

Glitch In iTunes Activation Servers - bigiain
http://www.shoutpedia.com/glitch-in-itunes-activation-servers-thousands-with-bricked-ios-4.3.3-devices-8794/

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steevdave
I've re-installed various versions of the iOS software. You just go in to
iTunes and shift-click the Restore or Check for Updates button and choose any
version. I am not an iOS developer and have had no issues in going between 4.2
and 4.3 versions of the iOS software.

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warmfuzzykitten
My wife's iPad wasn't bricked, but it was certainly crippled by a similar bug
two days ago (Friday).

When my wife attempted to sync her iPad prior to upgrading to 4.3.3, she was
informed that the sync couldn't be completed. No error code or other reason
was given. She could not therefore upgrade because the first step in the
process is a sync. It got worse. After a few attempts, she powered off and
restarted her iPad. Instead of the normal boot up, she got icons indicating
she must connect the iPad to iTunes. When she did, she was advised that she
was required to reset the device.

Now the real nightmare begins. After resetting the iPad, she had lost all but
four of more than 100 mostly purchased applications. This should not be a
problem, as the app store knows that an application has been purchased and
will re-download it for free. But nobody told iTunes which applications to
download. In the apps section, only 67 of her apps were recoverable. And those
"updated" (meaning were restored) fine. Over the next day or so by browsing
the extremely unhelpful app store, where applications are so excessively
categorized it is virtually impossible to browse the huge catalog, and
checking her email history she was able to make a list of (some of the dozens)
of apps still missing. Then she had to go through the tedious process of using
the App Store on her iPad to search for and reload each application
separately, which took hours. At the end of this, she has no assurance there
aren't still missing apps.

The original bug was bad, having to reset and lose all her on-device
application data even worse, but the inability to smoothly restore previously
purchased applications through iTunes and/or the App Store exposed a major
design flaw that just fixing the bug won't address.

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Derbasti
I sense some exaggerations here. "Scores of users", "eleven pagelengths", but
no link to the discussion. Maybe that's actually just a few dozen people
there? Then, "bricked devices", only they are not "bricked" at all, they
merely failed to update and you need to restore them.

So, basically, the article says: There are a few users who have problems
updating their iDevices.

I wonder if this happens with every update or just with this one? Actually, I
would _expect_ every software that is used by several milling people to fail
for some eleven pagelengths worth of people.

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PascalW
I've upgraded my iPhone to 4.3.3 yesterday night, at around 22:00 GMT+2 and
didn't experience any problems.

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daimyoyo
Can't you go into recovery mode and reinstall the previous version of iOS? Or
is that just for jailbroken devices?

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ceejayoz
I've done it on my unjailbroken iPhone. iTunes has a built-in way of doing it.

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bcl
My 3G is still on 4.2.X so this may only be for 3Gs and newer devices.

You may be able to un-brick it by downgrading if you are a developer, I know
I've switched versions several times, including recovering from scary notices
like the phone only wanting to say 'connect to itunes'.

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Limes102
It broke mine... I used redsn0w to get it going again and then tried the
iTunes update again. Seemed to work for me!

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drivebyacct2
From my understanding, iOS devices, much like Android devices, are nearly, if
not completely, impossible to brick. Can't you just load the old version into
the updater and restore a good version of iOS? Or does this _actually_ brick
the device? (I have to ask, because it seems no one uses the word properly
these days.)

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sisk
Firmwares are signed and checked against Apple's server. They block all but
the latest firmware.

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ntoshev
This is false. I've reverted to older firmware before. There's even a
dedicated button in iTunes for that.

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zbowling
You can only do it for images that the activation server is willing to keep
singing for you. Sometimes they go back one or two versions (or a version is
know to be jailbreakable, they won't allow it to sign).

The funny part is that the signature is always constant for your device for
each version so if you proxy your signing request and cache it (like use
Cydia's "on file" thing) you can install and active for older builds.

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gcb
apple. just works.

