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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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #112
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this even more despicable because Apple chooses to use a certain type of rubber under the guise of it being more eco-friendly. Yet this rubber is ridiculously brittle and frays almost without fail within 6-12 months meaning you just end up having to by more cables thus using more of the worlds resources anyway than if they had shipped you one cable that didn't fail. My 17 year old Ti Powerbook cable used daily…

So you're saying that you're sure that the problem that people usually attribute to bad strain relief is actually caused by slightly different plastic?

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #112
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this even more despicable because Apple chooses to use a certain type of rubber under the guise of it being more eco-friendly. Yet this rubber is ridiculously brittle and frays almost without fail within 6-12 months meaning you just end up having to by more cables thus using more of the worlds resources anyway than if they had shipped you one cable that didn't fail. My 17 year old Ti Powerbook cable used daily…

So you're saying that you're sure that the problem that people usually attribute to bad strain relief is actually caused by slightly different plastic?

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by pfortuny »

axoltl wrote: post #117
pfortuny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably can (and I guess rather easily) test whether the touchscreen is or not from Apple and at least let the ungood ones work as before (I am sure this is pretty easy to do: just keep the old controller), issuing a warning (not that Apple is short on these) to the user: "your screen may malfunction or may be insecure. If you had it repaired outside the Apple network, we remind you that it is not covered by ou…

It's neither easy nor cheap. The engineer in question now has to support multiple variants of the driver, and QA has to acquire several of these screens and maintain a dedicated test rack of them. I'm a little amazed by how many people in this thread don't understand how much work developing for, testing, and maintaining actual physical devices is.

You have a working device and then you modify the software and it stops working.

If it works, why change it?

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

#134

Post by thirdsun »

calebegg wrote: post #88
cheeze wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

> 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.

AMP isn't a requirement to build small, fast, performant websites. The fact that The Verge ignores those qualities with their non-AMP website is on them.

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

#135

Post by Terretta »

pfortuny wrote: post #76
saagarjha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was that best I could find from a few minutes of searching. > Service Exclusions and Diagnostic Fee. Apple may charge you a diagnostic fee (including shipping charges) as described in the Country Variation table, below (“Diagnostic Fee”), if Apple inspects your product and determines that (i) your product does not require service, (ii) your product has failed due to or has incompatibilities with software or data…

Thanks. You see it is really not very noticeable and the writing says nothing about hardware stopping working. I guess we have both learnt from this exchange. Thanks a lot.

> the product has failed due to ... faulty installation, repair, or maintenance by anyone other than Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider

That sounds like it could be not working, with root cause as bad repair.

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

#136

Post by ekovarski »

axoltl wrote: post #114
mkhalil wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the onus on Apple to ensure the third-party screens work, or is it on the third-party screens to ensure they're compatible?

I don't believe the onus is on Apple to /test/ for all possible permutations since they own and control every component of their hardware, but the onus should be on them to fix any phones rendered inoperable by another iOS update unless its to prevent a bigger issue, 3rd party batteries exploding, etc.

This is also another good reminder to postpone the iOS updates as long as possible; I think it's been since v10 when the updates have had a less than stellar record.

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

#137

Post by Const-me »

axoltl wrote: post #34
inteleng wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very specific charging protocol designed to prevent metal migration between the pins and the pads on the connector This is 100% bullshit.

This is 100% not bullshit. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170272058A1/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170124010A1/

From the first one:

> To mitigate these issues, external contacts may typically include a corrosion-resistant coating to the exposed exterior surface… Although temporarily effective, such coatings are subject to frictional wear and may become less effective over the life of a device.

Frictional wear is not a huge problem in practice.

There’re billions of devices with built-in batteries in the world. I’ve been carrying a cell phone, and later sometimes other electronics, since 1999. Never encounter such issues.

Most manufacturers use gold plating, and they advertise reliability for 10000 mating cycles:

https://gct.co/usb-connector https://www.gradconn.com/Products/MicroUSB https://www.molex.com/molex/products/datasheet.jsp?part=acti...

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

#138

Post by axoltl »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #125
axoltl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's neither easy nor cheap. The engineer in question now has to support multiple variants of the driver, and QA has to acquire several of these screens and maintain a dedicated test rack of them. I'm a little amazed by how many people in this thread don't understand how much work developing for, testing, and maintaining actual physical devices is.

> The engineer in question now has to support multiple variants of the driver, and QA has to acquire several of these screens and maintain a dedicated test rack of them. Conversely, the update just needs to reliably detect if the screen is Apple brand, and abort the update if it's not. If this can be done, then the current driver could be considered generic and working everywhere, and the engineer would just need to…

The update is an all-or-nothing type of deal though. You either update the entire system or you don't. So now people with a third-party screen don't get new features and - more importantly - they don't get security fixes.

If the update wasn't all-or-nothing, now you have to test interoperability between this generic driver and the rest of the system. That might be OK if it was just this one driver, but what if you suddenly have a generic driver for N subsystems? The combinatorics explode quite quickly.

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

#139

Post by inteleng »

Const-me wrote: post #137
axoltl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% not bullshit. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170272058A1/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170124010A1/

From the first one: > To mitigate these issues, external contacts may typically include a corrosion-resistant coating to the exposed exterior surface… Although temporarily effective, such coatings are subject to frictional wear and may become less effective over the life of a device. Frictional wear is not a huge problem in practice. There’re billions of devices with built-in batteries in the world. I’ve been carryin…

This is the point I'd have made if I had more patience. It is simply ridiculous to claim that galvanic corrosion and/or electromigration is likely to be a problem on a square millimeter gold contact with a few microns of metal that passes at most 15W continuously for a few years before being discarded.

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

#140

Post by ASalazarMX »

axoltl wrote: post #138
ASalazarMX wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The engineer in question now has to support multiple variants of the driver, and QA has to acquire several of these screens and maintain a dedicated test rack of them. Conversely, the update just needs to reliably detect if the screen is Apple brand, and abort the update if it's not. If this can be done, then the current driver could be considered generic and working everywhere, and the engineer would just need to…

The update is an all-or-nothing type of deal though. You either update the entire system or you don't. So now people with a third-party screen don't get new features and - more importantly - they don't get security fixes. If the update wasn't all-or-nothing, now you have to test interoperability between this generic driver and the rest of the system. That might be OK if it was just this one driver, but what if you su…

Even if it's all-or-nothing and no generic drivers are implemented, it's better to deny new features than to cripple a working device. Apple defines the third-party market with how much documentation it releases. This is not a technical or practical problem, it's Apple not easing its iron grip, as it always does.
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