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Apple Updates All of Its Operating Systems To Fix App-crashing Bug (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fixing-things dept.

It took a few days, but Apple already has a fix out for a bug that caused crashes on each of its platforms. From a report: The company pushed new versions of iOS, macOS and watchOS to fix the issue, which was caused when someone pasted in or received a single Indian-language character in select communications apps -- most notably in iMessages, Safari and the app store. Using a specific character in the Telugu language native to India was enough to crash a variety of chat apps, including iMessage, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, Gmail and Outlook, though Telegram and Skype were seemingly immune.

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Form Over Function? by ytene · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My first Apple purchase was a Mac Mini with an Intel Core Duo CPU, 160Gb laptop HDD and (I think) 4Gb RAM. Since then I've purchased various other Apple devices (including iPods, iPads and an iPhone 7). According to my records, "Apple spend" has made up about 31% of my total hardware budget since the Mini.

    One thing I've noticed change at Apple over that period of time is that, since the passing of Steve Jobs, there has been a slow but steady decline in quality and reliability from Apple products. That's not to say that they were immune before he left us, just that there appears, subjectively, to be deterioration in QA over at Apple.

    I write this not as an Apple Fanboi nor an Apple Basher: my current iPad (Pro, 10") is probably the most-used piece of technology I've ever owned, but on the other hand last weekend saw me swearing in disbelief at my Mac Mini : having gone to it to update my iPhone and iPad software, I discovered that, somehow, iTunes had decided to unilaterally "lose" the artwork for about 20-25% of my music collection. Of 900 albums. I've already spent a good 90 minutes trying to repair that damage and have a *long* way to go yet...

    My experience to date has been that when I made my first Apple purchase, the company had a reputation for high prices but excellent quality. Today, the high prices remain but the quality appears to be disappearing rapidly. Issues with iTunes Artwork, iCloud replication, corruption of the iOS Address Book, a Mac Mini update that bricked the machine, iTunes that can't cope with it's media database on a network-connected drive; the list goes on - and that's just since Christmas 2017...

    Apple really needs to get back to basics. If it can't sell reliable product, then no matter how shiny it is, people won't buy.

    1. Re:Form Over Function? by Freischutz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One thing I've noticed change at Apple over that period of time is that, since the passing of Steve Jobs, there has been a slow but steady decline in quality and reliability from Apple products. That's not to say that they were immune before he left us, just that there appears, subjectively, to be deterioration in QA over at Apple.

      That's what the next OS release is supposed to be about, stability rather than new features. That said, you are not the only one who'd prefer them to decrease the interval between 'stability releases'. As for iTunes, it sucks, it has always sucked and god knows if they'll ever fix it but it does not suck even half as much as iBooks. You spend a large amount of time organising the PDFs you added, every other update seems to mess them up and there is no easy way to export the library.