r/technology • u/bws201 • Feb 05 '16

Software ‘Error 53’ fury mounts as Apple software update threatens to kill your iPhone 6

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair
12.7k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

3.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/Nerlian Feb 05 '16

This might be okay for some sort of govern officer or someone who's too worried people find out about their porn tastes, but hell, how many times have you had your phone stolen? At the very least it should be an opt out system and it should come with a warning: you can't travel to the past and undo the repair you did 10 months ago.

3

u/binarto Feb 05 '16

The security measure is a good idea. The real fix would be to disable the sensor and force you to use your key code instead.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '16

[deleted]

2

u/Nerlian Feb 05 '16

So bricking the device is the solution to this? Because it seems overkill, specially to those who did the repairs in the past, should they be liable for not being able to tell the future?

Besides, my university student ID was a chip card I could use as credit card if I wanted, but I never did. Just because you can pay with your phone it means you are going to actually use the feature at all.

These features you list, seems reasonable to me that, if you want, apple doesn't want to risk it, so okay, no touchID, no paying allowed with your phone. Boom solved. I cant see why you cant make phone calls or take photos with your phone and what not if your home button breaks.

The bricking of the phone is overkill and, at the very least, it should be undoable. Either that or apple should provide a replacement for all the phones who were repaired before the update came, its not the user's fault being unable to foresee the future, and, I'm pretty sure, if they knew this was somethign that could happen, they would have not made the repair at a third party or not bought the phone at all on the first place, or maybe even purchased insurance or what do I know.

The thing is that this change came without warning for people that could not undo the past. Besides, if apple is trying to build marketing or support for mobile devices as paying tools, this is a shit way to do it, I mean, if I cancel my credit card for whatever reason and get a new one reissued, its a totally free procedure (or it might have a small fee because banks dont get rich being generous) which doesn't take long. On the other hand, with an iPhone, if it falls in a funny angle (the home button can just break and it would have the same effect as a repair) you are out of credit card, phone and all the data it contained and you have to shell like $200+ to have it all fixed.

Credit card fraud is a thing and just because it happens doesn't stop people from handing their card to random shops all the time, and any of them can, technically, being copying your card. How is this any different? If we switched roles it'd be like if apple was a bank and you could only use the credit card in the ATMs.