-out WiFi setting.

I restored her phone from scratch, and it didn't fix it.

We then took her phone to the Apple store, and the tech (I refuse to call them geniuses) said the hardware had failed. Thankfully, she was 8 days (?!!) away from warranty expiration, so she got a shiny new 4S.

I understand that iOS7 did a firmware upgrade, and that can stress the hardware - but no errors appeared during the upgrade process. You'd think an incomplete flash would at least kick out something.

Re: Another day, another anti-Apple story

[smooth wombat]

Apple has no reason to censor anything,

If Apple has no reason to censor, then why are the comments disappearing from the forum? If people are legitimately experiencing wi-fi connection issues, shouldn't others be aware of it and Apple take the appropriate action?

Or is Apple following the path of Nikon which refused to acknowledge the oil-on-the-censor issue on some non-insignificant portion of their D600 camera, then less than a year later released the D610 which miraculously doesn't have the issue but which is the exact same camera? Is that possibly why Apple just pushed out the 7.3 update?

However, if people are having issue with wi-fi, how are they supposed to get the update since updating requires a wi-fi connection?

Re:Another day, another anti-Apple story

[wjcofkc]

Personally, I as someone who overall likes Apple as a company, doesn't own anything but a Mac, but has had the chance to use their mobile products and do like them, I will first say I believe that the Slashdot crowd generally gives Apple a fair shake. Granted, this is not always flattering, but it is typically correct non-the-less.

Second, Apple stories garner among the highest number of comments and therefore user interaction and ad views. Based on this it is clear that the Slashdot crowd likes discussing Apple related stories, which works out well for Slashdot since it (presumanbly) generates ad revenue. That is what is known as a 'win win'.

Re: How about iWork?

[amicusNYCL]

I don't think anyone said "the iOS7 update damaged your wifi hardware". Here's one post that got removed:

Before I have another post removed I urge all those affected with wifi issues to exercise your rights as I have done as published on apples vet own website.

http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

There are far too many of us affected for this to be a coincidence or consumer caused problem, I had a 16gb white 4s purchased in July 2013 and wifi was completely greyed out no matter what fixes I was advised to try.

I have been successful in my claim and am now in receipt of a brand new iPhone 5, this was provided to me by the phone shop I signed my O2 contract with last year.

Good luck and persevere

Lessig went back to ask a question and found that the post had been deleted, so he re-posted it and that one got deleted also. It's not about spreading false information, Apple just doesn't want people to use the warranty route (for possibly a good reason, since they did end up replacing the above device and thereby possibly admitting that it's their problem).

Re: Another day, another anti-Apple story

[Wyatt Earp]

I manage 44 devices in building that use iOS7, this week I've had 108 wifi connection issues on those 44 devices and it's only Tuesday.

The 121 devices running Mac OS, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Linux that I manage have had 0 wifi connection issues.

Re: Another day, another anti-Apple story

[icebike]

You must be new here, /. has been anti apple since Android came out years ago

The question then is why was Lessig — who co-founded Creative Commons (and was a board member of the Free Software Foundation) using an iPhone in the first place?

You sort of expect just a little more dogfooding that that from a pontificater like Lessig.