Is there a way to tell if the HomePods updated or not? I haven't looked but I am guessing there is a way to see the HomePods' install version on the iPhone or Mac somewhere?
On your phone or iPad in the Home app. Click the home button at the top left and then click on Software Updates. It will then show you. You can turn off "Install Updates Automatically" while you are there.
I did have automatic updates enabled but quickly switched them off after reading the earlier article on Appleinsider about problems with this update. While I’m excited for the handoff feature, I’ll probably leave the updates on manual permanently and install them only after braver souls have tested the waters.
The Update timed out for me too, still on 12.4. Good thing I didn't try resetting the homepod. I'm excited for handoff, but can wait a little while longer.
Let’s see now... bricked MacsBooks and now bricked HomePods. I was always told bad things come in three’s. I think these recent debacles require a personal apology from the top gun even if they are affecting a “small” number of users. Mr. Cook, where are you?
I had a similar problem with my HomePod with an earlier update and Apple replaced the unit. The earlier experience taught me that bringing your HomePod into an Apple Store Genius Bar is unlikely to yield a positive outcome on the spot. First of all, the "geniuses" didn't have (at the time which was about 6 months ago) any diagnostics for the HomePod. They kind of just stared at the thing like it was Mork's Space Egg. Your grandma probably knows as much about how to troubleshoot a HomePod as does the average genius bar staff, at least at the time. Secondly, Apple Stores at the time did not stock service replacements and Apple will never hand you a unit from the sales inventory as a replacement, even under threat of imminent nuclear annihilation. Getting Apple to merge multiple Apple IDs is impossible, but still behind the possibility of getting a service replacement from sales inventory.
Just this week I had an update to my brand new Apple Watch that took over 12 hours to complete and an iPad Air that totally failed to update using the over-the-air (OTA) process and had to be updated via iTunes. I won't even get into the multiple Catalina installation and iCloud account debacles again. It's not a pretty picture.
I've unfortunately come around to realizing that there is a either a festering rot spreading inside Apple's current software process or they've outgrown their ability to properly support their customer base. Perhaps the scale of what they are trying to do is beyond whatever processes they currently employ. Perhaps what sounds like a tiny probability of failure is still not good enough at the scale they are operating. This is very reminiscent of reliability & availability (R&A) engineering and quality assurance (QA) where you have to very carefully account for exactly how many decimal place "nines" beyond 99% you are able to achieve with your process, e.g., four nines at 99.99% or six nines at 99.9999%. To laypeople it sounds like you're splitting hairs when you start talking about nines beyond 99% because, after all, isn't 99% availability pretty damn good to begin with? Unfortunately, when you're talking about the availability of a system or capability that needs to be available at all times plus the sum total of negative consequences of it being unavailable, and the scale of affected systems, a 99% availability, or even 99.99% availability, may be a catastrophic and total fail. When you're operating at scale mole hills are mountains.
I'm not saying anything about Apple's actual defect removal rate, but when you start to consider the hundreds of millions of devices that are negatively affected when they push out a bad software release or wonky update, and the human and financial costs involved with corrective actions, Apple had better be aiming to achieve a high number of nines from their software and quality process if they want to retain their credibility at the scale they are operating at today. Anything less will stunt their growth potential and erode their credibility. More so, they'd better be keeping track of where they are currently operating, what variables are involved, and driving every variable that is an impediment to them achieving the lofty targets they need in order to survive and prosper to acceptable levels. The recent string of high customer impact software anomalies had better not portend a trend. No ship is too big to sink, no matter the size of the hole.
I was one of the ones affected by the update. Just spoke with Apple and I have to bring it in to the Genius Bar for repair. It's out of warranty, but they'll be no charge. Definitely an inconvenience.
A factory default option should be able to truly revert devices to factory status, or a minimal working state from where to advance, from physical interaction with the device.
Perhaps it's a cost issue but if the device can be corrupted at a firmware level by an update, it should also be possible to recover it from the device itself, IMO.
When firmware goes bad and devices get bricked, at the minimum it's a headache and at its worst it can spell doom.
I've had out of warranty WD firewire drives need 'urgent' security updates that are highly recommended by WD, only to see them bricked by their stupid universal updater and be told by WD support that the fine print on the licence agreement stipulated that catastrophic failure of the process was a possible outcome. Their unofficial 'help' was to watch a YouTube video explaining how to get the drive out of the case and try installing the drive in a PC and running the updater again. Absolute worst possible support imaginable.
I also once bought a Sony high-end VCR but it turned out there was really only one model. They simply removed functionality via the firmware and sold the same device at lower price points depending on what functionality had been deactivated. Something happened after a power cut and the machine started up thinking it was the base model. I had to take it in and have the EPROM reset.
In this case Apple will have the decency to cover the 'repair' out of warranty but it does raise the question of whether this kind of non-recoverable situation should require the user to handle the logistics of getting the device in and out of Apple (in this case) or if the manufacturer (in general situations of this nature) should handle it.
I hope Apple does a complete end-to-end reassessment of how they roll out software updates going forward. This year has been nothing short of a complete disaster on virtually every front: - iOS 13 continues to be buggy even with 13.2, even if the major annoyances have been largely fixed. This is the version that should have been the 13.0; - Catalina and Catalyst in particular have been a massive let-down (just ask developers) - almost no documentation, much more work to create Mac apps than what was promised, apps that were supposed to be “Mac-like” are nothing of the sort. The very fact that Catalina rolled out so much later than iOS 13, yet apps like Reminders required the latest versions across all devices to work properly - that’s inexcusable. - Now they’re literally bricking devices after another failed update.
Who is in charge of these rollouts? Do these people and teams talk to each other? What rationale justifies rolling out something so half-baked just so you “hit a deadline”.
”Steve Jobs would have never allowed that” is a running joke now, but like any joke - there’s truth in that. This isn’t MobileMe. This is literally the very software that runs on their most popular devices. Do better.
This sounds like two problems. Something that causes a long update process and/or people are being impatient, and a fault in the reset process.
For the second thing, that’s not completely surprising. Rebooting during an incomplete OS update is inherently going to be a dicey prospect. Starting up a computer without a complete OS has a high probability of failure. Presumably there’s some design to have the device revert to a ‘safe mode’ that would allow for a fresh download and complete OS re-build, but if an abort/reset happens at the wrong time, it might to be able to reach the safe mode. The modified Apple restart advice regarding 13.2 suggests whatever the problem is, it hits at a point when restarting won’t get to that safe mode.
I’m still wondering how widespread the issue actually is. It’s obviously not zero, but this board isn’t stacked up with people who have bricked HomePods, so it seems possible the issue may be somewhat limited.
I bet many did abort and restart in frustration and you are right that can be a very bad idea. I did notice the 'update' seemed to be taking forever and I was luckily going out on errands so I just forget about it and several hours later the Application on the iPhone had seemingly finished so I assumed it had succeeded. I now suspect it had actually timed out.
I had mine bricked, and I can definitely say that the update had completed before I reset it. The Home app on my phone showed it as "Updating" during the update. Once it was done, that cleared away and I was able to ask Siri to do things on the HomePod. The problem is that my Siri requests would never work. She'd just say, "hmm... this is taking a while... please stand by..." and then eventually time out. I tried that a number of times before I finally decided to reset it.
This is why I normally wait a day. Let other SUCKERS test out the released software first. Generally, any issues will pop up pretty quickly. If they do, great, I can wait. If all seems good after a day, I'll go ahead and get and install the update.
I've unfortunately come around to realizing that there is a either a festering rot spreading inside Apple's current software process or they've outgrown their ability to properly support their customer base.
The first is a little dated, but perhaps of related interest: macperformanceguide.com/AppleCoreRot-intro.html macperformanceguide.com/blog/2019/20191008_1200-macOS-Catalina.html
I am normally the annoying guy at the table defending Apple to the end. However, I have to say this has not been a good month of software rollouts. Staggered releases with changing dates with bugs, bugs and more bugs. This HomePod issue really should necessitate someone losing their job. The other issues this month were excusable, I guess. But, this one is not.
Yeah, software is complicated, so I usually have some tolerance for updates sometimes not working out quite as expected. I don't have a HomePod, and have had no problems with the (multiple) iOS 13 updates, or with Catalina. But many people have, and now this.
We seem to have gone well over the line that divides "stuff happens" from "WTF were they thinking?"
I did have automatic updates enabled but quickly switched them off after reading the earlier article on Appleinsider about problems with this update. While I’m excited for the handoff feature, I’ll probably leave the updates on manual permanently and install them only after braver souls have tested the waters.
Did the same, but the update downloaded already. Waiting to install, which I won't do. I was thinking of resetting to remove the uninstalled update download. Or just don't do anything. Any thoughts?
I did have automatic updates enabled but quickly switched them off after reading the earlier article on Appleinsider about problems with this update. While I’m excited for the handoff feature, I’ll probably leave the updates on manual permanently and install them only after braver souls have tested the waters.
Did the same, but the update downloaded already. Waiting to install, which I won't do. I was thinking of resetting to remove the uninstalled update download. Or just don't do anything. Any thoughts?
Don’t do anything for the time being. Wait for the dust to settle around this issue.
Comments
Just this week I had an update to my brand new Apple Watch that took over 12 hours to complete and an iPad Air that totally failed to update using the over-the-air (OTA) process and had to be updated via iTunes. I won't even get into the multiple Catalina installation and iCloud account debacles again. It's not a pretty picture.
I've unfortunately come around to realizing that there is a either a festering rot spreading inside Apple's current software process or they've outgrown their ability to properly support their customer base. Perhaps the scale of what they are trying to do is beyond whatever processes they currently employ. Perhaps what sounds like a tiny probability of failure is still not good enough at the scale they are operating. This is very reminiscent of reliability & availability (R&A) engineering and quality assurance (QA) where you have to very carefully account for exactly how many decimal place "nines" beyond 99% you are able to achieve with your process, e.g., four nines at 99.99% or six nines at 99.9999%. To laypeople it sounds like you're splitting hairs when you start talking about nines beyond 99% because, after all, isn't 99% availability pretty damn good to begin with? Unfortunately, when you're talking about the availability of a system or capability that needs to be available at all times plus the sum total of negative consequences of it being unavailable, and the scale of affected systems, a 99% availability, or even 99.99% availability, may be a catastrophic and total fail. When you're operating at scale mole hills are mountains.
I'm not saying anything about Apple's actual defect removal rate, but when you start to consider the hundreds of millions of devices that are negatively affected when they push out a bad software release or wonky update, and the human and financial costs involved with corrective actions, Apple had better be aiming to achieve a high number of nines from their software and quality process if they want to retain their credibility at the scale they are operating at today. Anything less will stunt their growth potential and erode their credibility. More so, they'd better be keeping track of where they are currently operating, what variables are involved, and driving every variable that is an impediment to them achieving the lofty targets they need in order to survive and prosper to acceptable levels. The recent string of high customer impact software anomalies had better not portend a trend. No ship is too big to sink, no matter the size of the hole.
Perhaps it's a cost issue but if the device can be corrupted at a firmware level by an update,
it should also be possible to recover it from the device itself, IMO.
When firmware goes bad and devices get bricked, at the minimum it's a headache and at its worst it can spell doom.
I've had out of warranty WD firewire drives need 'urgent' security updates that are highly recommended by WD, only to see them bricked by their stupid universal updater and be told by WD support that the fine print on the licence agreement stipulated that catastrophic failure of the process was a possible outcome. Their unofficial 'help' was to watch a YouTube video explaining how to get the drive out of the case and try installing the drive in a PC and running the updater again. Absolute worst possible support imaginable.
I also once bought a Sony high-end VCR but it turned out there was really only one model. They simply removed functionality via the firmware and sold the same device at lower price points depending on what functionality had been deactivated. Something happened after a power cut and the machine started up thinking it was the base model. I had to take it in and have the EPROM reset.
In this case Apple will have the decency to cover the 'repair' out of warranty but it does raise the question of whether this kind of non-recoverable situation should require the user to handle the logistics of getting the device in and out of Apple (in this case)
or if the manufacturer (in general situations of this nature) should handle it.
- iOS 13 continues to be buggy even with 13.2, even if the major annoyances have been largely fixed. This is the version that should have been the 13.0;
- Catalina and Catalyst in particular have been a massive let-down (just ask developers) - almost no documentation, much more work to create Mac apps than what was promised, apps that were supposed to be “Mac-like” are nothing of the sort. The very fact that Catalina rolled out so much later than iOS 13, yet apps like Reminders required the latest versions across all devices to work properly - that’s inexcusable.
- Now they’re literally bricking devices after another failed update.
Who is in charge of these rollouts? Do these people and teams talk to each other? What rationale justifies rolling out something so half-baked just so you “hit a deadline”.
”Steve Jobs would have never allowed that” is a running joke now, but like any joke - there’s truth in that. This isn’t MobileMe. This is literally the very software that runs on their most popular devices. Do better.
macperformanceguide.com/AppleCoreRot-intro.html
macperformanceguide.com/blog/2019/20191008_1200-macOS-Catalina.html
Yeah, software is complicated, so I usually have some tolerance for updates sometimes not working out quite as expected. I don't have a HomePod, and have had no problems with the (multiple) iOS 13 updates, or with Catalina. But many people have, and now this.
We seem to have gone well over the line that divides "stuff happens" from "WTF were they thinking?"