“Continuing with their high profile interviews, Re/code’s Ina Fried and Walt Mossberg brought Apple’s VP of iPhone marketing Greg Joswiak up on stage today at their Code/Mobile event,” Cody Lee reports for iDownloadBlog. “The trio discussed a number of topics, including Apple Pay, Apple Watch and Apple’s recent software woes.”
Lee reports, “On iOS 8.0.1 [Joswiak said]: ‘It wasn’t the software itself it was the way it was distributed. We’re very sorry.'”
“This is perhaps the most interesting bit to me, as Apple took a lot of criticism over the bungled update,” Lee writes. “Within an hour of its release, and after thousands of users complained that the new software had crippled their iPhones, Apple pulled the software and announced it was working on a fix. That fix came a day later in the form of iOS 8.0.2.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, iOS 8.0.1 shouldn’t have been distributed to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices which it bricked? This “distribution” excuse doesn’t pass the smell test.
huh?
My thought exactly. How can distribution be the issue unless they released the wrong code?
Maybe Joswiak meant that the distribution code was corrupted?
Apple’s software update distribution system is supposed to detect the exact model of iDevice or Mac that you’re using, and select only those updates applicable to it. For some reason, iOS 8.0.1 was marked as “all models 4s or later, or iPad 2 or later” rather than excluding iPhone 6/6 Plus. THAT’s what he means by “distribution problem.”
Newsflash. It was the software. Wake up.
“It wasn’t the software itself it was the way it was distributed”
I hope they elaborate because this doesn’t make sense to me. iOS updates are verified against an Apple server before install, and again after install to activate it. Part of the install includes a check to ensure the device isn’t listed as stolen. This happens whether it’s downloaded through iTunes, on-device, or even via direct link in a browser. So why would the method of distribution matter this time?
We are all just blindly shooting arrows here, but I will take my turn. Perhaps he means that the software, itself, was fine, but a key step or two in the “distribution process” were missed or bungled, resulting in the unfortunate consequences.
For instance, I have seen cases in which various flags in the code used during the software development and verification process were not properly reconfigured before compiling the code for flight. The “software” was fine, but it was looking in the wrong places for configuration data or waiting for simulated data to arrive that was not forthcoming. The result was that it did not work during the flight test.
Who knows? Maybe he is just blowing smoke and obfuscating an Apple blunder. The incident was brief, it was resolved, and we have moved on. It did not bother me because I do not jump on software updates right away, not even Apple software updates, which are generally reliable.
“it did not work during the flight test”
Not working during flight test means flight crashed.
Plus, that flight that didn’t work was sent to the end users for a flight. You know what happened next.
Still crippled.
Stupid semantics. Political windbaggery.
He also said “We’re very sorry.” Get over it. Do you really think it’s going to happen again or is some sort of portent of Apple’s impending doom?
Interestingly, if you loaded 8.0.1 onto your iPhone 6 or 6+ over USB via iTunes, it didn’t do all those bad things. If you did the update directly, over the air (as I did), it did cause those problems. I wonder exactly what went wrong in that process.
Distribution. Do people really believe that iPhones come off the line and someone at the end hooks it up to iTunes and loads the OS on there? How does everything else get on there? Certificates, encryption keys, firmware, all signed. That’s done as part of the manufacturing/distribution process.
Maybe things are more complicated than they are in your job that is completely unrelated to manufacturing phones.
The problem is OTA updates. Apple is working slowly towards making iDevices standalone devices but isn’t there yet. When iOS 8 came out many people were outraged that it required over 5GB of space and hours to download and complained endlessly. Simply doing the update tethered to a computer requires far less room on the device, is faster and more reliable but many people didn’t want to hear that and kept complaining and insisting that iDevices ARE standalone devices already.
Until they are, Apple should just disable OTA updates entirely. The whole overblown iOS 8.0.1 fiasco would have been avoided.
He was just giving us more data for fucks sake!
Anyone who upgraded using iTunes sync was OK. Anyone who upgraded using OTA had problems. So to reiterate……it was a problem with the distribution.
On top of that, he is VERY SORRY. Please forgive him, for did know what he was doing.
If that doesn’t do it for you then FOAD!
Well-said. Also, it’s pretty dumb to instantaneously download a new update the second it comes out… Just sayin.
I suspect they QA tested one set of code (which worked) and accidentally released a different version of the code (which was not tested and did not work).
People are making too big of a deal of this. It was only up for an hour to two and only caused problems for OTA upgraders. Apple should just stop with the OTA upgrades.