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

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.

Comments

User's Fault

[avandesande]

You are clicking the links the wrong way!

Hooray for Agile development!

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Re:Hooray for Agile development!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

Re:Hooray for Agile development!

[Anonymous Coward]

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/

Re:Hooray for Agile development!

[Luthair]

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.

Re:Hooray for Agile development!

[tlhIngan]

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.

Re:Hooray for Agile development!

[sydbarrett74]

My 2006 MacBook lasted ten years.

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

Re:Hooray for Agile development!

[jittles]

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.

Is it somehow dependent on the search engine?

[93 Escort Wagon]

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

Re:Apple Feature!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Apple Feature!

[macs4all]

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?

Re:Apple Feature!

[anegg]

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.

Re:Apple Feature!

[HatofPig]

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.