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Clicking on Links in iOS 9.3 Can Crash Your iPhone and iPad (apple.com)

Posted by msmash on from the don't-click-on-that-link dept.

Reader lxrocks writes: Many users are experiencing an issue with their iPhone and iPad wherein trying to open a link on Safari, Mail, Chrome or any other app causes it to freeze and crash. The issue renders any type of search with Safari as useless as none of the links returned will open. The wide-spread issue -- for which there's no known workaround just yet -- seems to be affecting users on both iOS 9.2 and iOS 9.3. Apple has acknowledged the issue and says it will release a fix "soon." There's no official word on what's causing the issue, but a popular theory with developers is that the glitch has something to do with Universal Links, a feature Apple first introduced with iOS 9. It appears some apps, such as Booking.com, are abusing this capability, causing the Universal Link database to overload.

64 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. User's Fault by avandesande · · Score: 5, Funny

    You are clicking the links the wrong way!

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  2. Hooray for Agile development! by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's interesting to see such a large company letting a bug like this slip by, especially in an operating system. You would think even with an Agile "ship it broken, we'll patch later" mentality, they would have armies of QA people and automated scripts banging away at every corner of the OS. Something like "clicking on any link in our bundled browser with JavaScript turned on crashes the application" seems to me like a showstopper bug.

    I'm all for getting stuff rolled out in a reasonable time frame, but core stuff like an operating system needs to be tested a lot more intensely than some social media/dating app. Not everyone is connected 24/7 with easy access to patches...the product I currently do systems engineering work for is used almost exclusively in offline environments.

    1. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by phishybongwaters · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Also known as the Apple model of hardware development. Ship it now, offer a fix in 4 months for the shoddy work, then discontinue support for your 7 month old phone and release a new one.

    2. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Informative

      I suspect this is an intermittent bug. Anecdotally my wife and I have been on 9.3 for at least a week or two and have had no problems. This might be one of those things that slipped by because it's really hard to reproduce.

      That said, I have not been impressed with Apple's software quality in the last couple of years. I don't know if it's because it got a lot more complicated when it went 64-bit or if it's because when Steve was here he cracked the whip a lot harder, but I've definitely witnessed a lot more silliness in the software recently. iOS 9.x was supposed to be the bug-fix version, but I ain't seeing it.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    3. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Got an example of Apple discontinuing support for *any* 7 month old product? Even just one? Or are you just doing a mindless, 'they do it, too' post?

    4. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The bug won't express itself unless you have an app that ignores the wild-card capabilities of the Universal Link associations, *and* has a huge number of links defined (such as the Booking.com app which did their definitions in *exactly* the wrong way, having a defined link to each hotel, rather than '.../hotel/*').

      The underlying code does need to be fixed, but the sort of thing needed to expose it is exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't expect to run across, and therefore probably wouldn't think to test against.

      There's more details here:
      http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/03/poorly-behaved-app-causing-crashes-and-link-problems-for-some-ios-9-x-users/

    5. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by Luthair · · Score: 2

      Anecdotes are fun. My 2010 macbook pro lasted 4-years and needed 2 new power cords in that time, my thinkpad from the same time is still fine and hasn't needed anything.

    6. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      +5 informative

    7. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      [...] my thinkpad from the same time is still fine and hasn't needed anything.

      How many PCs still command a premium in the used market? Not many.

    8. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      It's interesting to see such a large company letting a bug like this slip by, especially in an operating system. You would think even with an Agile "ship it broken, we'll patch later" mentality, they would have armies of QA people and automated scripts banging away at every corner of the OS. Something like "clicking on any link in our bundled browser with JavaScript turned on crashes the application" seems to me like a showstopper bug.

      No, it's because of the way the OS works with apps (which are sandboxed).

      Basically when you install an app, it can register URLs so you can deep link into the app. So for example, you could have a Google search app, and if you did your search using Safari and Google, you could click a link to pass the view to the Google Search app directly which would take you to the results page immediately of the app, as if you use the app the whole time.

      There are other examples, like being able to enter an artists' name and being able to see all the songs by the artist for sale in the iTunes store, or the ability to repeat the search for songs you own by that artist, again by the Music app.

      The problem is, while the system supports wildcards, apps like Booking.com decided to enumerate every single URL in a huge 2.8MB table. End result is when searching for a handler for the URL, the OS dispatching the URL crashes because it was created with the assumption that the URL table would be fairly small (maybe a few hundred entries). Not thousands or tens or thousands of entries.

    9. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by tootired · · Score: 1

      I updated to 9.3 on day one. The bug hit me yesterday (28th) at around noon.

    10. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      The Mactard over-valuation of used Apple gear with old, generic components.

      Other World Computing has great prices for used Macs.

      http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Apple_Systems/Used/Macs_and_Tablets/

    11. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      If I buy quality gear that's good for a decade, why would I want to sell it?

      My 2006 MacBook has a 32-bit processor. Most Mac developers don't compile for 32-bit OS X, making software and updates difficult to find. However, it runs Windows 10 great (see YouTube link below). If you want quality hardware to run Windows, get an older Mac.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJw8aSxEFwQ

      Such is the thought processes of Mtards.

      That's the thought process of a Window retard who can't get pass smelling his own underwear and thinking it smell like roses.

    12. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by macs4all · · Score: 1

      It's interesting to see such a large company letting a bug like this slip by, especially in an operating system. You would think even with an Agile "ship it broken, we'll patch later" mentality, they would have armies of QA people and automated scripts banging away at every corner of the OS. Something like "clicking on any link in our bundled browser with JavaScript turned on crashes the application" seems to me like a showstopper bug.

      I'm all for getting stuff rolled out in a reasonable time frame, but core stuff like an operating system needs to be tested a lot more intensely than some social media/dating app. Not everyone is connected 24/7 with easy access to patches...the product I currently do systems engineering work for is used almost exclusively in offline environments.

      If you develop software, then you know how easy it is to fall into a "testing rut". You put together test data/round-up the URLs of some sites, and use those during your Development.

      Who would suspect that some stupid web-developer at the other end would try and shove megabytes worth of "link" data down your throat when you so much as clicked on a SINGLE LINK?

      This was an corner-case, clearly.

    13. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Apple have lately had a pretty big string of shoddy QA/QC on their products. Remember when a software update disabled all those brand new iPhone 6/6+s? They're supporting a very small number of platforms and struggling to test them all. How many iPhone alarm clock bugs were there? It was year after year. Time changes, new years, leap years, all the boundary conditions any developer with half a brain would test.

      Easy for you to say. All software has bugs. Sometimes those bugs seem to go on forever. Happens on Every. Single. Platform.

      Stop simply hating and start thinking.

    14. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 2

      My 2006 MacBook lasted ten years.

      Survivor bias, pure and simple. I have at least 10 anecdotes contra ones like yours.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
    15. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by macs4all · · Score: 1

      a) databases by nature are suppose to handle 1000s of entires no problem. a 2.8MB database should be cake to search through; the code behind it shouldn't care how many entries are in the database or that it would take a bit longer than normal to find what it's looking for.

      The ONLY thing I will "fault" Apple on in this case is not limits-checking. It should reject new entries or throw an error when the table-size is exceeeded. But the rest of it is simply the fault of a web-developer that didn't know how to code THEIR side. Clearly, shoving 2.8 MB of "link data" to a mobile device is OBSCENELY bad-practice.

    16. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      Out of curiosity was this on an iPhone 5 or an iPhone 6? The reason I ask is I'm curious if this was the update they did last night, the one they rushed out because of bricking issues.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    17. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Survivor bias, pure and simple.

      My father got a new Dell box every other year because they were "crap" in his eyes. Did he run an anti-virus/spyware scanner? Nope. Did he defrag the hard drive? Nope. Did he stopped looking at the naughty bits on the Internet? Nope.

      I take those Dell boxes home, blow out the dust and reformat the hard drive. I used them for another five years before I recycle them.

    18. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by anegg · · Score: 1

      To be fair, it wasn't just a single exemplar listed. It was a series of different Apple products purchased, all of which seemed to last reasonably long in that person's experience.

      My experience with Apple products purchased for my personal use is similar, starting with the Mac Plus I purchased in 1987, followed by a Mac SE30 [1990], a PowerMac 7200 [1995], a PowerMac G4 QuickSilver [2001], a 24" iMac Core2 Duo 2009 (still in use), a Macbook Pro Late 2011 (still in use), and the machine I'm typing this on, a 27" iMac Late 2013. All of them were supplanted only when I got envious of new machines specs - all of them were perfectly functional when I stopped using them [all of which I (sadly) still have in my possession]. Along with a disk-based iPod from 2008, a disk-based iPod from 2009, two Gen 4 iPod Touches [passed down to kids], 2 iPod Nanos of differing vintages (bought for kids), and an iPod Shuffle (door prize); all of which are still functional (one of the disk-based iPods lived in my wife's minivan most of its life, and has been transferred to her new car as her music library on wheels).

      To be fair, my experience with quality business-class Windows/Intel computers that I have had in my hands primarily for work purposes has been similar, although the Windows/Intel computers seem to run out of steam as O/S upgrades are applied faster than the Apple products.

      I've heard about and seen some Apple products with shorter lifespans, but my overall experience is that they tend to hang in there (except for beige cases on older models yellowing in the sun, unfortunately).

    19. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by jittles · · Score: 2

      I suspect this is an intermittent bug. Anecdotally my wife and I have been on 9.3 for at least a week or two and have had no problems. This might be one of those things that slipped by because it's really hard to reproduce.

      That said, I have not been impressed with Apple's software quality in the last couple of years. I don't know if it's because it got a lot more complicated when it went 64-bit or if it's because when Steve was here he cracked the whip a lot harder, but I've definitely witnessed a lot more silliness in the software recently. iOS 9.x was supposed to be the bug-fix version, but I ain't seeing it.

      The issue is caused by the Booking.com app. How has slashdot picked up on this issue and not the source of the bug? It's been known for over 24 hours. Booking.com's app registers every single URL their website offers (for deep linking) instead of just booking.com This causes a crash when trying to parse the list of deep links. Apple has already acknowledged the issue and said they have to release an OS Patch to fix broken devices. Booking.com has already removed the troubled app and published a new one but those who already have the issue are screwed until Apple patches.

    20. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by barbariccow · · Score: 1

      a) databases by nature are suppose to handle 1000s of entires no problem. a 2.8MB database should be cake to search through; the code behind it shouldn't care how many entries are in the database or that it would take a bit longer than normal to find what it's looking for.

      The ONLY thing I will "fault" Apple on in this case is not limits-checking. It should reject new entries or throw an error when the table-size is exceeeded. But the rest of it is simply the fault of a web-developer that didn't know how to code THEIR side. Clearly, shoving 2.8 MB of "link data" to a mobile device is OBSCENELY bad-practice.

      I've sent much larger pictures that load just fine..

    21. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's a very well known corner case and one of the first things you're supposed to check for. When receiving any type of input, you write checks for missing input, massive input, and malformed input. If you're not always doing those things, you shouldn't call yourself a tester (really the developer should have handled all these first anyway). This is one of the most basic QA things you're taught in any decent software engineering degree. Never trust input!

      I seem to recall browsers having issues with long URLs in the news a few years ago.

    22. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by malditaenvidia · · Score: 1

      Not even Microsoft would deploy something as stupid as this.

    23. Re: Hooray for Agile development! by corychristison · · Score: 1

      The underlying code does need to be fixed, but the sort of thing needed to expose it is exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't expect to run across, and therefore probably wouldn't think to test against.

      Rule one of software development: users are stupid, never trust user input or data.

    24. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by CannonballHead · · Score: 1

      The underlying code does need to be fixed, but the sort of thing needed to expose it is exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't expect to run across, and therefore probably wouldn't think to test against.

      If your software testers aren't testing the cases people don't *normally* think to test against, then you should replace them with random non-software-tester users who will accidentally test those cases. ;)

      In other words, software testers are *supposed* to test the things you wouldn't normally think to test, at least in part of a test cycle, somewhere...

    25. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Not even Microsoft would deploy something as stupid as this.

      You never tried Windows 1.0 or 2.0? I heard those version suck donkey balls. Most people point to Windows 3.11 as being the first usable version of Windows.

    26. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by macs4all · · Score: 1

      It's a very well known corner case and one of the first things you're supposed to check for. When receiving any type of input, you write checks for missing input, massive input, and malformed input. If you're not always doing those things, you shouldn't call yourself a tester (really the developer should have handled all these first anyway). This is one of the most basic QA things you're taught in any decent software engineering degree. Never trust input!

      I seem to recall browsers having issues with long URLs in the news a few years ago.

      If you read my post again, you will notice that I never said that Apple was blameless in this. I know that you should never trust input data. And I assure you that the iOS OS Dev. That wrote the code for that feature knows that, too. To assume otherwise is patently ridiculous, and you know it, or should...

      But what I pointed out was that I know from experience that it is an "understandable" error. You can get up on your high-horse all you want; but if you have been coding (or testing) for more than a year, you have probably had errors crop up in code "in the field" that you just didn't anticipate. And, I'll bet that you sometimes went "Yeah, I probably shoulda checked for that."

      There's an old Engineering adage: "You can't make things foolproof; because fools are too clever."

    27. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by perryizgr8 · · Score: 1

      huge 2.8MB table

      Hahahahahahahh! Huge and 2.8MB do not go together in the same sentence! These are phones with gigabytes of RAM. Gigabytes of super-fast flash storage, and screaming octa-core CPUs. And system crash due to a puny 2.8 megabytes table?! Is this a fucking joke?

      --
      Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
    28. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 1

      The Macs I recycled had crapped-out hard drives, PSU's that went bust, USB ports that were defective, and so forth. They were 3-5 years old, and the owners opted to buy newer hardware rather than replace the offending component. It wasn't simply because the people were too lazy to run malware/virus scans. In fact, these users were typically more technically savvy than the average Windows user. So they would've troubleshot the more obvious symptoms themselves before consulting me.

      On average Apple hardware is probably of somewhat higher quality than your Best Buy budget box, but it had better be for the price premium. Do the components that go into a MacBook or Mac Pro have drastically longer MTBF's? Probably not. The price premium is largely down to the logo and the styling. Form over function and all that.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
    29. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      I'm strongly in the Apple camp, and most things they do are high quality. But you're right about power cords. Apple's are poor. The sleeving on the cable between the brick and the Mac is too thin and too soft, and it's always just a matter of time before it splits open. And they've been like that as long as I've had Macbooks.

    30. Re:Hooray for Agile development! by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      The underlying code does need to be fixed, but the sort of thing needed to expose it is exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't expect to run across, and therefore probably wouldn't think to test against.

      If your software testers aren't testing the cases people don't *normally* think to test against, then you should replace them with random non-software-tester users who will accidentally test those cases. ;)

      In other words, software testers are *supposed* to test the things you wouldn't normally think to test, at least in part of a test cycle, somewhere...

      And by "software testers" you obviously don't mean the developers from booking.com who didn't test the effects of their new app version?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  3. Is it somehow dependent on the search engine? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have DuckDuckGo set as my default, and I haven't seen this at all.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Is it somehow dependent on the search engine? by lgw · · Score: 1

      Well some of us don't like using search engines that spy on and sell users' queries to scummy marketing companies. Might as well just use Google.

      You have any basis for this accusation?

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  4. Apple Feature! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Nah, it's just that iPhones only have a fixed memory capacity, because Apple won't let its customers have a memory system that could handle a large database, so they fundamentally broke the database by crippling its ability to handle reasonable amounts of data in order that it not eat up the limited available storage required to let the unit continue to work in general. But that's okay, because Apple's customers clearly like that kind of treatment.

    I knew a lady like that once; she just couldn't really have the most fun unless she was quite thoroughly tied to the bed. I was perfectly okay with it. I tied her up, you bet. Apple's okay with it too. Both Apple and I enjoy such experiences, I assure you. We differ on one thing though; I use lube.

    1. Re:Apple Feature! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "In iOS 9, developers can take advantage of a feature called "Universal Links" to associate their apps with their websites. When their app is installed on your phone or tablet, links to those sites open up in their apps instead of in Safari as they normally would. It turns out that the app for travel site Booking.com crammed every single URL from its site into the list of associated links in its app

      OK. Stupid behavior on the part of an app developer. Fair enough.

      But there's a bigger problem here . . . this bizarre mindset of creating an "app" to do things that can be/should be done by an ordinary web browser. Why exactly do you need an "app" for Booking.com at all? Yes, I know, everyone likes to app while they app, so now it is fashionable to put apps in their apps so they can app while they app. (Yo Dawg!)

      But this is just fucking stupid, and it appears that this stupid fixation on "apps" is starting to come back to bite people in the ass.

    2. Re:Apple Feature! by macs4all · · Score: 2

      Customers like paying 30% of their payment to a company that's already making billions, what can you say?

      Human nature at it's finest.

      So how much, pray tell, would be an acceptable amount for Apple to charge Developers for hosting, payment acceptance, cataloging, and providing a storefront where ALL users of your target platform WILL (have) to come to for your Appy-App-Appness?

      Because AFAICT, pretty much ALL of the "App/Play Store" models take the same "cut". I think that MS was only charging 20%; but they were desperate for content.

      Oh, and there's a way around that "usurious" 30%. Just list your App for FREE. Apple will STILL do all those things above, and NOT charge you ANYTHING (30% of zero is...).

      So, why don't you just STFU and DIE, hater?

    3. Re:Apple Feature! by anegg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I myself am unamused at the proliferation of "apps" that don't do much more than a web site would do. I tend not to install them, and even uninstalled a few that I had installed because I found that I really didn't like the automatic switch from the web site to the app when I just wanted to use the web site (Amazon, for instance). Although I am not an expert in iOS app development, I suspect that an app gives the vendor the potential for much greater access to personal data on the device than just going through Safari. In some cases the app may provide for a better user experience, but keeping vendors at arm's length through the browser seems more secure to me.

    4. Re:Apple Feature! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Just list your App for FREE. Apple will STILL do all those things above, and NOT charge you ANYTHING (30% of zero is...).

      IIRC, App developers need to pay the annual $100 fee for the Apple Developer Program to keep their app listings on iTunes. No membership, no listings. For some developers, it's a high price for a free app with in-app purchases.

    5. Re:Apple Feature! by wbo · · Score: 1

      That $100 gets you more than just being able to list apps in iTunes though. Among other things, it gives you 2 support incidents which you can use to get Apple to look at your code and tell you why something isn't working properly and how to fix it.

      Also, If the problem was caused by a bug in iOS then the support incident is credited back to your account. As far as I am aware, there is no way to submit a support incident without an active developer account.

      You also get access to the Apple developer forums which can be quite helpful and limited access to the Apple bug database for reporting and tracking bugs in iOS (production and beta releases.)

    6. Re:Apple Feature! by Altus · · Score: 1

      Thats not how this works. These apps are free apps. The customer does not pay for them... If you buy something through the app, even if you use apple pay, Apple doesn't get a cut. Apple only gets a cut of apps that cost money and in app purchases which are limited to payments for content used within the app (generally applicable to games and some utilities).

      Using an app to shop doesn't cost the user anything extra.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

    7. Re:Apple Feature! by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      There are honestly quite a few websites I'd use in place of the app if it wasn't for the constant messages "reminding" me that there's an app for the same thing. Plus Android's Chrome either doesn't support the notifications API or else hardly any developers do.

      Twitter's mobile website is, at the moment, actually better than their app. But I can't get it to tell me I've got DMs or mentions without manually going into it, and every time I go into it 1/5 of the screen is turned into an annoying "BTW you should install the Twitter app!" box. Every time.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    8. Re:Apple Feature! by HatofPig · · Score: 2

      I suspect that an app gives the vendor the potential for much greater access to personal data on the device than just going through Safari.

      My suspicions precisely. It's weird how, on the desktop, it's the web browser that spies on me. Yet on mobile, the web browser is one of the few apps I trust.

      --
      Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
    9. Re:Apple Feature! by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      So how much, pray tell, would be an acceptable amount for Apple to charge Developers for hosting, payment acceptance, cataloging, and providing a storefront where ALL users of your target platform WILL (have) to come to for your Appy-App-Appness?

      Don't forget ongoing maintenance.

      Because there are plenty of developers who balked at Google's 30% cut, set up their own e-commerce server by installing Ubuntu on some VM hosting account and that's it, using Paypal or even their own processor.

      And then you get stuff like heartbleed (there are STILL VULNERABLE SERVERS out there...) shellshock, SQL injections, wordpress bugs, and all sorts of other problems, because the app developer just set it up let it go and it's been running like that unpatched for years.

      So yeah, letting apple take 30% to do the "un-fun" stuff of keeping the site secure, payment information secure, everything up to date, site online, hosting, e-commerce, etc? (And to be honest, if you're an app developer, you're probably not well versed enough in website security, e-commerce, etc., nevermind keeping personal information safe).

      Oh yeah, and letting users redownload your app at will.

      And technical support - if people have problems paying for your app, they call Apple, I'm sure you, Mr. App Developer, would rather work on your app than spend 3 hours daily telling people how to enter their credit card numbers on the form. (And I think it's even phone support, available 24/7).

    10. Re:Apple Feature! by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      First of all, what is it with this generations demand that they get everything for free?

      Secondly, the $99 membership is there to help increase the signal to noise ratio of the store. If $99 per annum is a significant hurdle, to you, then your app idea is so trivial no one wants it. Or you're a scammer who wants to keep opening new accounts as fast as Apple close them down.

      It's certainly not there because Apple wants to make money from it. It's a trivial amount, and probably doesn't cover the costs involved in the registration process (which involves screening) and the 2 support tickets.

      It's a hurdle. And I'm glad for every person who thinks it's too high to jump.

    11. Re:Apple Feature! by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      Not only that, back in the days of shrinked wrapped software, the developers used to see between 2-5% of the retail price of the software, once everyone else had made a cut. i.e. The publishers/sitributers/retailers combined slices came to 95-98%. And even in the early days of mobile downloads, the cut taken by distributors was around 45% if I remember correctly. (I was doing mobile apps 15 years ago)

      The people that complain about Apple's 30% cut are not app developers, and haven't got a clue about the industry. They are commenting from their bedrooms in their parents houses.

    12. Re:Apple Feature! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      First of all, what is it with this generations demand that they get everything for free?

      Most venues that allow you to create a software product often provides FREE listings. Then again, those are mostly open source projects.

      If $99 per annum is a significant hurdle, to you, then your app idea is so trivial no one wants it.

      If I create an awesome app to give away for FREE and I can't afford to pay the annual fee to maintain the listing, the app must OBVIOUSLY be trivial. That's the same shrink wrap argument that Microsoft made against Linux back in the day.

      And I'm glad for every person who thinks it's too high to jump.

      It's not high enough to prevent the bloatware of freeium apps that have flooded the app store. Apple should be charging $1,000 per year to keep out those TRIVIAL freeium apps. Especially the ones that corrupt your app data if you haven't paid a dime after a specified period of time.

    13. Re:Apple Feature! by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      I expect Linus or someone else in the community could afford $99 per year to host Linux somewhere, given that it's not trivial, and is actually worth something to many people.

      Thus your one example demonstrates my point.

      As to the existing "TRIVIAL freeium apps", that's the thing about improving signal to noise ratio. There is still noise to point to. But the noise would be a hell of a lot worse without noise reduction. This isn't even theoretical - see Android app stores that don't charge anything for listing.

    14. Re:Apple Feature! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      I expect Linus or someone else in the community could afford $99 per year to host Linux somewhere, given that it's not trivial, and is actually worth something to many people.

      Early versions of Linux (kernel) and many Linux distros since then were hosted for FREE on university FTP servers before the Internet became available to everyone and broadband replaced dial-up accounts.

      Thus your one example demonstrates my point.

      Uh, no. Put in another quarter and try again.

    15. Re:Apple Feature! by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      You fail the comprehension exercise.

    16. Re:Apple Feature! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      You failed to prove your point.

    17. Re:Apple Feature! by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      But there's a bigger problem here . . . this bizarre mindset of creating an "app" to do things that can be/should be done by an ordinary web browser.

      Yeah, why make a "Mail" app, when mail works just fine in the browser?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    18. Re:Apple Feature! by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      I expect Linus or someone else in the community could afford $99 per year to host Linux somewhere, given that it's not trivial, and is actually worth something to many people.

      Early versions of Linux (kernel) and many Linux distros since then were hosted for FREE on university FTP servers before the Internet became available to everyone and broadband replaced dial-up accounts.

      So the someone who could afford the hosting was the taxpayer, without being asked for the kindness. You are my hero.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    19. Re:Apple Feature! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      So the someone who could afford the hosting was the taxpayer, without being asked for the kindness.

      What's the purpose of an university funded by taxpayers? The FREE EXCHANGE of information. Much of the Internet was based on taxpayer-funded research done by university graduate students across the United States and around the world for the last 50 years.

      You are my hero.

      You're welcome.

    20. Re:Apple Feature! by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      So the someone who could afford the hosting was the taxpayer, without being asked for the kindness.

      What's the purpose of an university funded by taxpayers? The FREE EXCHANGE of information.

      So according to you, universities should host anything for free, including child pornography. You are everybody's hero.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    21. Re:Apple Feature! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      So according to you, universities should host anything for free, including child pornography.

      That's YOUR OPINION, not mine. Everyone knows that the child pornography websites are operated by the FBI. Your federal tax dollars at work.

      A Washington state school administrator has lost a high-profile bid to suppress evidence against him secured by the FBI during an operation in which it secretly ran one of the Internet's largest child pornography websites in order to catch its users.

      http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-childporn-idUSKCN0V72D5

  5. It just works? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It just works? or maybe not...

  6. Re:Link-Caption by wile_e_wonka · · Score: 1

    Since this page couldn't have existed yet when the story was submitted, I salute lxrocks as having superior /. talents.

  7. Funny that the article has a bad link by heezer7 · · Score: 1

    https://slashdot.org/techcrunc...

  8. Been noticing this on my iPhone 5 by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Thought it was me running out of storage.Happened with both iOS 9.2 and 9.3

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  9. never update by johncandale · · Score: 1

    This is why I never update iso. Updates are trash man. It's a portable sealed device, it's not like the hardware changed.

  10. Got a broken kink too by valinor89 · · Score: 1

    what is funny is that it appears the second link on this post is wrong too. from homepage returns 404 "glitch has something to do with Universal Links" => https://slashdot.org/techcrunc... from comments it appends the same link multiple times and opens the comments page https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... etc

    1. Re:Got a broken kink too by valinor89 · · Score: 1

      And a broken title too it seems

  11. Click Differently by scorp1us · · Score: 1

    that is all.

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    Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.