auxio

MacPro said:

AppleZulu said:

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.

Be careful with this update.  It just bricked my HomePod and I'm in the process of getting help from Apple.

After I updated, I couldn't get Siri to work at all (even after a power cycle) so I tried removing my HomePod using the Home app and then adding it again.  Unfortunately, none of my iOS devices can even detect it anymore.  Tried a tap and hold to reset it, but that doesn't seem to work either.

randominternetperson said:

Tyshawn Cormier clearly has mad skills.  The elegant UI is a nice, surprising touch.  Maybe next week he can tackle all the old 32-bit games.  That would earn him the Nobel Prize for Software for sure.

Likely not going to happen.  His method relies on the app to be mostly 64-bit already (and created using Objective-C).  Works well for recently discontinued Apple apps, but not so great for anything which was only ever 32-bit.

GeorgeBMac said:

nicholfd said:

GeorgeBMac said:

wood1208 said:

GeorgeBMac said:

I'm a little confused by this.   I thought Apple had halted updates to the iPhone 5 last September (2018).   Is it still getting updates?   Or maybe just security updates?

Because Apple is not Android OS or Android phone maker.

Well, they aren't -- but, in this case, Android and Apple work about the same.  Google updates its systems but, at least partly because so many phones are using customized versions of the code many of those phones have to be updated by the carrier -- which doesn't happen.   Actually the best of the two is neither -- it is Microsoft:   I'm typing this on a 10 year old machine running the latest version of Windows -- and I have even older machines running current versions as well.

But, none of that answered my original question of:  "What is Apple's policy regarding outdated equipment?  I thought they had halted updates to the iPhone 5."

This is an up date to keep time accurate.  GPS is used for time.  Security (signing, certificates, etc.) all require accurate time, or things like the App Store, iCloud, etc., do not work.  This update fixes a GPS time issue because GPS' have "rollovers" where some hardware/software may have bugs, or did not considered the devices being in use this long.  Without this update, the device date/time will be wrong and secure stuff will break (App Store, iCloud, iMessage, secure e-mail, etc.)

Thanks!
So, if I get this correctly:   Apple will, at their discretion, produce critical updates in order to prevent the products from stopping completely -- but no functional or security updates?

If you’re looking for an “official company policy” for this, I’m fairly certain there isn’t one. Apple just “did the right thing” in this case to ensure users with old iPhones could still access iCloud, App Store, and other services. Which is pretty critical to the phone’s usefulness.

macxpress said:

blastdoor said:

As the release date approaches, I'm becoming convinced I just can't install it on any Mac I own. For my home Mac I refuse to let go of some 32 bit games. For my work Mac, there are vitally important apps that are still 32 bit. 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out -- will Apple be forced to walk back the decision to kill off 32 bit apps? Probably not, but I bet uptake on Catalina will be much slower than past operating systems. 

*sigh* Developers have had 12 YEARS! to get their apps, plug-ins, drivers, etc 64-bit on macOS. It's not Apple's fault developers dragged their feet on this. Any 64-bit issues are solely the developer's fault, not Apple's. Why should Apple continue year after year to offer backwards compatibility? If they don't push forward, developers will just keep dragging their feet or just plain not fixing their shit to bring it to modern standards. 

While I'm certainly not disagreeing with the sentiment that we need to more forward, let me give you an example of why an app might not move to 64-bit.

I worked on an app which supported loading 3D content in a bunch of different formats.  A couple of the components we used to load that content were very old and only available as 32-bit (no longer supported).  So if we wanted to move to 64-bit we either had to drop support for those formats (which would make customers unhappy), find 64-bit replacements (no good options existed), or write our own (very costly -- couldn't be justified to management to spend that much on it).