Slow news day on the Apple beat? That’s OK, because with a little gumption and some irate table flipping, you’ll find almost anything can be treated as newsworthy.
It’s not, of course, but you can treat it that way.
Writing for the Forbes contributor network and interpretive Dance Dance Revolution school, Gordon Kelly rages against the Apple update machine.
“Apple Silent On iOS 9.1 Touch ID Problem” (Tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)
Silent? Maybe, but the Macalope’s going to guess the eye rolling Apple did when relentlessly asked about this problem by Kelly was so pronounced it almost made a noise.
Despite launching with a changelog that admitted 11 of its 13 features were bug fixes…
Apple used release notes to “admit” to fixing bugs and shipping enhancements. For this they must burn forever in perdition’s flames.
…iOS 9.1 is raising ire across Apple’s official Support Communities forum…
Really? Across them? Are people in the iPod shuffle forums also complaining about this bug? Apparently the iPod socks forum is almost literally on fire with complaints about TouchID.
…for breaking Touch ID across iPhones and iPads – both old and new (sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 – and many, many more).
He found more than 10. A lot of the results in the final search Kelly links to only mention TouchID while discussing different issues. So, how many people wrote about the iOS 9.1 TouchID problem on Apple’s support boards? Seems like at least 20. Possibly a hundred.
Which doesn’t seem like a lot until you remember that only 4,000 people own iPhones. And, remember, where there’s a small amount of smoke, there’s usually a small source for that smoke, one that is generating a modicum of heat.
Several of these complaints were posted more than a week ago, were responded to with suggested fixes and then not updated. Did the suggestions work or does the user still have the problem?
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yes, sometimes people responded the fixes did not work but the plural of “forum posting” is not “endemic, catastrophic design flaw experienced by millions of users.”
The thing that’s so annoying is that one could reasonably make a case that the quality of Apple’s software releases has gone downhill in recent years. The Macalope wouldn’t personally make that argument (ask him about his struggles with Mac OS 8 some time no, really, do not), but it could be made without resorting to histrionics. Running to the forums and shouting about every glitch experienced is simply engaging in sensationalism.
Which, to be fair, is part of Forbes’s mission statement: “Sensationalism, salaciously packaged and delivered in a user-hostile format.”
It’s a niche.