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Published in Mobiles

Apple pulls back on booby trapped OS

by on26 April 2018


I find your lack of faith disturbing 

Fruity cargo-cult Apple has retreated on a change in its iOS operating system which effectively bricked third-party screen repairs to make it appear as if they were less effective than those of its overpriced in-house repairs.

Jobs' Mob was apparently surprised when a storm of effluent descended on it for bricking phones whose owners had opted for third party repairs.  Apparently, it sincerely believed that it could do what it liked and that its customers had to do as they were told or face the consequences of a bricked phone.

It might have been that someone pointed out that it was probably illegal in civilised countries to do that sort of thing, and even the US lawmakers are considering bringing in right-to-fix laws to stop that sort of thing.

Now the latest version of iOS 11.3.1 includes a fix for the bug that Apple consciously installed in its user's phones. According to release notes, "iOS 11.3.1 improves the security of your iPhone or iPad and addresses an issue where touch input was unresponsive on some iPhone 8 devices because they were serviced with non-genuine replacement displays."

It's possible that some users indeed were forced to shell out a fair chunk of change to Apple for official repairs, in which case they might  be angry that this was an issue that could be resolved with a software update. 

To be fair,  iOS 11 was notoriously buggy and most users could not tell if it was just rubbish programming from Apple or there was some evil intent behind it. Apple has said it has devoted so much effort to bug-fixing that this year's iOS 12 update will reportedly have fewer new features. So, in another words, you can have new features which don't work or an out-of-date operating system which has fallen behind its rivals.  

Though Apple says the 11.3.1 fix will work, it has still issued a stern warning not use third-party repair shops:

"Note: Non-genuine replacement displays may have compromised visual quality and may fail to work correctly. Apple-certified screen repairs are performed by trusted experts who use genuine Apple parts.."

It would sound a little more convincing if your "trusted experts" had not just written some code to bork your phone because you didn't trust them not to overcharge you.

Last modified on 26 April 2018
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