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iOS 11.3.1 Fixes Bug Where Third-Party Screen Repairs Made iPhone 8 Touchscreens Stop Working (gizmodo.com)
The latest version of iOS 11.3.1 includes a fix for an issue where people who use third-party repair services to replace their displays had their devices become unresponsive. According to release notes, "iOS 11.3.1 improves the security of your iPhone or iPad and addresses an issue where touch input was unresponsive on some iPhone 8 devices because they were serviced with non-genuine replacement displays." Gizmodo reports: Retailers and customers alike suspected that Apple was deliberately letting the issue and other malfunctions that arose from replacing other components go unresolved in some sort of ploy to pressure customers into paying for officially licensed repair services that are more expensive. It's possible that some users indeed were forced to shell out a fair chunk of change to Apple for official repairs, in which case they might justifiably be angry that this was an issue that could be resolved with an update. iOS 11 was notoriously buggy after its release, and Apple has devoted so much effort to bug-fixing that this year's iOS 12 update will reportedly have fewer new features. Though Apple says the 11.3.1 fix will work, it also warned people to please not use third-party repair shops: "Note: Non-genuine replacement displays may have compromised visual quality and may fail to work correctly. Apple-certified screen repairs are performed by trusted experts who use genuine Apple parts. See support.apple.com for more information."
Apple knew exactly what they were doing.
OS 11.3.1 Fixes Bug Where Third-Party Screen Repairs Made iPhone 8 Touchscreens Stop Working
... so all the screaming of bloody murder over Apple doing this deliberately to hurt people who use 3rd party spares was completely unwarranted. I suppose we'll have to going back to sharpening our teeth now in preparation for the next feeding frenzy.
So could a repair guy install a modded screen that also captures PIN-code data and exfiltrates it, now?
This might come in handy around DC and such.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
iTunes.
"Note: Non-genuine replacement displays may have compromised visual quality and may fail to work correctly. Apple-certified screen repairs are performed by trusted experts who use genuine Apple parts. See support.apple.com for more information."
if you didn't arse rape your customers on the repair cost then perhaps more would go the "genuine" path.
Is that like the "geniuses" at the "genius bar"?
maybe if Apple was really cracking down on 3rd party parts use they would have...
If they had done any of those things they would probably have ended up in serious trouble, perhaps not in the US but in the EU almost certainly. However with what happened they can accomplish the same goal without all the legal problems. Now everyone knows that non-apple repairs might be detected and disabled at any time in the future, entirely by "accident" of course, and while those "bugs" might be fixed you could be without a phone for a few weeks and who whats to chance that?
Of course it is entirely possible that this was as represented - a genuine bug - but it seems like a somewhat unlikely one to have occurred by accident. I'm also very suspicious of any "accident" where a company reaps significant financial benefit at the expense of competitors.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Very true, but I'm having an extremely hard time seeing how incompetence can adequately explain detecting and disabling non-apple displays.
Apple SUES iPhone screen repair shop and LOSES!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They even get the FBI involved, in preventing LEGIT parts being imported, and being classified as COUNTERFEIT even if they are 100% the same.
Come on Woz, as an electronics dude who cut his teeth on hacking he has to be ashamed of Cook today.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
dude, some people live 1000 miles from an apple repair shop, or some countries dont even have them at all (enemies of usa)
Let me remind you of the 90s, Apple sold DRAM modules at 3x retail prices as it was 'genuine'.
This is why they are making their own LCD factory so no one will be able to fix it then... https://www.popularmechanics.c...
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This is nonsense. Apple is / sells quite a closed ecosystem hardware-wise, which keeps the number of possible components low and system stability relatively high. Yes, they fsck up, but having used devices from both major worlds even on a medium-enterprise scale they are quite ahead of the diverse and open world android.
This said, Apple is under no obligation to test their releases against 3rd party modifications of their devices. This would be a cat-and-mouse game they can only lose. It think from a software-development perspective this is a sound decision. Either test against as many foreign hardware / modifications as possible and sell this, or only test against the low number of well known hardware / modifications and sell this.
There is no middle ground.
Now there still is the elephant of software quality in the closed china shop of Apple, but that's a different topic.
This headline makes it sound like the third party screens were responsible for the problem, when it was Apple being a bunch of self-righteous assholes and ignoring the law.
What law precisely did they break? Please be specific. They cannot legally prevent you from modifying your phone but there is no requirement that they support or cooperate with you in doing so. Seems fair to me as long as everyone understands that arrangement going in. If you want to figuratively speaking void the warranty, knock yourself out. If you want Apple's help then you had better play by their rules. If you don't like their rules buy something else. It's not like Apple is a monopoly.
Nobody's claiming it's an Apple-made screen.
OS 11.3.1 Fixes Bug Where Third-Party Screen Repairs Made iPhone 8 Touchscreens Stop Working
This headline makes it sound like the third party screens were responsible for the problem, when it was Apple being a bunch of self-righteous assholes and ignoring the law.
It's NEVER just a simple thing with Apple, as far as you Haters are concerned, is it? It ALWAYS just HAS to be some anti-competitive, evil, money-sucking PLOT, right???
You're just fucking RIDICULOUS.
GTFO, COWARD!
Right. If it's not an Apple-made screen, there's no reason to think Apple tested anything with it. Since Apple doesn't publish compatibility specs, nobody knows if any given non-Apple screen will work right. The repair shop can test to see if it works before handing it back, but any change in the iPhone could introduce a new incompatibility. So far, nothing's Apple's fault (except possibly not publishing specs).
That means that, when you have an iPhone in an unknown but currently working state, you don't change anything. You leave the iPhone as it is. If you were to, say, upgrade the OS, it might encounter an incompatibility that previously didn't matter.
Apple's not being real friendly to third-party repair shops or individuals, but beyond that it's hard to see what Apple should be required to do. Sell genuine Apple parts? How many people are going to go for a third-party part because it's cheaper anyway? Publish compatibility specs? That limits the improvements Apple can make in the future. Be careful not to break anything already working? Not really possible, as you never know what might trigger an incompatibility, and it rules out possible optimizations. Test against all third-party parts they can get their hands on currently and in the future? Not going to happen.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes