Once you upgrade an OS in the land of Apple, chances are you won’t be able to change your mind
I’m firmly of the opinion that the iPhone is the greatest piece of technology I’ve ever owned, which is why it’s infuriating when the thing decides it’s very much not going to work – doubly so, given that so much of my work is centred around reporting on iPhone-related apps, games, advice and accessories. What happened this time, though, was down to Apple.
Presumably through a desire to get iOS 9 out the door, what will in all probability be the final update to iOS 8.4 was seemingly programmed by a drunk intern, randomly mashing keys and hitting Submit before forgetting about the entire thing and curling up to sleep in the corner for a week.
Because I’m some kind of buffoon who trusts Apple, I saw the update notification on my iPhone and immediately installed it. Initially, I didn’t notice anything was wrong – I was in a period of manic work that didn’t really involve my iPhons, so it was days later before I noticed things were amiss. My iPhone would no longer update apps, nor download new ones from the App Store (although, naturally, the App Store was quite happy to take my money). Links in Mail failed to open Safari, and Settings locked up when you tried to access certain categories.
Worse, the Apple Watch app essentially ceased to function, as did a great deal of Apple Watch extensions. Given that, in Apple’s infinite wisdom, it has no way of doing much more than telling the time on its own that meant my wearable was essentially left marooned.
Then, as a final flourish, I noted the phone's battery life becoming alarmingly low, in fact the ailing iPhone was losing around 1% of a full charge per minute, while simultaneously becoming suspiciously hot.
Online, people helpfully offered advice along the lines of saying I was emitting a tech halo of doom (thanks) and noted that their devices were working just fine (great). A quick trip to Apple’s forums told a very different story, however. People with all kinds of Apple hardware were having similar issues – or worse. Gradually, I also had people on Twitter admit to their own horror stories, all of which seemed to be centred around iOS 8.4.1.
This was confirmed when someone noted they’d fumed in an Apple Store until they’d been given a replacement iPhone 6 (with diagnostics showing huge memory leaks and App Store connectivity issues, the ‘Genius Bar’ advice to "wait for an update" didn’t go down well). Said replacement ran iOS 8.3, and worked fine – but you can probably guess what happened the second its owner updated.
I’m informed that the iOS 9 beta is a possible fix and is, at the time of writing, “quite stable”; precisely the sort of wording you want to hear regarding the operating system at the heart of a device so critical for earning much of your income. What I really wanted, though, was to roll back to iOS 8.4, which I'd had no problems with. Apple has other ideas on that kind of thing, however, and stopped ‘signing’ that version of iOS a week after its successor’s release.
I and others were then left to sadly connect our devices to iTunes, and hope for the best through multiple restores. Third time’s a charm, apparently, although by ‘a charm’, I mean that my iPhone now grudgingly downloads apps, albeit at a snail’s pace, and no longer has working Touch ID. It’s like a downgrade. I can only hope that, when iOS 9 appears, I’ll finally get my iPhone back, and that it won’t need to spend another dozen hours connected to my Mac, not entirely successfully syncing data, apps, music and photos. Craig Grannell