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Apple Releases iOS 9.3.1 With Fix for Web Link Crashing Bug
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I never knew how much links defined my life till they were gone. They are back now. They blame everything on the Booking app, but I don't have that installed on my iPad Air 1. What gets me is that if it wasn't for Macrumors, I wouldn't have known this was a widespread bug and not just a problem in my iPad. I also wouldn't have known about the fix if it wasn't for this site - the software update notifier was showing anything. Thanks guys - I'm very grateful.
Software Update checks at regular intervals and provides a notification. Also, the update may be deployed geographically. It's unclear how Apple does it, but manually checking can pull it up.
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To me, it feels a bit linkier.
If Apple came up with a development process that prevented "errors like this" that would be an enormous breakthrough in computer science that would dwarf anything they have ever accomplished. As far as anyone can tell, such a development process is unachievable. Every significant bit of software you have ever used has bugs. That has always been true, and likely always will be.
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For now....
In my non scientific, complete speculative explanation is that or could be that the root cause of this issue is still present and whatever fix that has been put out just circumvents the issue from a customers experience and the app developers who rely on receiving data in the previous process will need to make some updates on their end to sync with whatever change Apple made.
At the end of the day it's the customers satisfaction that matters anyhow right?
Yes, we've been over this. This issue was present in iOS versions prior to iOS 9.3, so anything related to 9.3 and its beta process that gets referenced is basically moot as it doesn't have any relation to it.
How about Battery Life issue and auto brightness which is not working correctly so this minor update doesn't fix other issues with iOS 9.3, strange that this went multiple beta testing and still they create problems.
So, here's a realistic scenario: something was reported to Apple in very low numbers, Apple started investigating and aside from not seeing many people affected, they also noticed the issue affects versions prior to iOS 9.3, and all along continued figuring out more details about it and looking for what the best way to fix it would be--releasing or not releasing 9.3 would have no effect on whether this bug would become an issue given that previous versions that were already out there that people were already on were already susceptible. So, again, the release of 9.3 is moot in this discussion.
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And that is certainly a very realistic scenario.
It was caused by some Einstein at the Booking.com dev team who crawled their website and setup universal links to each individual URL -- think every hotel in the world. Apparently, the concept of pattern matching hasn't arrived in Amsterdam yet. (Side note: WTF, who was going to maintain that list?!?)
So the association file that should've been a few KB, tops, was 2.3mb, which was far more than the link process was built to digest. It was even too large to be fixed naturally during an uninstall. iOS 9.3.1 addresses those issues, and hopefully someone on the Booking.com dev team is learning to do code reviews.
As to the question, "Why the eff would we want every URL clicked to be preprocessed?" What, so app devs can hijack Safari and load their app instead? Only knows for sure...
I really think this has to do with a back end change which isn't something us users would report an issue on and takes place without any visibility to the customers/users.
Pure speculation lol.
My ipad 2 GSM is still locked at the activation screen. I tried this update and OS 9.3 over 20 times.
This could and would still happen even if none of those things that you mentioned happened and even if everything you mentioned was in place and running.
Never seen anything like that on "Android" so who might know where the truth is...
The bug was already there in previous iOS releases that were already out in public before the latest release.
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Just like not everyone by far has experienced the issue in this update or even heard of it, which can mean that it probably doesn't exist, right?
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Yeah, it's the whole Universal Links thing: http://www.wired.com/2016/03/apple-...recall-the-bad-old-days-of-internet-explorer/
I'm only saying that, to my limited knowledge, I'm not aware of an issue like this one happening on Android phones (maybe given the fragmentation...) so nobody (as far as I am concerned) can be sure about the time it would have been necessary for a fix.
The easy solution to your particular wishes is for YOU to not update for a year. If 9.3.1 fixes your issues and you can click links now (which is apparently all you use your device for) then wait it out and don't update every year. In summer of 2017, you can review how well iOS 10.3.2 is working for others and update then. Problem solved!
Upgraded my 6 plus, iPad Air 2 and other family member's iPhone 5s and iPad Air.
All went well
All went well
And that probably still might not necessarily escape some deeper bugs that might surface down the line and are present going back some versions.
It's still an Apple problem. The tools were broken. A screwdriver can be used improperly, but it's not much use if it's made from rubber.
This affected people people on earlier versions of iOS.
Clicking links in Safari, Mail and Apps is how I use my device for work aside from it being a phone. I'm glad its usable again now.