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iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

theguardian.com

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Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#81

Post by scott_s »

maltalex wrote: post #50
axoltl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not done intentionally. They simply don't QA their releases on repaired phones (because why would they?). The touchscreens in question highly likely use an older touchscreen controller from a previous iPhone. These controllers don't support certain commands that evidently they are now using. As far as the lightning connectors go, that WAS done intentionally. The third party lightning connectors generally don't…

> It was not done intentionally. What evidence is there make this claim? It all seems to boil down to this question. Do you trust that Apple had the user's interests in mind? > They simply don't QA their releases on repaired phones (because why would they?) The more important question is why wouldn't they if the customer's experience is what guides their decisions.

> What evidence is there make this claim?

From the article:

"A similar thing happened for the iPhone 7 last year. An iOS update prevented the touchscreens from working on iPhone 7s with third-party repaired screens. Apple then released a follow-up software update that made them work again, resolving the issue."

To me, that makes axoltl's explanation far likelier. From Apple's perspective, I get it: they do Q&A on what's officially supported. Trying to pull in all of the unofficial changes is more expensive and potentially restrictive.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#82

Post by reiichiroh »

astockwell wrote: post #4

Apple, I get it. I get why you do it. But seriously, this retroactive punishing of prior 3rd-party purchases is asinine. I had purchased multiple lightning cables from Anker (a very reputable brand), and had one of the iOS 11.x updates basically render them useless. Apple's product support is not fast enough, nor pervasive enough (to say nothing of cheap enough), to justify this behavior. Edited for clarity

I'm confused how your Anker cables stopped working. Mine continue to work and Anker is part of Apple's "Made for iPhone" accessory certification program.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#83

Post by nomel »

maltalex wrote: post #50
axoltl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not done intentionally. They simply don't QA their releases on repaired phones (because why would they?). The touchscreens in question highly likely use an older touchscreen controller from a previous iPhone. These controllers don't support certain commands that evidently they are now using. As far as the lightning connectors go, that WAS done intentionally. The third party lightning connectors generally don't…

> It was not done intentionally. What evidence is there make this claim? It all seems to boil down to this question. Do you trust that Apple had the user's interests in mind? > They simply don't QA their releases on repaired phones (because why would they?) The more important question is why wouldn't they if the customer's experience is what guides their decisions.

From my understanding, many Apple chips are custom, and I assume much of their firmware is too. What your asking is for Apple to support third party knock off chips in their firmware and drivers which were most likely reverse engineered to "get it close to functional". That's a bit silly.

Imagine getting upset that an Occulus firmware update didn't work with a knock off HMD that lacked features of the original...

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#85

Post by 794CD01 »

saagarjha wrote: post #47
wvenable wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this analogy has gone off course a bit. But I do think a manufacturer providing automatic irreversible updates has an obligation to ensure, as best as possible, that the device continues to work with that update. If it worked yesterday, it should work tomorrow, period. It would be perfectly reasonable to not force updates and allow users to continue with the current version forever if that keeps them running.…

How would the manufacturer know you were using a non-OEM part, though? As far as they're concerned their parts support so-and-so protocol, so they should be able to use it.

They don't and shouldn't. But they should and can detect if a pending update will break your device, or downgrade more gracefully when their software runs on hardware that is missing some expected features that were previously unused.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#86

Post by mkhalil »

nomel wrote: post #83
maltalex wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not done intentionally. What evidence is there make this claim? It all seems to boil down to this question. Do you trust that Apple had the user's interests in mind? > They simply don't QA their releases on repaired phones (because why would they?) The more important question is why wouldn't they if the customer's experience is what guides their decisions.

From my understanding, many Apple chips are custom, and I assume much of their firmware is too. What your asking is for Apple to support third party knock off chips in their firmware and drivers which were most likely reverse engineered to "get it close to functional". That's a bit silly. Imagine getting upset that an Occulus firmware update didn't work with a knock off HMD that lacked features of the original...

We are not talking about a small number of users though, millions of their users use third-party screens.

They should have a test to make sure they don't get left in a dust with an update.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#87

Post by umpc »

Why would Apple test every 3rd-party compatible screen?

If they don’t test, components will break. If they don’t change APIs, components won’t be able to improve sufficiently.

In this case, there are only two actual solutions from Apple’s perspective, and they’re both ‘bad’ for customers:

Restrict users of 3rd-party screens from upgrading their devices, even when breakage may not occur, or, let them update and take the risk.

Technical debt, likely caused by time-pressure before releases, is expensive when it can’t be left behind.

Apple also doesn’t have to support much 3rd party hardware because their phones are the only built to run iOS.

I would imagine that Google’s processes are better equipped to support more hardware and for longer durations.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#88

Post by calebegg »

cheeze wrote: post #72
no_wizard wrote: post #51

All the more reason to support the right to repair https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/3/8/17097256/cali...

Oh man, someone advocating for right to repair but linking an AMP article on HN? Surely this will lead to some fun discussion

The amp version of this page takes my browser 1.39 seconds to load with about 616KB of data over 27 requests. The non-AMP version takes over 10 seconds, and loads 2.2 MB over 300+ requests.

In this case, it's just a light version of the article with the same content. That seems objectively better. If AMP wasn't incidentally in the URL path you wouldn't have noticed it was AMP. If the existence of AMP encourages people to write faster, less cruft-y pages, that's a good thing to me.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#89

Post by tajen »

axoltl wrote: post #20
DINKDINK wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(because why would they?) Because a company understands their product in the field and cares about what effect a change might have. Now is that cost justified? arguably no.

It'd be pretty hard for them to know though. They'd have to reverse engineer (the irony isn't lost on me) every variation of third party screen/touchscreen controller. What happens if some feature isn't available on a third party screen? Either they don't implement the feature at all or third party screens are now worse off and we'll have a headline "Apple cripples third party repairs!".

OR provide third parties with API info, maybe even the third party implementation. It doesn’t even have to be official. Apple knows very well how to leak controlled information. But it would greatly improve the quality of third party repairs, and lower the load on official support workflows.

Re: iOS 11.3 update breaks iPhone 8 devices with third party-repaired screens

#90

Post by dmitrygr »

This could have been entirely innocent. It happened to an android device I am familiar with as well. Third-party screens will usually identify over i2c/spi/whatever the same as original, but you cannot apply original firmware updates to them (they are different internally and will get bricked). However, as they are designed to appear original, there isn't always a way to tell. The two options both suck: do not ship firmware updates (bad) or ship them and risk damage non-original screens (marginally less bad). The choice in the case I know of was made to not ship update (it was minor). Apple chose otherwise.
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