
App with local notification will crash iOS Springboard on Dec. 2 - sashk
https://twitter.com/niw/status/936804672735649792
======
Khaine
I fortunately have not experienced this, despite living somewhere where it is
already the 2nd (no doubt because I've disabled most notifications). But Apple
seriously needs to fix its QA processes.

Microsoft was a security laughing stock in the early 2000s and they invested
heavily into secure coding methodology, tools, and standards. Now it is
Apple's day of reckoning.

Apple must demonstrate that they have learnt this lesson and commit to fixing
the security and quality control processes they have.

~~~
bsaul
I think Apple has a bigger problem. Microsoft has always been a software shop.
Apple culture has shifted throughout the time, between software and hardware.
I wonder if what we’re witnessing now isn’t the consequence of putting tim
cook and ives at the top, without a « software guy ».

~~~
ghostcluster
Craig Federighi is the software guy, succeeding Bertrand Serlet and Avie
Tevanian as VP in charge of software. He's only been at Apple since 2009,
though according to Wikipedia, he did work at NeXT in the 90s leading
WebObjects.

He's very charismatic and charming in the keynotes, but maybe he deserves some
scrutiny for Apple's recent sfotware problems? Though some of it has to be the
yearly cycle of releases and the pressure for glitzy features every Summer and
Fall.

~~~
bsaul
It could just be a problem of rank. From what i remember from steve jobs
decision, ive is in charge of both hardware and software, but i don't think he
would be able to code a javascript hello world to save his life.

If Craig doesn't have the authority to prioritize hardening the kernel vs the
latest gesture du jour, because Ive wants it badly, then no matter how good
and charming you are, you're screwed.

I mean, it's not hard to see there's something happening with the priorities
set inside the company : iphone X is apparently a great new piece of hardware,
but iOS and mac OS are seriously lagging.

The last batch of real new features was iOS10 with extensions (which honestly
didn't change anything in my personal experience), and before that iOS7 with
the new UI look. No serious innovation really happened in Apple software since
iOS. I'm talking "Richest company in the world" serious. Swift is the only
piece of really innovative software coming out of Apple, and from what i
understood, it's a very personal initiative of someone who's not even part of
the company anymore. And judging at the pace at which the language is
evolving, it seems badly under staffed (considering it's supposed to become
the main tool for all new apple software).

The way i see it (but frankly i don't know), Scott Forstall was the guy with
the vision and the history to lead ambitious new software project, and the
other top-level guys dumped him (for relational reasons). And now we start
seeing the aftermath of that decision.

~~~
andrewjl
Swift, metal, bitcode / LLVM IR, CloudKit, XPC on iOS, all other new
frameworks, machine learning on device, differential privacy. Maybe you meant
user-facing features, but all the aforementioned help build better software
for users.

~~~
magnetic
APFS too, with what seemed to be a smooth rollout.

~~~
ghostcluster
The APFS switchover wrecked a lot of people's drives, and AFPS is slower than
the filesystem it replaced. I wouldn't hold it up as an example of Apple
software initiatives that are shipped fully-baked.

~~~
magnetic
Do you have source for that? I can't find any reports of widespread problems.

The speed wasn't the part I was impressed with, it was the ability to do in
place upgrade of a filesystem on millions of devices without any massive
amounts of problems.

I find that to be a tour de force.

While I'd prefer new filesystems to be faster than older ones, I understand
that improvements don't always come in the speed dimension: it can also come
in the integrity/data loss one.

You can run your filesystem without write ordering, cache enabled, and no-op
for SYNC/FLUSH, and it will be very fast, but you will risk data loss.

It seems reasonable to me to trade speed for integrity.

------
jonstjohn
I landed in Australia this morning and as soon as my phone updated to Dec 2 on
the new network my phone started locking up immediately. It would go to the
loading screen (spinner in middle of screen) every 8-12 seconds then reset to
lock screen after 4-5 more, making it nearly impossible to even access
settings for more than a few seconds. I was able to disable local
notifications for the apps that I know use them after 3 or 4 tries (required
some quick navigation to get to the right screen before it locked up). I
captured the logs on a number of occasions but and saw a few anomalies in the
logs including this one:

iPhone kernel[0] <Notice>: 2404.102 memorystatus: killing_highwater_process
pid 736 [SpringBoard] (highwater 16) - memorystatus_available_pages: 26834

Possibly SpringBoard consuming too much memory because of the bug?

Additional saw some of these, although not sure if they are a factor:

iPhone dasd(DuetActivitySchedulerDaemon)[107] <Notice>:
com.apple.healthd.achievement-asset-manager:E60402:[ {name:
NetworkQualityPolicy, policyWeight: 11.400, response: {Decision: Must Not
Proceed, Score: 0.00, Rationale: [{[wifiQuality]: Required:100.00,
Observed:50.00},{[networkPathAvailability]: Required:1.00, Observed:1.00},]}}

~~~
giovannibajo1
It’s a calendar bug. Local notifications are/can be scheduled 30 days in
advance, so on Dec 2nd they can be scheduled on Jan 1st. I saw crash logs on
Twitter mentioning “month 13”, so it looks like there’s an off by one bug in
that calendar handling code

~~~
stesch
Stupid mistakes by big companies helped me fight the imposter syndrome.

------
aklemm
I woke up to this gem today. For me, Headspace was the culprit. Deleting it
allowed me to start the update process. Hopefully that fixes all cases.

The Golden Age of Apple has ended, and looking back, it was truly a Golden Age
of personal computing in terms of quality and usability. I moved to a Windows
laptop last week; it's o.k. Not terrible. But I'd say MS elevated themselves
and Apple stepped back and they've met in the middle to offer us only
mediocrity. /rant

~~~
NelsonMinar
Springboard. Springboard is the culprit. It is a core part of iOS and it is
crashing.

~~~
rwc
Headspace uses local notifications (meditation reminders) which triggers the
springboard bug.

------
BinaryIdiot
Whoa. That's pretty bad. According to someone in Australia the Apple Stores
there are getting swamped!

[https://twitter.com/jeremybank/status/936775902121226240](https://twitter.com/jeremybank/status/936775902121226240)

~~~
johansch
[http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/crowd-gathers-at-
apple...](http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/crowd-gathers-at-apple-store-
in-orchard-road-over-1112-ios-bug-that-crashes-phone)

------
robbiet480
Apple can’t QA software anymore, so I’m sitting in my hotel at Disneyland
trying to go to bed but actually upgrading two iPhones to iOS 11.2 beta so
that we can use them in the parks tomorrow since the beta is the only
confirmed way thus far to avoid it without losing something (access to apps
that time check or notifications for apps). Fantastic.

~~~
taspeotis
You can skip the beta: [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/02/apple-releases-
ios-11-2...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/02/apple-releases-ios-11-2/)

~~~
alpb
That’s not the point the commenter is making.

------
zootm
I had a look in Software Update and apparently iOS 11.2 is now available (not
as a Beta release). Since people were reporting the Beta didn't have the
issue, maybe Apple just released it?

~~~
Angostura
Rushing out a half-baked major release would certainly have other bad
consequence.

Update: They’ve just released 11.2 :)

~~~
IBM
iOS 11.2 has seen 6 dev betas and the GM was set to arrive any day.

~~~
Angostura
Sorry, I should have said 95% baked.

------
saghm
From reading the Twitter thread and these comments, I'm not quite sure I
understand what actually is happening/will happen to people's phones. Any
chance someone could explain what's up to someone with little to no iOS
knowledge?

~~~
loopfor
Well, what's happening to my phone is that every few seconds screen blanks
out, running apps crash and the phone goes back to the lock screen. The
battery is also draining fast and the phone is warm to the touch.

~~~
jamra
The battery drain screams of planned obsolescence. But there is always the
possibility that it’s proprietary hardware just requires them to write code
that just obliterates our battery.

~~~
matthewmacleod
No it doesn’t. This is a belief without any merit whatsoever. There is
approximately zero chance that Apple are deliberately causing iPhone batteries
to drain faster so that people will buy new iPhones.

~~~
nikanj
Well, no. But comparing the overall resource demands of iOS 6 and iOS 10 (the
first and last iOS available on iPhone 5), it's very clear that the latter is
an absolutely pig. Burning through more CPU, RAM and IOPS = faster battery
drain.

I doubt Apple is deliberately adding bloat to iOS, but every major version is
definitely heavier than the previous one.

~~~
umanwizard
OK sure, but this has nothing to do with what "planned obsolescence" means.

------
ghostcluster
How many gigantic software disasters can Apple have in one week?

~~~
rcthompson
To be fair, I have difficulty imagining how you could practically test for
this kind of bug ahead of time. You can't test every feature in every app in
the app store with the clock set to every possible date and time.

~~~
userbinator
This is not a bug that should be caught by testing, but by simply looking at
the code and _thinking_ about it (and often getting others to do the same for
your code.)

The current fashion of "write some code, write some tests, modify either until
the tests pass" is not a way towards fewer bugs. All it leads to is the
analogy of "throwing things on a wall and seeing what sticks". Tests should be
for reducing the remaining uncertainty about the functioning of some code, and
not a substitute for actually trying to get it right through careful
reasoning.

~~~
Tobba_
Unit testing seems to frequently result in overconfidence.

------
jordansmithnz
Shoot, I have an app on the App Store with a user count in the hundreds of
thousands, and local notifications are one of the main features. Can't say I'm
looking forward to responding to App Store reviews tomorrow (although I guess
just for users that figure out it's the notifications causing the restarts?).

I understand why Apple software has bugs - it's practically impossible to
write perfect software. However, it does seem like in the last year, the
quality bar has dropped significantly. The number of iOS 11 bugs I've had to
work around during development is crazy.

------
GrandTheftR
Reddit thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7gzntq/psa_iphone_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7gzntq/psa_iphone_rebootrespring_issues_megathread/)

seems the solution is to set clock back, will set iPhone to do not disturb
help this?

~~~
userbinator
A comment there mentions the specific time that causes it:

 _I found that the crash problem occurs when the datetime is after 2017 Dec
02, 12:15am. The problem does not happen at 12:14am, but once the time goes
past 12:15am, and I do a hard reset, the problem returns._

...the real question then, is what is special about 2017-12-02 00:15 ? It's
not a leap day[1], there are no leap seconds, and nothing about the epoch
timestamp stands out either. I'd love to read about the cause of this bug.

[1] Leap years have caused similar problems before: [http://bit-
player.org/2009/the-zune-bug](http://bit-player.org/2009/the-zune-bug)

~~~
markild
Expired certificate, maybe?

~~~
jmgao
Seems unlikely, it seems to trigger at 12:15 local time.

------
songgao
There’s an official guide now: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208332](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208332)

------
loopfor
Wow, is that what's happening? I'm in New Zealand, couldn't figure out what
was happening with battery drain + continuous crashing even after factory
reset and restore. I guess I messed up with the restore.

------
reacharavindh
Still feeling better about sticking with iOS 10 on my iPhone 6S. Enjoying the
original battery life and some sanity at the cost of "cutting-edge" features.
Apple is going to be treated like the old IBM and Microsoft from now on.
Always wait until they figure their stuff out AFTER their public release.

------
anton_gogolev
And nothing from Apple yet, right? Apparently, engineers are hard at work
releasing a fix, so there should be known workarounds. Or at least it’s known
to them what is actually causing the issue. Instead, we have hordes of people
resetting their iPhones, adjusting dates and times, fiddling with notification
settings and generally stumbling in the dark.

What would hurt them more, I wonder: publicly admitting that there is an issue
(on a massive scale) and listing workarounds, or keeping total radio silence
and then publishing a “whoopsies, we screwed up” after the fix is ready. All
the while all their support centers are drowning in calls.

------
mwill
This is crazy, I haven't gone up to iOS 11, not having the problem, is this a
problem going forward? ie if you set your date to Dec 3 does it still happen?

Can't wait to see a write up on how this happened and why.

~~~
Angostura
If you’re on 11.1.2 and not having the problem, then you don’t have an app
with local notifications.

In my case it was the Pebble app, apparently. Turning off it’s notifications
stopped the constant respringing, though has presumably left we with a much
dumber watch.

------
bitmapbrother
On the plus side, Animoji has been rock solid.

~~~
bsaul
I heard gesture on iphoneX were pretty cool too. That tells a lot where the
management focus is on these days.

------
mastax
I bet this'll be a front-page story tomorrow simply because some significant
portion of journalists will be affected.

------
thisisit
Is there an official Apple page already for this? If not I wonder how many
people will end up restoring their iOs devices.

------
johansch
"It reproduces only actual device runnning with iOS11.1.2 or iOS11.1.1."

[https://github.com/ktakayama/NotificationCrash](https://github.com/ktakayama/NotificationCrash)

~~~
peterburkimsher
I can confirm that an iPhone 4S 64GB from 6 years ago running iOS 6.1.3 still
runs perfectly today, just like it always did.

It's also not too hard to repair by myself.

~~~
TheCoreh
What apps still support iOS 6 to this date? Several websites are probably also
broken on Safari on iOS 6... If so, what's the difference between running this
version and just using a feature phone?

~~~
tinus_hn
Not to mention the lack of security updates. Basically your only protection is
that people lost interest in these phones.

~~~
peterburkimsher
Security for what purpose? My iTunes account isn't tied to a bank account or
credit card. My contact list isn't that valuable. I don't have anything worth
stealing.

My security was compromised when I jailbroke my phone in order to install lots
of tweaks (I've had the swipe up gesture as a home button, like the new iPhone
X, for years). In that time, I've not missed the lack of security, and I have
benefitted from the local offline backups that aren't encrypted.

~~~
tinus_hn
I don’t know if there is a standard page to refer people to that have this ‘I
have nothing to hide so I don’t need security’ mindset but there should be
one.

You are endangering your friends and family and potentially annoying the rest
of the Internet.

------
stesch
What's so special about this date?

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2017-12-02+00:15+to+un...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2017-12-02+00:15+to+unix+time)

==> 1512170100

That's not it. (Not like the KMail crash on 2001-09-09. :-)

~~~
mcintyre1994
From this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15831385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15831385)

Basically, you can do notifications up to 30 days ahead, 2nd December + 30
days = 1st January, something overflows and thinks month(January) =
Month(December)+1 instead of correctly looping around.

------
Jyaif
In malaysia; can confirm the springboard crash ("caused" by the uber app)

------
saagarjha
Does anyone know why this is happening? I see a lot of testing of _when_ this
happens, but I don't see any reasons presented of _why_.

------
ksec
macOSX High Sierra and iOS11, both are the worst release in their respective
OS, in the same year.

I could partly argue the misstep in hardware as Johnny and his team as well as
other department were likely too focused on Apple Park, arguably the biggest
Apple product release since the Mac and iPhone.

But I just cant relate how and what Software had to do with Apple Park. Sloppy
Software release, iOS 11 GM leaked by rogue employee, Homepod firmware with
new info and release. Root bug, Springboard crash. And last time i checked,
the iCloud Drive and Whatsapp backup syncing issues is still there, wasting
potentially multiple hundreds GB/month of bandwidth in the background.

When the video of an employee's daughter filming at Apple HQ, which her father
allows it and spoke about he is working on Apple Pay, the first thought that
came to my mind was "sloppy". It tells me something were wrong in Apple,
because literally all previous, and current long time Apple employees freaked
out when they saw it.

Something is missing since Steve Job's left. It is the fear, the worry whether
you are doing your job good enough to please him. The yardstick of quality, in
an environment where excellence is the norm and expected.

P.S - I know everyone loves Crag Federighi, but i do miss Scott Forstall.

~~~
skinnymuch
What's wrong with High Sierra? When I upgraded to Sierra, my OS got a bit
buggy. I was hoping High Sierra would fix some of this. But I haven't upgraded
out of fear that it would make things worse. Sadly this may be the case.

~~~
yladiz
In my experience, High Sierra is pretty much the same as Sierra. There isn't
that much difference between the two, but I've run into three annoying and
consistent bugs: pressing command+space doesn't always open Spotlight Search,
meaning sometimes I have to press it twice; there is a memory leak in
WindowServer that causes OS instability over time (my WindowServer currently
says 27.94GB in Activity Monitor); and, using QuickTime in fullscreen
sometimes causes weird fogging issues in the video, making it look washed out
when anything besides the video is on screen (like the QT controls, mouse
cursor). The only one that really causes me major problems is the WindowServer
memory leak, because it sometimes randomly cause freezing in the entire OS,
sometimes not unfreezing and requiring a restart.

------
m3kw9
No crash here, schedule the moon symbol on from now till 11:59pm you could be
fine

------
zaphirplane
No it’s not crashing for me, hmm it actually crashed once at midnight

------
PhasmaFelis
I recently got a second-hand iPhone 6 running iOS 10, and this week I keep
getting happier and happier that I didn't upgrade to 11.

