Apple's iOS 12.1.4 Update to Fix FaceTime Eavesdropping Bug Showing Up in Analytics

Software bugs are now supposed to be federal business ending crimes? This timeline sucks.

 

Is that all it's going to do is fix the FaceTime bug? That's disappointing.

 

No it’s not. Other things are for 12.2, which is already in testing.

 

What else were you expecting?

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I hope the mother ends up getting her bug finding reward.

 

Good for us, but sadly the lawyers and though daily updates on new class action lawsuits over here won’t be stopped by this.

 

I'm sorry Apple, but QA didn't try hard enough to break it. With a feature this sensitive, it is necessary to have a couple of employees trying to break things all day every day. I know not every bug can be discovered in time, but obvious ones like this should be caught before release.

 

I disagree. This was an edge case bug. In fact it took a long while before millions of users had been using group FaceTime before it came to light.

It certainly wasn't an 'obvious' bug.

 

Don't forget that this bug likely existed in the months of developer and public beta testing as well and wasn't discovered by users. If so, it wouldn't be fair to classify it as an "obvious" bug.

 

It's about time. I tried the bug out on a friend and the results were… eye-opening.

 

If you want to know when the update is coming out, just call Apple, don't worry if they don't pick up... !

Seriously, this was a bad bug (perhaps more in terms of the company's image than anything else) and I hope they issue the fix as soon as they can. I think they should really hold their hands up and say sorry too, if only to repair the PR damage a little.

 

Honestly, from what I understand, it's not as though this bug is in any way insidious—at the very least, you will be aware that someone is trying to join the call, no? So I don't see why this is considered such a horrific breach of trust, when selling personal data, including real-time location tracking—which is far more useful to someone with malicious intent—is considered a "business model".

 

It wasn't discovered on Monday. It started getting media attention on Monday. Big difference.

 

Adding another person to the call is a documented function. So adding yourself to the call is a boundary condition. If it only takes two steps to reproduce the bug, then it should have been discovered. If it took 10 steps, then I would say it wouldn't be an obvious one. Either way, this family deserves to get a reward.

 

This is an embarrassing bug, but clearly you’ve never developed a piece of software, have you?

 

First thing i tried was adding myself to a call (during the early betas of the feature.). Tested that i could talk from iPad to iPhone, etc. Sadly, didn’t occur to me to first add a third party. :-(

 

IF they did not take this seriously right away, they deserve the wrath they get. And I'm a huge Apple supporter. But to only disable *after* they get media attention looks really, really bad! They should have learned from past experiences.

I know it can take time to reproduce this issue and prove it's real, but I fear they dismissed it internally because it didn't seem believable. Privacy is their huge selling point, and this was a huge slap in the face of privacy. They definitely should have handled this better. Somebody's head needs to roll!

 

Does anyone else know of a more friendly Apple site with other friendly actual Apple enthusiasts? Seriously, for as long as I've lurked on here it's all negative people who are Apple haters commenting. Pointless to be on here anymore. All this negative news is hardly "rumors".

 

My macrumors handle starts with C++. All I do is develop software.

 

Appleinsider?

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In these parts we use Objective-C and Swift.

 

Yep. Very simple bug that should have been caught. This will result in many lost upgrades and sales for the next year and beyond. Another massive Tim Cook failure. Really sucks for those of us who see the writing on the wall.

 

I’m assuming it didn’t get to the right people. There’s a real problem with apple’s reliance on the Radar system. Radar is too difficult for an average non-technical person to use, there’s no obvious way for someone to report a critical bug to Apple without using radar, etc. Apple needs to seriously consider new ways of reporting and tracking bugs. Something like a friendlier version of bug reporter running on the device itself (i.e. the bug reporting app that installs during betas.)

 

Knowing Apple, they rarely apologize, and I’m not knocking them, it’s just the nature of how they are as a company being egotistical at times. But one thing I want to mention aside from your post that you discussed, it’s my opinion, but somebody _should_ probably be terminated for this error. I’m sure there was a group of developers working in a team collaboration, but usually it comes down to one person that should be held responsible in a situation such as this in a leadership position. I’m not always about firing people with that type of mentality. But this is it something that likely can’t have remedial retraining, this is grounds for termination in my opinion.

 

In fact it was so simple, that you picked up on it on the day of release

 

Yes as more evidence comes to light it does appear they knew about the bug well in advance of Monday.

The same way they knew about the batteries and faulty processors/throttling, and did nothing.

Their lack of transparency IS going to corrode consumer trust and ruin their branding. Watch. Next year’s iPhone sales are going to be abysmal.