This bug is very annoying. Two people in my close circle of friends/family have this issue, which makes me think a) it's pretty common and b) it was catchable in QC.
I spent 2 hours this week trying to upgrade, back-up, restore, etc a relative's phone, without success. The fact that you can't downgrade from iOS 7 makes this doubly painful. Support from Apple was pretty straightforward for my friend: "Your phone is out of warranty, sorry, we will not help you." The fact that this warranty is illegal under EU law is left out.
Finding that this is an incredibly common problem amongst users with a recent iPhone (4S, still being sold by Apple), and seeing that Apple is actively censoring people for offering warranty help, is very frustrating. It's sad that it takes someone famous ranting about Apple's censorship to solve the issue, when it all could have been avoided by saying "We are aware of the problem, it has to do with the iOS 7 upgrade, we are working on a software fix, if we can't fix it we will replace the affected iPhones."
> Support from Apple was pretty straightforward for my friend: "Your phone is out of warranty, sorry, we will not help you." The fact that this warranty is illegal under EU law is left out
In my experience (happened twice), even if you buy the device from an Apple Store on some other European country (thus having the 2-y warranty) Apple Stores in the UK won't fix it. I had to wait for the flight home to have it fixed in my home country (and it was).
I own all categories of Apple devices but I never had a good experience at an Apple Store, not even when buying stuff. I realise I'm an exception though.
Apple products and services are not exclusively sold by Apple and its network of official resellers etc. On the other hand, most manufacturers offer warranty in addition to the legally mandatory seller's warranty obligations.
But Apple censoring it's forums is nothing new. They've been doing it for years. And frankly, most companies do censor their forums.
No one likes it. And Apple is infamous for not responding until an issue reaches the mainstream press. So the best thing anyone can do is reach out to the mainstream press. Get this issue on the evening news programs and trust, it'll be fixed in a couple of days.
It's not "censorship" if it's Apple's own forums. A censor is a _third party_ who acts as an arbiter of what is morally acceptable elsewhere (OED definition: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/censor). Apple are entirely within their rights to remove stuff from their own website... even if they're being dicks by doing so.
The definition you linked to says nothing about 3rd parties, only officials without specifying who they work for. In fact, one of the examples given in that definition is film censors which is within scope here - in the US film censorship is done by the MPAA which is an organization composed of movie studios. Most of the films they censor are produced by their own members.
The use of the word censor in this discussion is entirely within the common and technical definitions of the term.
If you want to learn about how bonkers the MPAA ratings process is, check out this documentary: This Film Is Not Yet Ratedhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/
Each to their own, but I wouldn't call what the MPAA does "censorship" (to my limited knowledge, that is; I'm not an American).
The MPAA issues ratings; it's up to the studio to decide whether to make cuts to a film in order to attain a particular rating. No-one forces the studio to make the cuts (Wikipedia: "The MPAA rating system is a voluntary scheme not enforced by law and films can be exhibited without a rating").
Sure, it might be commercial suicide to issue a film with a particular rating, but the right to free speech != the right to make lots of money.
The rating system is only "voluntary" in the sense that the government will decline to impose its own rating system as long as the private one meets the government's goals.
It definitely should have been caught in Quality Checks.
There's another interesting angle to this. My boss always tells me to emulate Apple and Google engineers. He says "If they can create a phone or a search engine without glitches, I should be able to create a mediocre form without a defect".
This is a triumph of marketing over QA - the oft-quoted Apple reality distortion field...
A senior electronics engineer where I used to work 'had to have' an iPhone, so one was duly supplied. He immediately had problems connecting reliably to Exchange to pick up his emails and after the IT support guys had tried several times to make it work more reliably, the phone was handed back with the (valid) comment that this was currently a 'known problem'.
The engineer's reply was that he didn't accept that response because it was an Apple product and they'd not have problems making something as simple as email 'just work'.
You must be new to apple products: launchd had problems running scheduled tasks for years, people resorted to installing anacron, when the Cisco VPS connection was released in snow leopard it was utterly broken, the first iteration of time capsule had thermal problems, most of those units are probably dead by now.
If I'd be your boss I'd simply tell you to code like every single bit no matter how small will be used in a space shuttle, airplane or submarine. Forget about trying to be like some Google/Apple guy, just trying not to be the cause of the next Challenger-like disaster shoud be a nice starting point to produce quality code.
iOS 7 feels extremely rushed to me, as well. I have found several easily reproducible crashes in stock and freshly restored systems in MobileSafari (on top 100 sites) and elsewhere.
I really hope Apple abandons their overly-rigid release schedules in favor of quality once again.
Anyone else have the bug where flipping off bluetooth doesn't turn on the software keyboard? If I forget to hit 'eject' before I leave the house, my only options are to either hard reset or spend the day in read-only mode.
Yes, I've had that one too. I have a Logitech keyboard case, but if I'm not writing long-form, I find it more comfortable to have the "bare" iPad, and tap out any shorter text. Unless I specifically disconnect the keyboard through the iOS settings panel first, I don't get the software keyboard back.
By contrast, in iOS 6, if the BT keyboard disconnected for any reason, (i.e. power-off/range) the software keyboard would instantly reappear.
My cousin had this issue on her iPhone 4S and Apple replaced it with a new one when she took it to the store. It seemed like a very straightforward exchange for her.
I think the key is that this was probably under warranty for her. The 4S, for many people, is more than a year old.
Most people expect that their new phone will be built to last more than one year, but understand that if something breaks after that period they will need to pay to fix it, even if it is a factory defect (say, a home button or battery which should last 2 years, but in some cases doesn't). They also expect to benefit from software updates after their warranty period, but understand new features may not always be available.
What they aren't expecting is that Apple will pro-actively break a core feature of their phone with an update, which can't be reversed, and can't be repaired, without replacing the whole device.
This is a widely known Apple issue. They constantly release new products with complete disregard for the previous version. Just look at the iPhone 3G. iOS 4 made it completely unusable. Did Apple ever do anything to help? Nope!
I might be missing something here - why would people flag it? HN has never struck me as being this petty. Anal retentive, pedantic, and difficult (citation required, sigh). What am I missing?
I didn't flag, but as has been pointed out many times on previous discussions of this, the consensus seems to be that if Apple didn't moderate their forums and remove incendiary posts or threats of lawsuits, they would be opening themselves up to more unhappy customers doing the same. A forum isn't the place to demand Apple fix something, the Apple store or their support line is the place for that. Likewise, a forum isn't a place to bring threats of a lawsuit against the company who owns the forum.
The fact that someone is trying so hard to make this become controversial and news-worthy is the only interesting thing here.
Flagging does push a post down the ranks; I've never heard of summoning a moderator. Flags alone can also kill stories entirely if they come before it gains many points. The voting ring detection and flame-war detection code also push a post down the ranks.
So, the Lessig post could've been flagged, the comments on it could've triggered the flame war code, or a moderator did it.
What almost definitely didn't happen is "Apple fan boys at work" flagging down anything anti-Apple. When you use the flag link any more than extremely sparingly, you lose the privilege, permanently.
Flagging does, in fact push posts down. I believe the amount is proportional to the flagger's karma.
Psychologically, the UI seems intended to separate "I don't like this" from "I think this content is detrimental to the site". This communicates that users should not attempt to punish links they simply dislike, but may do so with comments.
Yes it does, and PG is allowing everyone to have basically an infinite amount of flagging now. It used to be that if you used it more than 10-20 times (maybe in a period of time), you would have the ability removed.
I flagged it because it's just not interesting. Where's the "hacker news" angle? That a company's community representatives should never remove posts? That Lawrence Lessig should somehow enjoy immunity from what they try to uphold?
Company screws up some software upgrade, hundreds of uses swam their forums and complain. Who would be served from 100s of threads about the same thing with no solutions?
It's generally not "censhorship" unless the government does it. Your speech is not being suppressed by Apple not wanting spam in their forums. It's not some deep conspiracy to drive up Apple stock price.
So who really cares? Someone who has not upgraded to the latest iOS and needs WiFi access to drive his life critical system?
This is pretty brutal and disingenuous IMHO. If this is considered proper justification for flagging this post, I'm not surprised why there's such a positive Apple slant here.
replying because I'm going to refer to this comment as a prime example of how HN's moderation is going downhill in all future posts. Thanks for the ammo.
There is a more or less open campaign to flag NSA stories despite the appearance that some kind of crisis is coming to head about about spying on European allies and that General Alexander and the UK PM are openly calling for media censorship.
Sorry should have been clearer. My point was: the "Winter is coming" post was posted around the same time as Lessig's post, has less points and yet is at #20. How does that happen?
Btw, only 15 minutes after your original post, and Lessig's post know is upvoted to 245 points already yet is 2 places down...
It's not total votes that counts, but rather votes per time. So two posts of the same age and same vote count could be in different places if one has recent votes and the other older votes.
The time of the votes is not taken into account. The time-based decay is only based on the submission time. A story with the same votes and same submission time will have the same rank regardless of when the votes occurred, all other factors being equal.
Ugh, enough with the implied conspiracy theories and the meta-discussion about vote mechanics. It's obviously not a very vast conspiracy since we're discussing the story now.
I think the title is a bit too bait-y and trollish for its own good. I almost flagged it on sight and I'm no Apple fanboy by any measure (the only apple product I've owned in my life was an old iPod). I assume it's a slashdot reference but still.
It's not censorship at all, it's the moderation of the forum maintained by the company. If I would maintain my forum I'd also delete the comments that are aggressive, overblown, conspiracy-insane etc, for example. I'd also know it's hard to win: only a few weirdos (and internet makes it really easy for them to be visible) are enough to waste the time of more people, but it's still a nice goal: better a few people on the payroll deleting the comments than the thousands or even millions of users being distracted, creating the new conspiracy theories or organizing lynching.
In short, "do it in your own forum, I reserve the right to delete your posts in mine, and by participating, you're acknowledging my right."
If you did any real-life engineering, you know there isn't anything that can be produced without any glitches. You are aware that your product isn't perfect, but you still wouldn't want to support aggression in your own forums. Due to the different laws in different countries, who should you personally contact to solve the problem varies so even such answers in globally-read thread which should be purely technical can be inappropriate. In European countries it's very regulated and clear, for example. I don't know how it's in US.
What's certainly clear is that nobody would even want the forums without the active moderation, except the spammers and the insane.
>If I would maintain my forum I'd also delete the comments that are aggressive, overblown, conspiracy-insane etc, for example. //
That's fine, but a polite legitimate enquiry about a genuine problem doesn't meet with those characteristics - it is "censorship". Apple Computers are censoring the speech of their users seeking support from other users (and Apple).
So I guess what you're saying is "don't expect Apple to offer support or act ethically towards their users". Fair enough.
>Due to the different laws in different countries, who should you personally contact to solve the problem varies so even such answers in globally-read thread which should be purely technical can be inappropriate. //
Yeah 'cause that's why the posts were deleted. Not like you could simply add a comment "these returns are only available in the EU".
>What's certainly clear is that nobody would even want the forums without the active moderation, except the spammers and the insane. //
Which is a strawman. You can have a moderated forum without deleting posts simply because they'd affect your profits.
Not sure if you're trolling, but I'll bite. Agreed that aggression in forums shouldn't be tolerated and aggressive or false comments deleted, but this isn't a case here. The point of a support forum is to provide a platform for getting information about a problem you are having. Legitimate questions and solutions to problems are being actively deleted by Apple and it's clear they are trying to hide bugs in their software rather than addressing it.
Have you actually read the posts or do you also react purelly emotionally? Lessig fixed on the post that was clearly inconsistent, and Lessig's own posts are "why ate you moderating" subjects, nothing technical. There were also some strange claims of "heating the chips to 300 degrees helps."
The frustration of non-functioning phone is understandable. But the decision to keep away too emotional posts or those that attack moderator's decisions is also understandable.
Similar story for 2011 Q1 MBP, it seems like the Graphics are defect for several models and suddenly started to fail for several customers about now... +800 posts, NO RESPONSE AND CENSORSHIP FROM APPLE!! Think twice before buying a new Macbook Pro:
I have the same early 2011 MBP, but with a failing logic board (kernel panics, restarts, fails memtest86 identically with multiple sets of RAM). AppleCare sends me to Genius Bar to get it fixed. "Genius" reinstalls the OS and tells me it's fixed. After disagreeing that this was a fix--when I started seeing the problem I tried clean reinstall--they run their memory test which doesn't catch the issue, and tell me they won't fix.
At this point I offer to pay out of pocket for a new logic board even though I am covered under AppleCare. 3 days after first calling Apple, I just want my machine working. They tell me they won't even do that unless their iMemoryTester comes back with an error. So, they offer to mail it to a repair facility to see if they can figure out what's wrong. So, I'm now into a process that they tell me will take an additional 5 days, and they may still elect to not fix the problem unless they can reproduce a problem that is intermittent in the OS and is reliably flagged by memtest86.
I used to believe that a laptop and AppleCare was a way to have a worry-free three-year cycle. What I'm going through right now is making me reconsider that.
This isn't germane to the topic of censorship, but appears consistent with Apple not giving a crap about certain classes of problems.
I'm a software-developer and my livelihood depends on being able to write code freely, without getting censored and threatened with litigation, bullshit patents and rounded corners.
Thus patent trolls and people abusing software patents for anti-competitive purposes is a direct threat to my livelihood and supporting that is directly unintuitive, borderline madness.
I have an ethical code of software conduct and it's very simple: I don't deal with patent-trolls. None. That includes not buying anything from Apple.
Then I'm sure you don't buy any products that contain Samsung NAND NVRAM, nor do you purchase anything with Qualcomm chips, as a significant portion of their revenue comes from aggressive patent licensing, right?
Listen, I hate patent trolls as much as the next guy, but patent licensing is a very common business tactic everywhere. Don't make broad, over reaching comments if you don't actually mean them. You're perfectly fine with not buying Apple products because you don't like Apple. I don't like LG products, so I try not to buy LG. But, lets be realistic here.
> Then I'm sure you don't buy any products that contain Samsung NAND NVRAM, nor do you purchase anything with Qualcomm chips, as a significant portion of their revenue comes from aggressive patent licensing, right?
Definitely adding them to my list of companies to not buy, thanks for the tips.
Key phrase being 'end up'. After denying for a long time, forcing many people to pay out of pocket for repairs (which weren't retroactively reimbursed). Hardly stellar customer service.
I think you're thinking of the GeForce 8600M GT recall, for 2007+ models. I went through that one myself. So far my mid-2011 MBP has been without major issues.
My girlfriend's iPhone 4s updated to iOS7 and refused to activate. After four or five hours of going through support and then a trip to the Apple store, Apple confirmed that the hardware was fine but something went wrong on the upgrade. The "Genuis" told us that's it's "unfortunate" that things like wifi sometimes break when you upgrade your phone's OS because of the stress that it puts your phone through. Their only solution was to buy a used phone of the same model for $200 from them. Our request to have downgrade back to iOS6 (we have both an iTunes backup and an iCloud backup) was refused because the "Genuises" can't even do it. I even offered to pay them to fix that phone and we were told they couldn't do it.
We refused to pay Apple to replace her phone and I bought her a friend's spare phone in the meanwhile. My first and only bad experience with Apple so far but quite disappointing to say the least.
We don't need laws against this. We already have existing and satisfactory avenues that expose these types of business practices. Good journalism and websites like Hacker News do a better job than a law regarding this type of practice ever could.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but please don't be so casual with this audience's time.
For example, should we have to do vigilante investigation of every company everywhere?
Obviously consumer rights have to be balanced with the first amendment - and for this reason, I don't think your parent's proposal is clear enough to become a law. It's super-vague.
But don't for a second be so generous in saying that we should take the burden on instead.
I don't want to have to read about underage workers, credit card fraud by companies, carcinogenic additives, gross marketing misrepresentation, or any number of other practices that are simply illegal. Moreover even if someone did want to read about them here, we couldn't police the world's 125M companies.
This original story was about information about the warranty in the EU. So I don't think the first amendment of the US constitution applies in this case.
(And yes, it's a vague quick suggestion, this is a discussion board, we're not writing laws here)
Apple's forums are a private website that they are free to moderate in any way they want, and users agree to these conditions prior to contributing to the forum and any time they change. There are friendlier places on the Internet to post things Apple doesn't want you saying, but their user forums isn't that place.
Just because something is owned by a private company doesn't mean they can do what they want and the law isn't allowed interfere. They cannot close it to Jews or black people, the law is quite clear. I'm suggesting making a law that says they cannot counter/restrict other people informating customers of their rights.
Well, I still disagree with you with respect to that law, because I think you're stretching consumer rights cover disliking a product. The point of Apple's forum isn't for warranty-covered tech support, so going in and bitching about a product is both nonconductive and distracting. If Lessig has a problem with his iPhone, there are channels he can go to for support, as well as other channels where he can voice his opinion. Besides, there are defamation laws in place already, and they're broad enough.
One thing is clear: Jony Ive is no great software designer. He's stuck in a paradigm of modernist functionalism that works well for physical objects but doesn't translate well to the screen.
I spent 2 hours this week trying to upgrade, back-up, restore, etc a relative's phone, without success. The fact that you can't downgrade from iOS 7 makes this doubly painful. Support from Apple was pretty straightforward for my friend: "Your phone is out of warranty, sorry, we will not help you." The fact that this warranty is illegal under EU law is left out.
Finding that this is an incredibly common problem amongst users with a recent iPhone (4S, still being sold by Apple), and seeing that Apple is actively censoring people for offering warranty help, is very frustrating. It's sad that it takes someone famous ranting about Apple's censorship to solve the issue, when it all could have been avoided by saying "We are aware of the problem, it has to do with the iOS 7 upgrade, we are working on a software fix, if we can't fix it we will replace the affected iPhones."