“A bug in Apple’s iOS Messages app can cause an iPhone to reboot after receiving a specific string of text in a message,” Nathan Olivarez-Giles reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Apple acknowledged the bug in an email to the Journal, saying: ‘We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of Unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update,'” Olivarez-Giles reports. “While the bug is real and Apple has said as much, it’s not easy to pull off, even if you know the offending text.”
“It took The Guardian 50 tries before they were able to make it work, and it took us 24,” Olivarez-Giles reports. “In our experience, once the iPhone crashes, it restarts and works as normal.”
Read more in the full article here.
“This isn’t devastating, but it is annoying and Apple will make a fix available. But some users have already started complaining that it permanently disables iMessage — until you delete the conversation,” Jose Pagliery reports for CNN Money. “(One tip to get around this freeze is to use the Photos app to send a text message, then once you’re in iMessage, erase the conversation.)”
MacDailyNews Take: Good to hear, but it seems rather specific and difficult to trigger, like 2013’s “Unicode of Death.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Random string of Arabic characters can crash nearly any Mac, iPhone or iPad – September 3, 2013