Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I'm pretty sure it isn't an iCloud issue, but an issue with the file/photo database on the device itself.
You keep making things up that don't align with the reports from people this actually happened to. Please stop theorizing.

Do you think I'm wrong?
Yes.

You say it as if that is the truth. Even if we assume the Files apps is one way to cause the Photos to come back, is there any proof that no other ways the Photos are being stored? Did you audit Apple's source code to find out there are no other possible triggers of the bug?
It's a theory they pulled from the ether, because that's not an explanation that exists anywhere outside this thread.
 
Jesus these comments are 95% ignorance driven by conspiracy.

So reports pop up stating old photos even years old are reappearing and undeleting themselves, some Apple folk dismiss it as fake, then Apple releases a patch with a specific text stating it fixes this exact issue, and now it’s a conspiracy and ignorance to believe the fault existed and Apple admitted it?
 
I'm not moving to Android. As I showed earlier, I'm well into the Apple ecosystem and I despise Android.

But at the same time, Apple isn't perfect and people need to stop acting like they are.

It shouldn't be 100% back Apple at all times or switch to Android. What kind of nonsense thinking is that?
Who exactly is claiming Apple is perfect? What sort of straw man argument is that? Some of us are arguing that this one bug is decidedly minor given that only one report has emerged about photos showing up on transferred devices; a report that is unverified and if examined with common sense instead of in the manner the media reported it is somewhat dubious (how did this person find out that their photos showed up on a sold device?). Not only that but it was fixed over a weekend.

Were your photos compromised? Are you honestly experiencing any disruption to your device? And are you truly besieged by “all these bugs” or are you someone who installs betas and gets outraged by those bugs that are actually expected? Because that’s at least 75% of the noise that gets posted on here.

Whatever, this is not important—I don’t even know why I’m engaging in this. My apologies, I’ll let it go. Enjoy your phone.
 
Some of us are arguing that this one bug is decidedly minor given that only one report has emerged about photos showing up on transferred devices; a report that is unverified and if examined with common sense instead of in the manner the media reported it is somewhat dubious (how did this person find out that their photos showed up on a sold device?). Not only that but it was fixed over a weekend.

Were your photos compromised? Are you honestly experiencing any disruption to your device? And are you truly besieged by “all these bugs” or are you someone who installs betas and gets outraged by those bugs that are actually expected? Because that’s at least 75% of the noise that gets posted on here.

Whatever, this is not important—I don’t even know why I’m engaging in this. My apologies, I’ll let it go. Enjoy your phone.
You not understanding the possible implication this "bug" has given awareness to is the issue. The issue isn't the bug causing a disruption in the functionality of the device, but what is going on with our data in Apple's cloud servers.
 
I hope they don’t get away with trying to bury the issue under the rug with a simple software update.

There needs to be an explanation as to why the images were not truly deleted from their servers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gusmula and hanami
You're telling me Apple released iOS 17.5.1 to address a made up issue? :confused:
No they released an urgent update to calm down the hysteria one Reddit user caused in the worldwide media, about an event that has yet to be verified. All we know for certain is that some deleted photos showed back up in the active album—none of the specifics, including the age of the photos, when they were deleted or whether the story of them showing up on a wiped phone (REALLY unlikely) is even true!
 
I'm not moving to Android. As I showed earlier, I'm well into the Apple ecosystem and I despise Android.

But at the same time, Apple isn't perfect and people need to stop acting like they are.

It shouldn't be 100% back Apple at all times or switch to Android. What kind of nonsense thinking is that?

But why be angry? Why not just update your phone and go in with your life?
 
So reports pop up stating old photos even years old are reappearing and undeleting themselves, some Apple folk dismiss it as fake, then Apple releases a patch with a specific text stating it fixes this exact issue, and now it’s a conspiracy and ignorance to believe the fault existed and Apple admitted it?
No, you’re just getting the actual facts wrong and are defaulting to media hype without any confirmed details, and making up that Apple urgently fixed this because of actual risk as opposed to quelling the hysteria. Hence “conspiracy theories”.
 
This attitude is weird to me.

You're implying that nobody should criticize Apple. That they should praise Apple 100% of the time or switch to something else. Well more than implying since you outright told me to do that.

I think people and commenters on Macrumors should be more quiet and more calm. I think they should suffer in silence.

It's the anger and aggressiveness I don't like.
And the accusations against Apple with no evidence whatsoever.
 
even 10 years old deleted photos!!!!. What does Apple has that dont belong to them???. If I choose to delete a photo, it does not belong to them.
You had 10 year old photos reappear? Were they 10 year old photos you deleted 10 years ago, or did you have 10 year old photos you more recently deleted (say, within the last 5 or so years) reappear?
 
Last edited:
Because anything you delete isn’t actually wiped from your device, whether it’s a file on your computer or a photo on your phone. It’s marked as deleted on the operating system level, and opened up as free space for new data to take its place. Somewhere down the line, something’s been messed up in the Photos app, causing this.

If you’ve ever used Disk Utility on a Mac and seen the faster vs. more secure option when erasing a disk, that’s what this is referring to. It’s faster to just mark everything as deleted on a disk, as opposed to putting several cycles of garbage data to cover up old files. And, I seriously doubt the Reddit rumor is true because I believe iOS creates and throws away an encryption key for everything on a device before it’s erased, so a new user wouldn’t be able to just stumble upon old photos.

Right, secure erase / DFU restore will remove the keys from the secure enclave. Photos on restored devices are toast.

It's the other point that I wonder about. While true that deletion is primarily a filesystem operation... I'm not sure faster vs more secure applies anymore. With spinning hard drives, absolutely. As long as nothing overwrites it, that data is there to be recovered. I've done this many times.

The problem I have is these devices don't use spinning hard drives, they use NAND flash chips. This is entirely different. Typically flash storage doesn't write bit by bit. You have to write to a whole sector just to change a single bit in that sector. So if any data around that photo needed modified, the photo would be blown away by the write operation for that random bit that happened to be in the same sector. (The write operation has to zero the entire sector before writing the new and still-relevant existing data). A lot of SSDs (which, again, operate a bit differently) have a TRIM command that the operating system can send that will zero the sectors of just-deleted files to speed up future writes there (by skipping the zeroing step). There is also background garbage collection on the storage controller serving a similar purpose. Presumably Apple's controller does something similar for deleted data.

Anyway, I don't have much of a point, just wanted to add some context to all of the posts saying that deletion doesn't actually erase the data. Kind of true, kind of not.
 
Yeah but reports state some of these photos were years old… Apple has no excuse, it plainly IS keeping old deleted photos for years on its servers, to me that’s a breach of privacy. And Apple have basically admitted it with this patch.

1) 5 years ago, a user takes a screenshot on the iPhone
2) For some reason it's stored both in Files and Photoes (but in the same db) without the user knowing
3) After a day, the user deletes the screenshot photo in Photos
4) 5 years go by with the photo stored on the device because it belongs to the Files app
5) The user updates to 17.5
6) The reindex bug of the db causes the photo which belongs to the Files app to reappear in the Photos app
7) Photos and iCloud Photo Library sees it as a new photo and it's uploaded to iCloud and all the user's devices
 
You not understanding the possible implication this "bug" has given awareness to is the issue. The issue isn't the bug causing a disruption in the functionality of the device, but what is going on with our data in Apple's cloud servers.
I know, I know, they’re clandestinely spying on us. So said Marjorie Taylor Greene. By all means move to an open source Android phone, then you can really get paranoid about privacy. The bottom line is that the specifics of this less than a week long bug are completely unconfirmed and everyone is speculating broadly about disasters armed only with what the media reported—which we’ve already learned was hyped from one Reddit user. This is the essence of the waste of emotional resources born out of a 24 hour news cycle on the web. I don’t know about you but I conserve my energies for the truth, not speculation, but that’s just me.
 
I hope they don’t get away with trying to bury the issue under the rug with a simple software update.

There needs to be an explanation as to why the images were not truly deleted from their servers.
This bug had nothing to do with their servers. This has been proven already by the fact people that who don't use the cloud have the bug. What people don't seem to understand is if you back up a corrupted database, and then restore the corrupted database it's still corrupted a database.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.