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Apple Releases iOS 9.3.1 With Fix For Unresponsive Links

Posted by msmash on from the squashing-bugs,-bringing-happiness dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple, on Thursday, rolled out a minor update to iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices. The update, dubbed iOS 9.3.1, brings with it a fix for a software glitch that caused many apps -- including Safari, and Chrome -- to freeze and crash when trying to open a link. The issue was related to Universal Link, a feature Apple first introduced with iOS 9. Many reported that some apps including Booking.com were abusing this capability, causing the Universal Link database to overload.

36 comments

  1. They have, have they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just checked. My phone says it's up to date with the 9.3 version.

  2. booking.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    crashing.YEAH!

  3. Found a bug and fixed it. by jellomizer · · Score: 0, Troll

    Oh wait, The Linux/Android Zealots and Microsoft apologists want to make fun of those pompous Apple Fanboys.

    Never mind why 2 or 3 time a week when I do an apt-get upgrade there are new patches to apply. Because that is Linux and we get fixes to problems.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Their QA department somehow missed that iOS 9.3 made it so that links broke in the mobile browser.

      How do you miss that? How shoddy do your testing practices have to be to miss that you've broken LINKS?!

      I don't recall the last time Android broke something so fundamental to the smart phone experience. Remember when Apple's plan was that all apps on iOS were going to be webapps? And they can't even take to the time to see if LINKS still work?!!

      So, yeah, I'd say Apple fully deserves mocking in this instance.

    2. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by John+Bokma · · Score: 1

      "some apps including Booking.com were abusing this capability,". So yeah.

      --

      Perl Programmer for hire
    3. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't all links. I have yet to encounter a link that caused this issue. I think this is an edge case that got missed. Bugs happen, it is software after all.

    4. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Their QA department somehow missed that iOS 9.3 made it so that links broke in the mobile browser.

      How do you miss that? How shoddy do your testing practices have to be to miss that you've broken LINKS?!

      No, links were not broken. Certain apps broke it by being stupid about how it does things.

      What happens is some apps allow deep linking - so you can browse in Safari and then have a link open in an app. Perhaps you're shopping on Amazon and if you have the Amazon app, it will allow you to view the link in the Amazon app instead of just opening the page. The deep link will tell the Amazon app to not show its normal front page, but to go directly what the user was looking at. So if you did a search for an item, it would open with the search results.

      The problem was, you're supposed to list the URLs you allow, using wildcards if necessary. Some apps, like Booking.com, instead enumerated EVERY link on their website and told the OS to use that, rather than wildcard linking. So the file they presented to the OS was around 2.8MB of URLs.

      The problem is when the OS URL handler started looking through, well, it was not supposed to be presented with lists of thousands of URLs, which caused it to crash.

      So yeah, the links worked, just some apps broke it. So of course it would pass QA because it was only stupidly coded apps that broke. The affected apps have been removed.

    5. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh wait, The Linux/Android Zealots and Microsoft apologists want to make fun of those pompous Apple Fanboys.

      Never mind why 2 or 3 time a week when I do an apt-get upgrade there are new patches to apply. Because that is Linux and we get fixes to problems.

      Says the pompous Apple Fanboy ... who doesn't seem to realize that a tool like apt-get updates virtually every piece of software running on a Linux system.

      From the O.S. itself to things like Adobe Flash, Mozilla Firefox, Oracle Java, and Open/Libre Office, is it any wonder that apt-get updates so often?

      If I counted the updates coming from the App Store the same way you're counting updates from apt-get, I would say my iPad gets daily "fixes."

    6. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it was just one app that broke it, one not just remove the app? Why does iOS need to be updated to fix the behavior of a buggy app? Isn't the App Store supposed to be curated, blocking misbehaving apps from ever making it to a user's phone?

      Your answer still means Apple is incredibly bad at software QA.

    7. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by macs4all · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Their QA department somehow missed that iOS 9.3 made it so that links broke in the mobile browser.

      The reason it didn't get caught was that only a very few websites try to cram multi-MEGABYTES of "related-links" data down a browser's throat when the user simply clicked on a single link.

      So, howabout you share some of that copious hatred for the stupid-ass web developer that thought it was ok to send every URL on the interwebs (yes, I know that's much more than a few MB) to your browser just because the user clicked on a single link.

    8. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by macs4all · · Score: 0

      If it was just one app that broke it, one not just remove the app? Why does iOS need to be updated to fix the behavior of a buggy app? Isn't the App Store supposed to be curated, blocking misbehaving apps from ever making it to a user's phone?

      Your answer still means Apple is incredibly bad at software QA.

      Because, you frickin' nitwit, it wasn't an issue until Apple added the "Universal Links" feature to iOS.

      So, do you want Apple to now do a code-review of every possible App ALREADY IN THE STORE to see if it is abusive in this manner?

      And besides, I don't think it was the APP's fault anyway; it is the (e.g .booking.com) WEBSITE's behavior that who's behavior is outside all reason. And Apple has no control over that. So they had no choice but to patch the OS to handle the ridiculous data-flooding.

    9. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by mr_java66 · · Score: 0

      correct. How and Why do they enjoy doing it.

    10. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      The reason it didn't get caught was that only a very few websites try to cram multi-MEGABYTES of "related-links" data down a browser's throat when the user simply clicked on a single link.

      I've never run into this bug, myself. Having said that - someone, somewhere in the QA chain, really should've been thinking about edge cases.

      Operating under the expectation that everyone will play nicely with your services is what led to stuff like Heartbleed.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    11. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wait, you're saying a WEBSITE is capable of breaking LINKS in the browser, simply by having the user visit it?!

      That's EVEN MORE DAMNING to Apple than just some rogue app breaking things!

      You don't do QA, do you? One of the first things any QA guy worth their salt does when generating tests is generate a purposely large dataset to ensure that nothing breaks if some idiot tries to store the Library of Congress into any input the program accepts. What happens if I decide my iCloud password is the entire text of War and Peace? Do text messages break?

      There should be a limit to the amount of data allowed, and if that limit is exceeded, then the program should handle the error gracefully.

      Not break links in everything that can process them.

      So, again - what the hell is wrong with Apple's QA department that they missed this?!!

    12. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not a website, an app installed on the device.

    13. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So uninstall the app and make the app fix it. Why does this require an iOS update to fix?

    14. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Cimexus · · Score: 1

      Only specific apps. I have been using iOS 9.3 on both iPhone and iPad since the day of release and have had no issues whatsoever. Their testing can't account for every possible combination of apps that people have installed, I guess.

    15. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The apps weren't buggy, it was iOS. iOS shouldn't be parsing the links in a manor that would freeze and then crash. That's incredibly poor design. It should even be able to process more links than can fit in memory since it's reading them from the file system.

      The apps weren't playing nice, but as long as iOS never stated a maximum limit on the number of links, the apps weren't doing anything wrong.

    16. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      "So of course it would pass QA because it was only stupidly coded apps that broke."

      Assuming well-formed input from a source you do not control is at minimum QA failure, and potentially a security risk.

    17. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Any other app could still create a unexpectedly large list of allowed URLs, then you'd have the same problem over and over again.

      While they could add a check in App Review to look at the size of hr URL list, it would also be prudent to also update the OS to better handle unexpected input.

    18. Re:Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      iOS shouldn't be parsing the links in a manor

      I agree. iOS should be doing it in a hovel.

    19. Re: Found a bug and fixed it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Missed a bug = incredibly bad at QA? I missed a button once five years ago. I don't think I'm incredibly bad at dressing. Seriously, you might be over exaggerating just a bit.

  4. Finally! by marklark · · Score: 3, Funny

    How could they take so long?!?

    1. Re:Finally! by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

      just wait until your phone manufacturer has to customize it for their phone and wait on the carriers to approve it. iphone 8 will come out before it happens oh wait...............

    2. Re:Finally! by DutchSter · · Score: 1

      Installing it on my brand new AT&T iPhone SE right now...

    3. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Longer than you think. This was broken in 9.2.1, and - if you happened to be caught by it before it became widespread public knowledge - then a simple search revealed people on the Apple support forums who have been complaining about it for many weeks now. So it's not a 9.3-release-to-fix, it's a several-weeks-of-bitching-users-then-fix turnaround...

  5. One thing I wish they had fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    is the "link" Safari will generate for something that looks like a phone number. It took me forever to figure out that it wasn't some bug where it was treating a real html link as a phone number, but that it was creating its own 'call button' for any unlinked series of digits that looked like a US phone number. It was only by the third incidence or so of going to a non-Apple device to look at the page that I finally realized the page provider wasn't offering any further information.

    Stupid, I know, but I blew at least an hour of my life on that.

    1. Re: One thing I wish they had fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The solution to that is obvious. Apple should create a HTML extension tag and coerce everyone into using it.

    2. Re: One thing I wish they had fixed by macs4all · · Score: 0

      The solution to that is obvious. Apple should create a HTML extension tag and coerce everyone into using it.

      Ah, the Microsoft way of "following" standards.

  6. It wasn't just the links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's more than the links not opening. I'm saying "is" because I have yet to get on WiFi and apply the patch to my device. In fact, functionality in many apps is affected. If the search engine in safari is Google then links don't open at all. If the search engine is switched to Bing then links open at first but may not open later on pages. More annoyingly, some apps take forever to open (e.g., Game Center). Links in Facebook Pages, the Twitter embedded browser, and other apps also don't open and those apps freeze. Can't open any podcast in Podtrac.

  7. Re: Yeah. links working again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You could have said the same thing without promoting your site, but I suspect that was the entire point.

  8. Re:Yeah. links working again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The golden rule of Slashdot is once your link is present, your site goes down due to traffic. It might not in your case because you clearly are just trying to lure people to your site. It's a bit pathetic that you have to do that in a way other than promoting the site content.

  9. Facebook app opens and closes immediately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have 6S+ iPhone and yesterday i have upgraded to 9.3.1. When ever I try to open facebook app, it opens and immediately closes. I hope someone might have reported the similar issue.

  10. Real Racing 3 is crashing on iOS 9.3.1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's it: Real Racing 3 just crashes back to home screen since I've installed the latest version of the operating system. Any clues?

    Thanks.