Apple Releases iOS 11.2.6 With Fix for Telugu Character Bug That Causes iOS Devices to Crash

[Heineken]

There's a very good reason it takes so long.

iOS has a separate read-only partition for the operating system. In order to update, the OS needs to make a new copy of the operating system in a temporary location, then merge the downloaded update with this temporary copy. After this is done, the system will then verify the updated operating system to make sure it is free of corruption. This takes a while as it is a few GB worth of data that needs to be checksummed on a slow (relative to a desktop computer) mobile CPU.

When all this is complete, the update process will swap the now updated and verified OS partition into place as the new OS to boot (an atomic operation), and restart the device.

Basically, the cost of a botched update is a semi-bricked phone that requires a computer with iTunes to bring back to life. This is a really annoying situation for anyone it happens to, so the update process spends a lot of time verifying the new OS partition to make sure it has no problems.

Most people don't force updates anyway; they just get an update notification and tell it to update overnight, so they aren't inconvenienced at all. Us nerds who must update immediately have to wait, though!

Thanks for clarifying, but still ... I've been buying these devices that allegedly get faster and faster with faster CPUs and faster storage, but doesn't take less time to install those updates anyway. With faster cpu and faster storage these operations should be faster, but they aren't.
[doublepost=1519090791][/doublepost]

So forever is now since the moment they released it?

Yes.

P.S. It's a figure of speech.

 

[coolfactor]

Why does this have to be an entire OS update? On Android this would be a quick Gboard and Messages update.

It's a system-level fix. Rather than every application re-implementing functionality separately, the system provides libraries of functionality that applications can inherit and build on top of. Text handling is one of those system-provided libraries, and it had this bug, so all applications utilizing that library were affected.

 

[nativeteluguspeaker]

None of my friends, family type use Telugu keyboard. The only time we receive Telugu messages are forwards during festivals and none of my messages I have in my whatsapp friends chat groups has this character. I guess Apple didn't receive many crash logs whenever this bug was introduced (guessing iOS 11) because not many type in Telugu script, and majority of phones used in India are not running iOS.

Media and folks on twitter blew this issue out of proportion.

 

[coolfactor]

... just how often are you making sparse disk images with nearly full flash-based drive?

I frequently run my SSD close to full because it's only 128GB, and that's apparently not enough for all of today's data. I had to move my Dropbox folder to an SD Card just to free up space!

A sparse disk image grows as you add data to it, so it's perfectly reasonable that one _could_ run into the situation where the SSD is full and data gets added to an existing sparse disk image. All reports okay, yet the data is corrupted when the drive is remounted.
[doublepost=1519091531][/doublepost]

None of my friends, family type use Telugu keyboard. The only time we receive Telugu messages are forwards during festivals and none of my messages I have in my whatsapp friends chat groups has this character. I guess Apple didn't receive many crash logs whenever this bug was introduced (guessing iOS 11) because not many type in Telugu script, and majority of phones used in India are not running iOS.

Media and folks on twitter blew this issue out of proportion.

I think more importantly, if characters are supposed to be encoded in well-known encodings, such as UTF-8 and UTF-16, and Apple's operating systems have mature support for these encodings, why did this bug crop up? It wasn't language-specific, but rather an input validation or text display issue that this particular language was revealing.

 

[LovingTeddy]

Sounds like user error and Android fanboism.

No matter what Android offers, it’s Useless bc it’s not stable enough. I had an S8 and a Note 7 (lol) too.

LOL.... You were judging Android as whole from only Samsung phone. LOL... I just can stop laughing. I have had LG, Haiwei, Motorola, HTC, ZTE, Xiaomi etc. I had over 20+ Android phone. I used iPhone from iPhone 4S..all the way until iPhone 6S. I used Android since Android Honeycomb with Asus Transformer 2 and I started using Android phone since Nexus 4 period.

Typical Apple fan, when someone dislike iPhone or iOS, it is user issue. If something is wrong with Android, it is Android issue automatically.

No matter what Apple has to offer on phone side, I have absolutely no interest. Android on phone side offers better phone selection, more price competitive, easier to use of certain tasks.

I just saw a form posting regarding how to download YouTube video on iPad. You can’t even do that easily with iOS, this is laughable in 2018. Just show how limited iOS can be.

 

[zeromeus]

We should know by now that the world is full of unsmart people who will deliberately do things that they should not do. This is an exploit that many corporations are using against these people, particularly Americans.

 

[Michael Goff]

Because this was the system level unicode font character rendering problem, not just Messages.

Yeah. The real problem is that Apple wrote their Unicode font renderer in a way where it can crash the entire system.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Should Apple contact you to see if an update release meets your time schedule first, or should they release updates when needed to the iOS community, and you update at your leisure, as it has always been?

Update at my leisure, which is exactly what I plan to do. Good night.

 

[Populus]

... just how often are you making sparse disk images with nearly full flash-based drive?

Oh, that bug only affects sparse disk images on SSDs? I thought it could affect external HDDs (mechanical disks) too
[doublepost=1519092499][/doublepost]

No thanks. I'll stay on iOS 10 and El Capitan

You should try Sierra.

 

[panther quest]

I dunno, because that's how iOS is built? Nobody is making you update.

Actually everyone is obligated to update if they don't want this bug to affect them.

 

[johnnygee]

Whew! I feel better already.

 

[mew-93]

my bench marks

 

[sdf]

Why in the sam H3LL can't they at least release them on time (10am PT/1pm ET).

You have weird expectations if you expect all patches to be released at the same time of day. Even if that was the intent, it's the start of the day so they can adjust if things go wrong.
[doublepost=1519094464][/doublepost]

Yes, Apple is making me. Every night at 8pm it alerts (annoys) me to update. And consumes my bandwidth and storage downloading the update without my permission.

The solution to both is simple: Don't connect to the Internet anymore. You won't get the patch, and you won't need it.

On the other hand, devices that are connected to the Internet should be kept up-to-date.

 

[JosephAW]

Thanks for clarifying, but still ... I've been buying these devices that allegedly get faster and faster with faster CPUs and faster storage, but doesn't take less time to install those updates anyway. With faster cpu and faster storage these operations should be faster, but they aren't.
[doublepost=1519090791][/doublepost]
Yes.

P.S. It's a figure of speech.

It's like a New York minute. The horn is blowing before the green has begun to glow.
[doublepost=1519095226][/doublepost]

Oh, that bug only affects sparse disk images on SSDs? I thought it could affect external HDDs (mechanical disks) too
[doublepost=1519092499][/doublepost]
You should try Sierra.

I have and Sierra works well. Problem is I can't boot Sierra on all my hardware. I can with El Capitain from a Mac Pro 1,1, 2009 iMac to MBP 2012.

 

[crescentmoon]

Okay Apple, now release an additional update to macOS 10.13.3 in order to fix this and the APFS bug as well. I'm afraid we'll have to wait until spring for all this fixes coming in macOS 10.13.4

EDIT: OMG They just released a complemental update for macOS 10.13.3! YAY!
Unfortunately, APFS bug is not solved in this update, only the character bug.

I really wish Apple had their best coders on mac OS 10.13 like they do with iOS....

 

[adnbek]

But is it really free!?!. Say someone violated your house every night at 8pm, and left a big brown one on your floor. All free of charge of course. That’s pretty much comparable IMO.

So a software update is analogous to someone breaking into your home and defecating on your floor. Wow, that’s a new one...

 

[Tubamajuba]

Apple’s software only runs on few devices and Apple has done terrible job on making sure their software side. Microsoft has to make sure their software works on all kind of devices, including Apple’s devices. I think Microsoft is doing better job than Apple in terms of software optimization. At least my old 2012 laptop still runs perfectly fine with Microsoft Windows 10.

Then how come so many Windows 10 issues can be reproduced regardless of what machine you try it on? Most of the issues I've been following over the past few months on the Windows 10 subreddit absolutely don't seem to be machine-specific.

And my "old" 2012 MBP runs both Windows 10 and macOS 10.13 perfectly fine. Not sure what you're getting at with that.

I have Windows 10 on five different computers and macOS on two of those five. Both operating systems have their issues, but you seem hellbent on trashing anything to do with Apple in this thread.

 

[adnbek]

LOL.... You were judging Android as whole from only Samsung phone. LOL... I just can stop laughing. I have had LG, Haiwei, Motorola, HTC, ZTE, Xiaomi etc. I had over 20+ Android phone. I used iPhone from iPhone 4S..all the way until iPhone 6S. I used Android since Android Honeycomb with Asus Transformer 2 and I started using Android phone since Nexus 4 period.

Why do you change phones so often when each one is as awesome as you say it is?

No matter what Apple has to offer on phone side, I have absolutely no interest. Android on phone side offers better phone selection, more price competitive, easier to use of certain tasks.

And all that extra cash you save... you buy more phones with?

 

[Mascots]

A sparse disk image grows as you add data to it, so it's perfectly reasonable that one _could_ run into the situation where the SSD is full and data gets added to an existing sparse disk image. All reports okay, yet the data is corrupted when the drive is remounted.

It's possible, but I'm going to say very unlikely. It's very edge case.

I have a feeling a large degree of current Mac users don't understand the disk image system beyond mounting and dragging apps into /Applications, which would not cause any data loss since the system would refuse to dup it out of the volume.

why did this bug crop up? It wasn't language-specific, but rather an input validation or text display issue that this particular language was revealing.

Years ago it happened in CoreText's TStorageRange function: because of the unexpected collapse in character, a negative integer threw a memory exception.. this is probably similar.

Edit: found a beautiful rundown, it actually is a few languages http://manishearth.github.io/blog/2018/02/15/picking-apart-the-crashing-ios-string/

 

[jimthing]

Anyone know what does this character actually stand for in English?

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Apple turns around and fixes a bug in just a couple days and all Mac Rumors members can do is complain they didn't fix every other known and unknown bug too.
[doublepost=1519077155][/doublepost]

Is it OK with you if I complain that the bug that 11.2.5 was supposed to fix (iMessages being displayed not in the order they are sent/received) STILL exists and is actually WORSE than it was on 11.2.4?

But they race to fix a bug that some obscure character in the Indian language Telugu (whatever that is) causes, and we should be thankful?

iOS is turning into a steaming pile lately...

 

[dingdong]

How's iPhone 7+ running for you lot? Any improvements from 11.2.1?

 

[expiredyogurt]

It's 40 MB. Can someone explain to me why does it take almost 30 minutes to install on iPhone X with all that fancy hardware?

took mine 15 min to finish. idk what junk you have abusing your device but it werks on my machine™

 

[twennywonn]

Anyone know what does this character actually stand for in English?

Yes it stands for "GotEm"

 

[macsba]

Anyone know what does this character actually stand for in English?

THIS has got to be the smartest post in this thread. Yes, I also am wondering.