News

Some Very Bad News For Apple

by Jenny Hollander

This might end up right there with that whole iPhone 4 antenna debacle...

App-testing company uTest has revealed that nine in ten of their crowd-sourcing customers are reporting an incompatibility between their apps and iOS 7. The company is rolling out the brand-new operating system — which proved in beta to be more of a leap forward than any previous system updates — on Wednesday.

Business Insider said that "a lot of app developers weren't listening" when Apple pointed out that the changes between iOS 6 and 7 were bigger than any had been in years. Now, once users update the software (for free, as the company painstakingly points out) they'll probably be knee-deep in buggy apps. Plus, problems that arose during testing were generally of the "seriously bad" variety — for example, lines and lines of text being cut off, and the apps crashing and shutting themselves down. Which is pretty much as bad as you get in the smartphone universe.

The revelation is the latest in string of rough news for Apple, which has seen a slump in stock prices in response to their Sept. 10 iPhone unveiling. And by "slump," we mean...

Hang on. That reminds us of something.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Oh, yeah. A CLIFF FACE.

The bugs won't take too long to fix — probably just a few weeks, said uTest. The lesson here is to probably not get ahead of yourself and update to the new Android-esque, business-aimed iOS until you're totally sure you won't be shooting yourself in the foot. And, um, speaking of golden, those "champagne" phones haven't fared too well either...

The new Denny's ad hasn't exactly given the ailing company a boost... and neither has news of yet another, long-term Apple bug, details of which emerged yesterday in a Russian newspaper. This bug prompts any app that sees Arabic text to crash instantly, and since said text is embedded inside a whole bunch of English-language apps, it's been crashing Twitter and other major iPhone apps for at least six months. [Insert racist conspiracy theory here.]

Meanwhile, Microsoft has started integrating a Siri imitation into their own phones. This one is named Cortana, after a Halo character.

Sounds about right.

(Image: Halo)