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Have Your iPhone 6 Repaired, Only To Get It Bricked By Apple (theguardian.com)
New submitter Nemosoft Unv. writes: In case you had a problem with the fingerprint sensor or some other small defect on your iPhone 6 and had it repaired by a non-official (read: cheaper) shop, you may be in for a nasty surprise: error 53. What happens is that during an OS update or re-install the software checks the internal hardware and if it detects a non-Apple component, it will display an error 53 and brick your phone. Any photos or other data held on the handset is lost – and irretrievable. Thousands of people have flocked to forums to express their dismay at this. What's more insiduous is that the error may only appear weeks or months after the repair. Incredibly, Apple says this cannot be fixed by any hard- or software update, while it is clearly their software that causes the problem in the first place. And then you thought FTDI was being nasty ...
Sell your bricked piece of shit and buy an Android phone, which does not have this problem.
Solved.
Probably to prevent hardware attacks on phone encryption
If Apple gets away with this we may see more vendors doing the same thing to the stuff we own.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It sounds like Apple fixed a security bug in an SU, closing a hole which allowed attackers to replace the touch ID sensor to gain access to user data. Had Apple not made this move, we'd instead be seeing an article about how Apple products are insecure and the NSA could get access to your secure date just by replacing some hardware components. Then everyone would be up in arms, demanding this exact software change, and complaining about how Apple is reactionary and not proactive in fixing security issues.
Of course, "Apple fixes vulnerabilities in iOS 9" is not really a catchy flambait title for an article.
This error occurs if the repair involves the TouchID sensor. Sense this stores data required for the fingerprint authentication, the device will refuse to function for security reasons if it thinks it's been tampered with, which seems to be a reasonable precaution for a device component that can authenticate you across the device and also external services including financial transactions.
A better option would be to instead disable TouchID if tampering is suspected, but this isn't a case of Apple just arbitrarily making iPhones not work if you get a third-party repair like the story suggests.
In the Apple world-view - you're just borrowing their property. Never mind you paid for it, it's still theirs and they retain 100% right to do anything to it at any time, and you just have to accept it. Because, you know, It Just Works. For them...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It doesn't matter.
Consumer law trumps any EULA, signed consensually or not.
Apple tried to only give you one year's warranty in the EU, the EU told them that's not how it works. Now everybody gets a "free" 2-year warranty. Amazing, that, given that's its compulsory under EU law on such goods.
Just because you signed something, just because Apple says something, just because they can point at a line on a piece of paper, does NOT mean that's the end of the matter. By far.
Pay the $99/year extortion/insurance that is AppleCare, and always have your phone fixed by Apple under warranty. Then if it gets bricked, it's Apple's fault and you get a new phone. The one thing I've found that Apple does best is customer service.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The provisions for the FTC and the resultant class action provisions could get expensive.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Never fails to amuse when people "lose all their photos".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Personally, I don't trust the updates that come out for my Samsung phone. My last phone had the GPS functionality reduced by an official upgrade. There were other things after that upgrade that were removed causing me to loose some data. I now will not install the upgrade that has been in the notification bar for the last year. I am planning on putting Cyanogenmod on there because I do trust them to do upgrades that are good for the customer. But the official ones from Sprint and Samsung, no-way. If the Apple fans stopped trusting their beloved company perhaps they would be in a better position. Of course it isn't as easy to mod the Apple and still have access to the apps, so they are more stuck because of their initial decision.
On a side note, I trust Microsoft even less and never install their updates on my system. I have less fear from viruses and malware than I do from the update coming from Redmond. And with the amount of spying being built into their recent versions of their OS they have become a gaming system only for me. If I want to have a work computer to do things on, it will be Linux. If I want to play games on my big screen tv, I can use Windows. I guess I'm not too worried about them spying on which game I am playing. As the linux gaming environment improves perhaps that will change, but it still seems that the video cards work better and Windows.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Apple has made it abundantly clear that they are selling a *secure* device. Always on encryption, etc etc.
How would you expect such a device to behave when it is compromised with unauthorized components? A phone with 3rd party components could do pretty much *anything*, including sending everything on the device to an unknown third party, without your knowledge or consent.
Heck, this sort of "problem" just makes me appreciate Apple's commitment to security even more.
My only complaint is that the phone doesn't brick soon enough. It should brick itself immediately upon the next boot up.
The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance.
There is clearly an implied warranty that updates won't be malicious, even after the warranty period. The phone wasn't damaged by the consumer - Apple chose to brick it willingly. Even if the phone was out of warranty, they don't have the right to purposefully damage it, any more than a car company can claim lack of responsibility because an oil change was done at a competitor, unless they can show that the product's failure was because of the competitor's actions.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
This was a case of an un-authorized service which creates a security hole.
That's not bricking. Bricking would be MS rendering components in the computer or the entire computer unusable.
RTFA ass-hole. No one serviced the fucking iPhone, it stopped working after the update. Person dropped phone, screen had hairline crack but phone still worked, phone got update, error 53. Phone still under warranty, no one touched it, but Apple will not repair or replace. Some customer service there.
“I was in the Balkans covering the refugee crisis in September when I dropped my phone. Because I desperately needed it for work I got it fixed at a local shop, as there are no Apple stores in Macedonia. They repaired the screen and home button, and it worked perfectly.”
Zoom in.
RTFA ass-hole. No one serviced the fucking iPhone
I got it fixed at a local shop
Closer.
No one serviced the fucking iPhone
fixed at a local shop
Pan left on the suspect and zoom again.
ass-hole
There we go!
First I've heard of this. I have a very small side business replacing batteries, headphone jacks, buttons, screens in mobile devices -- I have the factory tools and know where to get the parts. I don't really make any money off it. I got into it mostly from being offended by the electronic waste these devices represent. A handheld shouldn't become useless just because a $3 part has failed, and the cost to fix through regular channels should not approach 50 - 100% of the replacement cost.
But if Apple is going to brick the device after I've fixed it, I can't in good faith make the attempt. Instead, I'll have to recommend that the customer buy something else -- something actually repairable.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I must disagree.
There are two distinct scenarios: upgrades and repairs.
If you end up replacing every component in your PC over time, it's legitimate to say that it's a new computer. In practice, it's tied to the motherboard.
On the other hand, if you just replace the motherboard with an identical model (or similar, they don't care about those details), you can speak to a support person and they'll activate the new board for you in a minute.
You're still free, however, to either put some of the old components back so that that's no longer the case, or boot Linux on the thing instead.
Or buy another Windows license, or call Microsoft and tell them what happened......
There are plenty of options in the Windows case that aren't available in the iOS case.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I think you would be really hard-pressed to get a refusal to activate from a MS phone-rep, so long as your license is verifiably valid (and even in some cases when it's not valid, as you got scammed online).
Apple always gets away with it and the other vendors don't follow, because they don't have customers who will eat up anything.
Let me give you an example just from my experience. My 3rd iPhone 4S in a row has failed in the same exact way: wifi/gps disabled. Just do a quick google about the "grayed out wifi" problem, you will find thousands of posts and also a lot of iPhone 4/4S phones on ebay with that fault. Only the first of the 3 failed within warranty in my case and all three where always in an office and used once a week for testing/debugging (that's why I kept replacing it, I test on various devices). People have actually pinpointed the problem: the overheat detection of the wifi/gps module fails and the software disables it. In fact, this disabling was a "feature" introduced with iOS 6 IIRC, so people who had stayed with iOS 5 did not get the issue. For any other company there would have been a recall, since it would have been an easy class action otherwise, and even a software patch would fix it. But apple is happy with customers getting a new phone and their average customer doesn't mind much.
Ooh, another example, my boss, who you would call a dedicated Apple fan, had bought a mac mini 5-6 years ago. After 6 months it started killing his keyboards. He went through a few expensive/fancy keyboards before figuring out it was the mac mini and so he took it to the Apple store (Manhattan) where they diagnosed a faulty MB and told him it would take a week to have it replaced. He left it there, got a call about a delay and finally went to get it almost two weeks later. Instead of returning a fixed mac mini they told him they had voided the warranty because they found "dust" inside!!! And the only solution they offered was a 10%-off a new mac mini!!! And he took it!!! Bought the same thing, at a 10% discount!!! He didn't even flinch, I mean, I only found out because I asked, he did not find it interesting enough to mention. My jaw dropped when I heard it, I told him there is no such thing as warranty voided because of "dust", that if the device maker thinks they should not have dust they put a little filter in the computer intake (I do that in my custom builds), that a 6-month old mac mini in a no-pet no-smoke office would not have any dust anyway (and even if it did, why would it fail when decade old dusty components work fine). For all my arguments his response was "the apple genius told me my warranty is voided there is nothing I can do". He actually believed they were right. Even after I showed him the warranty which of course does not mentions dust he though they were right somehow...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
There is the possibility that Apple discovered some TLAs have been fucking with their TouchID and using it to steal fingerprints/bypass TouchID.
Otherwise, Apple typically prefers to have good user interaction rather than bad interaction, and they have to know that if they brick enough people's devices, it's going to be extremely bad press, and reduce the chances of people immediately upgrading when new versions come out - which is a number they really like to keep as high as possible!
To balance that bad press, against people hacking TouchIDs, and them falling on the "lets keep it secure" side, I can see that happening.
The iPhone 5S uses the same concept, of touchID in the home button. However, when you change the button on the 5S, you don't brick the phone.
Apple has some good concepts, but I've spent nearly ten years driving myself nuts trying to find ways to fix devices that they make difficult to repair for no reason. I document that on a YouTube channel I've been posting starting two years ago. https://www.youtube.com/playli...
This is the most blatant middle finger to the independent repair community, and the customer who wants to fix their old one vs. buy a new one, that I have ever seen. It makes sense to increase the bottom line by creating devices that brick themselves when common parts are repaired outside of Apple. I get it, there are a lot of shitty iPhone screens out there... and a lot of shitty repair people. I've talked about it for years. The reality is that there would probably be less shitty parts out there if Apple didn't go above and beyond to make it impossible to repair their products. If I told you the crap I had to go through to get anything in good condition that was original to repair their products, you'd laugh... but it's true.
Buttons break all the time.
I agree. Think of it this way, Apple are trying to push Apple pay which makes use of the system security provided by the fingerprint scanner (the private keys for apple pay are split between the fingerprint scanner chip and the crypto engine chip on the motherboard, so that compromising one chip doesn't reveal the whole key).
At present, the OS will disable apple pay when it finds that the finger print scanner fails to negotiate key exchange correctly; this potentially ends up with a tech support call to apple, or a social media posting saying, "why does my apple pay keep screwing up?".
Now consider what happens when there are a large number of field-repaired phones with knock-off fingerprint scanners. They appear to work fine, but some features are broken in subtle ways. The customer is confused; they may not relate it to the repair they had done; it creates an impression of an unreliable product and an expensive customer support nightmare. Clearly, apple want to stop this before it becomes endemic.
With the OS doing a full power-on self test on the security infrastructure, such a fault would be detected at the first reboot after the damage occurred, or after a repair using an incorrect part was performed. The security failure can now be easily attributed to the damage/repair, even by users of social media and journalists. This ensures that repairers don't perform half-assed repair jobs which can lead to incomplete or faulty operation (on what is marketed as a premium product).