16 ms·

Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

296 points by pbowyer 4y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Fascinating stuff. I do not know so it is a stab in the dark here. Is there a possibility that there is a correlation between this note and clientele not using mobile banking enough to justify an upgrade?
- kennend3 4y ago
  This! i posted above, but it is crazy people think the ultra-wealthy sit around and pay bills online. They have assistants and accountants and they are not paying bills the size wealthy people rack up on their phones.
YPPH 4y ago
If only there were some program whereby app developers could preview the new iOS version so as to ensure compatibility. /s
- gregoriol 4y ago
  So it seems that you have never worked in a real company, where it can't easily be done to make a major technical rework of some components in a 3 months timeframe. With debugging, conception of a fix, implementation and testing, it is not often possible. Teams are also not standing by to be available anytime for such works, often those apps are being worked on with contractors.
  - m-p-3 4y ago
    It's fairly reasonable to assume a new major iOS version will come out around September or October every year, with multiple betas before the final release.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      The question is more what to do when you find a major issue from let’s say the third or fourth beta, and your dev company tells you refactoring is needed and it will take 3 months to ship. I feel most people’s opinion in this thread stops at “just don’t be in that situation”
  - YPPH 4y ago
    Most companies (and banks) seem to manage alright, without their apps breaking, or their customers being given inane advice. Or is this not your experience?
    - gregoriol 4y ago
      There are at least 3 in this thread that have made a warning, there could be others. It will most likely happen to apps using some special features (security, connectivity, ...), not to the most common table view.
      - martyvis 4y ago
        If an app has "security, connectivity" as important features there is a greater not less an onus to keep abreast of platform changes and ensure your userbase isn't exposed.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Banking apps have always been the bottom of the barrel to me, with many (non critical) bugs taking months to get fixed. Gov. apps and utilities app come second and third from the bottom. My personal experience is, many mammoth companies are not managing that alright.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    The companies that care have dedicated iOS teams that work on precisely this. Perhaps this bank should funnel some of the outrageous sums of money they presumably skim off the top and spend it here?
    - gregoriol 4y ago
      Depends on how much their users actually use it. Maybe the app is just a gadget and not their main business tool. Most companies with such kind of app usage won't have a team all year round for their app and will work with contractors on a project basis.
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        Sounds like "app doesn't work on iOS 16" would be an appropriate thing to get a contractor team to fix?
        gregoriol 4y ago
        And every client of every iOS contractor is asking the same "please check and fix" within the same 3 months (2 of which are also during summer holiday period in many places).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - goalieca 4y ago
    > So it seems that you have never worked in a real company, Pretty much all of us who are posting here, even many of the students, have in fact worked at real companies. Perhaps you mean to say that not all of us appreciate that some organizations are a mess and simply cannot design and release a feature in a 3 month timeline even with a year or two of deprecation notice.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    It’s very unusual for major technical reworks to be required as a result of a new version of iOS unless you’re using APIs that have been deprecated for a long, long time and have been kicking the can of migrating to the new APIs down the road for years.
tambourine_man 4y ago
Get another bank if at all possible
- vitiral 4y ago
  Or at least don't use their mobile app
  - notwedtm 4y ago
    Nah, get another bank. Any FI that has to encourage users not to upgrade to the latest iOS because of engineering problems has significant other issues that they are able to still hide.
    - xnyan 4y ago
      “Yes, King Charles III? You need to switch your multi-lifetime relationship bank because they have not updated for iOS 16”
      - csdvrx 4y ago
        Exactly this - it's a different bank for different customers with different needs.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - JimmieMcnulty 4y ago
    IDK this is a giant red flag that the engineers running their infrastructure aren’t baseline competent, I wouldn’t trust these folks with my email, let alone my banking. That said, this reeks of a contractor situation gone bad.
  - mleo 4y ago
    They just buy the new iPhone 14 Pro and use the 13 for the bank app.
ohadron 4y ago
Good luck with that.
notwedtm 4y ago
The disclaimer at the bottom is the icing: "A smartphone or tablet with a recent version of iOS or Android is required to access our digital service. Read-only access will be provided to users age 11 to 16. Access to our digital service is at our discretion. To activate the service, we’ll need to hold an email address and mobile phone number. Face ID and fingerprint recognition available on selected devices. Payments made to new payees over a certain value will need to be made on the desktop version as an additional layer of security."
crazygringo 4y ago
Separately from the utter ridiculousness of this... ...can anyone guess what about their app might break in iOS 16? I was under the impression that iOS updates didn't generally break compatibility, unless it's locking down some kind of permission. But I'm having a hard time imagining what a banking app would rely on that would change underneath it?
- mathieulj 4y ago
  Touch ID/Face ID lockdown most likely.
- tcoff91 4y ago
  Apple Pay is changing in subtle ways that can break payment flows.
  - aeontech 4y ago
    Can you expand on this? From my understanding about Apple Pay, anything already working should continue to work, and any new features are optional… so I’m curious what you have in mind.
    - tcoff91 4y ago
      If you fail the payment request, the Apple Pay dialog remains on the screen and the user can change cards. Before, the payment flow would end and the app would then submit a new payment request to try again.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- poink 4y ago
  There is at least one expensive enterprise DRM/obfuscation/"code protection" tool that had a late breaking bug in the iOS 16 beta process, and any app that uses it works with with earlier iOS 16 beta builds while crashing on newer ones.
- 4y ago
thr0wawayf00 4y ago
This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world, counting the British Royal Family among their notable clients, and they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date. Pretty much sums up what rich people think about technology: make it sexy and powerful but I don't want to hear about ongoing maintenance costs. According to Wikipedia, new clients needed £500k in disposable funds to set up an account back in 2001.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coutts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coutts
- pid-1 4y ago
  That's not a lot for a wealth managament firm.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > not a lot for a wealth managament firm Not sure why downvoted. Many private banks have $1 to 10mm minimums.
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      It was 21 years ago. The figure on the website now is £1M.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > figure on the website now is £1M OP’s point still stands. That’s middle of ground for a private bank. Far from “most exclusive.”
        mytailorisrich 4y ago
        I don't think this is the sort of bank where you can just show up with 1m and the staff will bend over backwards to open your account. For instance, if the Royal family banks there it means they think the bank will never ever make headlines for the wrong reasons or at all.
jrm4 4y ago
Regulation. Good, old-fashioned, regulation. There's no other meaningful way to prevent this sort of thing. Now that we're dealing with "people's money" there should be energy to push this through. (And to be clear, it's Apple that needs to be regulated.)
- frogpelt 4y ago
  Prevent what? iOS being updated?
- silon42 4y ago
  No, the bank apps need to have a web alternative. The browsers need improvements (and not getting worse) on handling TSL + client side certificates.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Apple as a vendor to highly regulated entities, including governments is regulated and is audited for compliance against a vast swath of regulatory requirements. Rapid updates is a core part of a lot of modern security regulations for banks and other sensitive entities. Note, with Apple Pay and Apple Cash and Apple Card, Apple itself is directly regulated for it’s “peoples money” business already. In what way are you thinking regulation applies to this situation? I’d posit this bank is stretching their regulatory obligation to incorporate vendor updates into their customer facing and perimeter products on a timely basis.
tmslnz 4y ago
Their engineering prowess is also demonstrated by their website’s butter-smooth scrolling performance. /s
mark_l_watson 4y ago
What horse shit. I have been running iOS 16 beta (with Lockdown Mode) for quite a while and all business related apps that I use work fine. IOS 16 improves security and privacy, so is it possible that this famous bank could be doing something dodgy?
- thro388 4y ago
  iOS update bricked devices before. Sometimes Apple removes features and reduces performance. Avoiding software update is totally valid strategy!
- morelisp 4y ago
  Is data mining royalty more or less dodgy than uncomplicatedly enabling them?
dweekly 4y ago
The reviews of this bank on TrustPilot are rather telling. https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/coutts.com https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/coutts.com
- elliekelly 4y ago
  They don’t care about the clients who use the app because their bread and butter clients don’t want to use the app— they want to call or they want to text or they want to email. The uber wealthy clients this bank caters to want white glove service with a “private banker” at their beck and call all hours of the day and night. The people leaving these reviews are probably trust benes whose opinion doesn’t matter to the bank in the slightest.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- blackhaz 4y ago
  My experience with just pretty much all major banks in the UK as a telecom startup has been beyond horrible. No international trade allowed - whatsoever, on any of them. Opening an account is nearly impossible. And those who open... Inbound payments from Brazil? Not allowed. A transfer from UAE? That's a high-risk country - bloody terrorists. Oman? Just forget about it. Exclude all Africa, Middle East and Latin Americas completely from your user base. EU? Well, maybe, if your client is not too far to the East. Slovakia sounds dodgy. That's all while they are laundering billions of corrupt cash. Never in my entire life I saw a financial system failing and undermining a fundamental function of the society so much. Seriously, I can't wait for the entire UK banking system to go to hell.
csdvrx 4y ago
The EU bank market is weird. Most comments here don't understand that for some customers, not having to upgrade the mobile OS is a feature, not a bug. You might care about safety etc. These users just don't care - it's another person problem, so they don't want gizmos to enhance "safety" if they are cumbersome. The intersection of these customers with Coutts typical clients (>500k in liquid funds according to the comments below) may be just as high as the N26 users (let's say, "less privileged") who want the latest mobile OS version and receive OTPs by SMS to protect their precious $100 purchase.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Going through Byzantine steps to disable automatic OTA updates that apply while you are sleeping seems like the exact opposite of what you’re saying. The disabling is cumbersome, the updates are invisible. That’s not reason this is happening. The reason is clearly they aren’t ready for the update with their own forward compatible update so are shifting the burden to their customers.
  - csdvrx 4y ago
    > Going through Byzantine steps to disable automatic OTA updates that apply while you are sleeping seems like the exact opposite of what you’re saying The bank customer will not do this - their personal assistant will. > the updates are invisible If only! Tell me you've never deferred an update? > shifting the burden to their customers. I don't think you understand the type of bank we're talking about.
- agsnu 4y ago
  Coutts is of course not an EU bank any more. Sigh.
DavideNL 4y ago
Medtronic sends emails to their customers also, for both iOS and Android it is recommended to disable OS upgrades, as they will not update their Minimed Mobile app yet [1]. I imagine they need to test / get FDA clearance first or something similar, since it's a medical app. But... people will forget to re-enable the updates afterwards, of course. The email is send every year, with every update of the OS. [1] https://apps.apple.com/en/app/minimed-mobile/id1464664725?l=en https://apps.apple.com/en/app/minimed-mobile/id1464664725?l=...
- altairprime 4y ago
  Apple tends to ask people to reconfirm system settings now and then after iOS upgrades. Does iOS ask about automatic upgrades occasionally?
  - agsnu 4y ago
    No
gregoriol 4y ago
While it's not clear what the exact problem is in this case, the Triumph motorcycle company seems also to have issued a message about not updating iOS because of a bluetooth connectivity issue with it (https://superbike-news.co.uk/triumph-motorcycles-ios16-update-advice/ https://superbike-news.co.uk/triumph-motorcycles-ios16-updat...). It is annoying that Apple breaks existing apps. System updates should keep existing apps working as they are, and only impose changes to those that are rebuilt/updated after the release.
- sfvegandude 4y ago
  Why does a motorcycle need an app
  - gregoriol 4y ago
    It's actually in the link: to show the turn-by-turn navigation on the bike's display. Useful or not, that's for users who will not be able to use it to judge.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > Apple breaks existing apps. They have a pretty long beta program (source: Apple dev., since 1986). If your app doesn't work with the upcoming release, it's not Apple's fault. Some companies will refuse to start testing, until the OS is officially released. That's a corporate process problem, and not Apple's. I'm not an Apple apologist, though I am often accused of being so (because I develop Apple apps, that is enough to categorize me as a "fanboi"). It's just that Apple (and many, many other companies) goes well out of their way to accommodate prerelease testing of apps on their operating systems, and many many companies don't bother to avail themselves of the opportunity. I do have a problem with people that consider themselves to be "professionals," having these issues, and blaming the operating system, when the fault is PEBCAK. I tend not to do very much testing of prerelease, beyond a simple "make sure it doesn't crash" test. I will turn up an issue, from time to time, but it's rare. When I do get an issue, it is often that I rely on a certain order of calls, in delegate protocols, and they can change, with OS releases (the fact I rely on the order is a bug, and this just exposes my bug, so I need to fix it). This is because I take a very conservative approach to writing apps, use native Swift, but not "bleeding edge," and support one version back. I have deprecation warnings turned on, and all warnings as errors, so I can't compile, if I have stuff that Apple sees will break (usually, the deprecation warnings start a couple of major releases in advance). I also don't use dependencies, or write, using hybrid systems. That helps a lot.
ToddWBurgess 4y ago
To be fair maybe the app is done but not rejected by the Apple review process so there is some back and forth getting the app to pass. A lot of app politics to navigate for both Apple and Google to get your app out and published. More then likely being a bank they probably have a lot of policies and procedures in place to get an app to the point where it is ready to be published and someone just figured out that Apple did an update.
scrlk 4y ago
I'm surprised that they seem to be using a custom app just for Coutts and not a rebranded NatWest app (Coutts is the HNW division inside the NatWest Group). FWIW Royal Bank of Scotland (another brand inside the NatWest Group) shares the same app as NatWest.
amelius 4y ago
This is the difference between Microsoft and Apple. Where Microsoft goes through great lengths to keep new versions of OSes compatible with previous ones, Apple just lets users and developers sort it out.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Yes and Microsoft has constantly paid the cost by not being able to move as fast and having security issues because of some long forgotten piece of legacy code. Apple was able to have basically the same core OS run on phones, tablets, watches, set top boxes and monitors (yes the latest Apple display runs a version of iOS on an iPhone 11 era chip with 64GB RAM). Back as early as 2005 there were more than half a dozen ways to represent a “string” in C on Microsoft platforms depending on which API you were using. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-between-various-string-types https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-bet... Of course this led to an early easily exploitable security issue in Windows where all you had to do was encode a DOS command and put in the url for the browser and you could run any DOS command with admin privileges on a web server running IIS.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    Speaking of security.. tell us, what is involved in "jailbreaking" an iphone? you take some action, and get "root" access to the OS which allows things like bypassing the anti-theft mechanism? Do you remember the days when all you had to do was go to a website and now your iphone was "rooted" Microsoft should have done more to limit "backwards compatibility" as it has stung them over and over again. Apple has a tendency of intentionally breaking things (sorry, your mac isn't supported on this version of MacOS. Apply a very small patch is suddenly is supported?). Pretending that Microsofts legacy support created security issues while Apple doesn't have security problems on its own is misleading.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      I never said that Apple didn’t have any security issues. But by definition if you have a smaller attack area, you have less chances of security vulnerabilities. You don’t have to worry about an old forgotten part of the code that was just there to support 32 big apps from iOS 1 have lingering bugs.
jl6 4y ago
What I find really amazing is that we have here an incredibly elite service that the vast majority of people will never be able to afford, and yet its elite clients are dependent on essentially the same mobile devices that everyone else is. You can spend ~$2k on a phone, and it will be the best phone you can buy. There's no $20k phone that will be any better. It's like flying in first class and then having to queue up in the same immigration line as everybody else - except in that scenario you can pay your way into a priority lane. True, ~$2k is still a lot for a phone, but it's within reach of so many more people than the gatekept world of private banking and jets. This is not a comment about wealth disparity - it's about goods which seem to resist the impact of wealth disparity; where there is a relatively low upper bound on how good of a thing you can buy.
- scarface74 4y ago
  The same thing was said about Coca Cola https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1959/02/14/the-universal-drink https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1959/02/14/the-universal-...
- Victerius 4y ago
  There is an exclusive version of HN, but I can't tell you about it. Entrance fee is $50k.
  - bookofjoe 4y ago
    HN Prime. Or is it HN+?
    - shaky-carrousel 4y ago
      It's HN++.
    - natch 4y ago
      HN λ
- msh 4y ago
  I completely agree, but people still try to create the premium phone. It used to be vertu before they went bankrupt and now sells strange phones. These days guess it's more rebadget iphones like the ones sold by caviar.
superkuh 4y ago
Everyone is jumping on the bank for not staying up to date with the frequent and massive chanages that Apple makes. But this is only a news story because it is a bank, this scenario happens constantly to a large fraction of all iOS software. The problem here is that modern libs and standards change so fast (similar to JS) that it really is hard for anyone without a megacorp's worth of software dev employees to keep up. This isn't just this bank. This is many. And this is future shock.
- dangus 4y ago
  I would criticize the bank for suggesting to non-technical customers to disable automatic updates. I think that’s a major security issue for the average person. Companies like this act like their services are special and that customers should bend over backwards to accommodate their own shortcomings.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Marco Arment (Overcast) and David Smith (slew of apps) would argue differently https://marco.org/apps https://marco.org/apps http://david-smith.org/apps http://david-smith.org/apps
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Marco did have a pretty massive rant this year about how terrible the beta process was and how he was getting told that bugs filed in July were "too late" to be fixed. It's certainly not a friendly process for small devs, but OP is definitely overstating how hard it is.
- ajaimk 4y ago
  They've had 3 months to test the new iOS software. That's the whole purpose of WWDC in June and new OS coming out in September
  - svnpenn 4y ago
    oh really? Three whole months? Shame on them /s
bluedino 4y ago
My credit union (well, the company that hosts their banking site) was always MONTHS behind on browser support for Safari. Random shit would break at each major update, I ended up just using browser X for accessing their site. Amazing how you can have millions of customers but don't test the Safari betas.
seaghost 4y ago
If I worked here I would resign immediately.
tatoalo 4y ago
> We’ll let you know when we recommend upgrading to iOS 16. Oh, how kind of you.
ppetty 4y ago
The demographics should not matter, period. The idea that few people use the app or that direct communication is the standard at a wealth management bank like this doesn’t mean lack of preparedness is okay. In other words what omissions or lapses should a millionaire be okay with. I’m not in the market for this type of bank, but software update reliability is important… As important as things like 2FA maybe not? But this seems like a non-trivial mistake.
drexlspivey 4y ago
On the other hand here’s the email I received from Revolut (European neobank similar to cashapp) yesterday: Apple sent out a notification on Wednesday 17 August warning of two security issues within their operating system, and advised users to update their devices to the latest version to resolve them. As you've previously accessed your Revolut account from an iOS device, we advise you to follow this recommendation as soon as possible. You can update your device via Settings > General > Software Update.
- MrBump_ 4y ago
  As an aside, cash app is pretty different to Revolut. The former is a payments platform and the latter is a bank. I think the US doesn't really have much of a true equivalent given their sclerotic retail banking sector (how on earth do the big banks get away with charging for current accounts, inter-account payments, cash withdrawals... it genuinely beggars belief)
  - judge2020 4y ago
    It's effectively a banking app, they just don't call it that: https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/1113-direct-deposit https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/1113-direct-deposit
simonjgreen 4y ago
99% of Coutts and similar customers absolutely will not mind, they're not the demographic. And nobody else should either, because they're not impacted. Speaking as an ex Coutts customer, until recently they didn't even have a mobile banking app. The bank I moved too as a marginally better one, and it's one of the reasons why I moved to them. I absolutely do not operate day to day from these accounts, they are for doing specialist things and making large movements. Only a very small portion of this banks customers will use them for day to day needs. Private banking is more like business banking for personal use. Oh and also networking events for people who speak a certain way to meet other people who speak a certain way. /eyeroll
Zigurd 4y ago
The Santander app has lost the ability to photograph checks a few times on Android devices I use. It is currently not working on a Pixel 6. It is just an inconvenience but it does not make me confident about security.
SanjayMehta 4y ago
I once switched banks to get away from their insistence on Internet Explorer, a fake requirement which could be easily bypassed by switching user-agents. This seems to be equally lazy.
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
Customer tells bank to disable account and upgrades to a different bank.
omarforgotpwd 4y ago
completely normal for large companies just to simplify IT management / make sure all applications used by the company are compatible
JaceLightning 4y ago
Title is misleading. Bank tells customers to not update yet until they have a fix out... Which is unfortunate but doesn't seem super unreasonable. You only have a few months to find and fix bugs before beta software becomes full release. And that's only if you found the bug in the beta version to begin with.
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
I’m aware of at least one large law firm telling its employees the same thing.
- gene91 4y ago
  It shouldn’t be necessary for an employer to “tell” its employees to defer iOS updates. For iOS updates, employers can defer OS updates via MDM by up to 90 days. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/manage-software-updates-depc4c80847a/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/manage-software-u...
  - agsnu 4y ago
    BYOD is very common these days, MDM can only defer updates if it's a managed device. Most people don't want to carry two devices and most companies would like to save the cost...
aurelien 4y ago
LOOL we are not secured, please do not upgrade to let the stuff continue to works xD
leeoniya 4y ago
> 3 SIMPLE STEPS TO GET SET UP where Step 2 is to follow additional steps :D kinda like drawing an owl https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/572/078/d6d.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/572/078/d6d...
mikeyinternews 4y ago
Wouldn't the fact that they know ahead of time that their current app is incompatible show that they somewhat care about techmology?
makach 4y ago
Their security department must be up in arms. Making sure your software is updated is a pinnacle in security - you simply do not turn of updating of your devices - I know this is a little bit simplistic but it isn't as if the BETA hasn't been available for iOS 16 for ages. Instead of disabling your updates, you should change your bank. Don't let them get away with it.
- mnd999 4y ago
  Security departments are generally so unhelpful that most organisations quickly learn to ignore them beyond the box ticking exercises.
mcs_ 4y ago
I suspect many of us can tell more about IT horror-stories in the banking industry. There is simply no way to make agile software in such a gigantic and obsolete environment. And yes... doesn't matter if you do micro-front architecture now... it is still obsolete.
ouid 4y ago
why on earth is no one one the side of the bank here? apple is using a backdoor into their hardware to cut people off from their funds. This is a gairly serious security breach and the bank is asvising customers to mitigate it.
bob1029 4y ago
Fun coincidence. We are telling our customers (the banks themselves) the same thing for our B2B product. We are going back to a web app for everything. Native is a joke if you care about stability over time. We sign contracts that are 5 years long. That’s 5 major apple/google/etc product cycles. We needed a different strategy for our tiny company. There’s not really much you can’t do in iOS Safari in 2022. I’ve even got some customers pushing PWAs over Azure Intune to iPads without any problems. No codesign or apple developer program in sight. Life feels much better this way.
balderdash 4y ago
The better question is does anyone in this category actually have their act together? Most private banking apps I’ve seen are pretty abysmal
monocularvision 4y ago
As one who works on the iOS app for a major US financial company, my guess would be they included some “security” tool/SDK that is having problems getting upgraded to iOS16.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  I think this relates to management mentality when management are engineers. Scenario: we should upgrade our .Net Framework from 4.6.1 to 4.7.0. and the answer is: why is that necessary? It's a lot of effort and extra cost. Ok... Now 4.8.0 comes out... The effort is doubled. .Net Core 1.. 2.. 3.. and the effort seems impossible, and you'll have to rewrite a lot of your code base. Now .Net 8 will be released next year, and you're still stuck with the old .Net Framework. This is not to say that every app needs to be updated, but the ones that do will require huge effort. /rant
sizzle 4y ago
FISERV sucks
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Doesn't apple put out APIs and such for developers at least 6 months ahead so they can make sure this doesn't happen?

296 points by pbowyer 4y ago

Fascinating stuff. I do not know so it is a stab in the dark here. Is there a possibility that there is a correlation between this note and clientele not using mobile banking enough to justify an upgrade?

kennend3 4y ago
This! i posted above, but it is crazy people think the ultra-wealthy sit around and pay bills online. They have assistants and accountants and they are not paying bills the size wealthy people rack up on their phones.

YPPH 4y ago

If only there were some program whereby app developers could preview the new iOS version so as to ensure compatibility. /s

gregoriol 4y ago
So it seems that you have never worked in a real company, where it can't easily be done to make a major technical rework of some components in a 3 months timeframe. With debugging, conception of a fix, implementation and testing, it is not often possible. Teams are also not standing by to be available anytime for such works, often those apps are being worked on with contractors.
- m-p-3 4y ago
  It's fairly reasonable to assume a new major iOS version will come out around September or October every year, with multiple betas before the final release.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    The question is more what to do when you find a major issue from let’s say the third or fourth beta, and your dev company tells you refactoring is needed and it will take 3 months to ship. I feel most people’s opinion in this thread stops at “just don’t be in that situation”
- YPPH 4y ago
  Most companies (and banks) seem to manage alright, without their apps breaking, or their customers being given inane advice. Or is this not your experience?
  - gregoriol 4y ago
    There are at least 3 in this thread that have made a warning, there could be others. It will most likely happen to apps using some special features (security, connectivity, ...), not to the most common table view.
    - martyvis 4y ago
      If an app has "security, connectivity" as important features there is a greater not less an onus to keep abreast of platform changes and ensure your userbase isn't exposed.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Banking apps have always been the bottom of the barrel to me, with many (non critical) bugs taking months to get fixed. Gov. apps and utilities app come second and third from the bottom. My personal experience is, many mammoth companies are not managing that alright.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  The companies that care have dedicated iOS teams that work on precisely this. Perhaps this bank should funnel some of the outrageous sums of money they presumably skim off the top and spend it here?
  - gregoriol 4y ago
    Depends on how much their users actually use it. Maybe the app is just a gadget and not their main business tool. Most companies with such kind of app usage won't have a team all year round for their app and will work with contractors on a project basis.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Sounds like "app doesn't work on iOS 16" would be an appropriate thing to get a contractor team to fix?
      - gregoriol 4y ago
        And every client of every iOS contractor is asking the same "please check and fix" within the same 3 months (2 of which are also during summer holiday period in many places).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- goalieca 4y ago
  > So it seems that you have never worked in a real company, Pretty much all of us who are posting here, even many of the students, have in fact worked at real companies. Perhaps you mean to say that not all of us appreciate that some organizations are a mess and simply cannot design and release a feature in a 3 month timeline even with a year or two of deprecation notice.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  It’s very unusual for major technical reworks to be required as a result of a new version of iOS unless you’re using APIs that have been deprecated for a long, long time and have been kicking the can of migrating to the new APIs down the road for years.

tambourine_man 4y ago

Get another bank if at all possible

vitiral 4y ago
Or at least don't use their mobile app
- notwedtm 4y ago
  Nah, get another bank. Any FI that has to encourage users not to upgrade to the latest iOS because of engineering problems has significant other issues that they are able to still hide.
  - xnyan 4y ago
    “Yes, King Charles III? You need to switch your multi-lifetime relationship bank because they have not updated for iOS 16”
    - csdvrx 4y ago
      Exactly this - it's a different bank for different customers with different needs.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- JimmieMcnulty 4y ago
  IDK this is a giant red flag that the engineers running their infrastructure aren’t baseline competent, I wouldn’t trust these folks with my email, let alone my banking. That said, this reeks of a contractor situation gone bad.
- mleo 4y ago
  They just buy the new iPhone 14 Pro and use the 13 for the bank app.

ohadron 4y ago

Good luck with that.

notwedtm 4y ago

The disclaimer at the bottom is the icing: "A smartphone or tablet with a recent version of iOS or Android is required to access our digital service. Read-only access will be provided to users age 11 to 16. Access to our digital service is at our discretion. To activate the service, we’ll need to hold an email address and mobile phone number. Face ID and fingerprint recognition available on selected devices. Payments made to new payees over a certain value will need to be made on the desktop version as an additional layer of security."

crazygringo 4y ago

Separately from the utter ridiculousness of this... ...can anyone guess what about their app might break in iOS 16? I was under the impression that iOS updates didn't generally break compatibility, unless it's locking down some kind of permission. But I'm having a hard time imagining what a banking app would rely on that would change underneath it?

mathieulj 4y ago
Touch ID/Face ID lockdown most likely.
tcoff91 4y ago
Apple Pay is changing in subtle ways that can break payment flows.
- aeontech 4y ago
  Can you expand on this? From my understanding about Apple Pay, anything already working should continue to work, and any new features are optional… so I’m curious what you have in mind.
  - tcoff91 4y ago
    If you fail the payment request, the Apple Pay dialog remains on the screen and the user can change cards. Before, the payment flow would end and the app would then submit a new payment request to try again.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
poink 4y ago
There is at least one expensive enterprise DRM/obfuscation/"code protection" tool that had a late breaking bug in the iOS 16 beta process, and any app that uses it works with with earlier iOS 16 beta builds while crashing on newer ones.
4y ago

thr0wawayf00 4y ago

This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world, counting the British Royal Family among their notable clients, and they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date. Pretty much sums up what rich people think about technology: make it sexy and powerful but I don't want to hear about ongoing maintenance costs. According to Wikipedia, new clients needed £500k in disposable funds to set up an account back in 2001.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coutts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coutts

pid-1 4y ago
That's not a lot for a wealth managament firm.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > not a lot for a wealth managament firm Not sure why downvoted. Many private banks have $1 to 10mm minimums.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    It was 21 years ago. The figure on the website now is £1M.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > figure on the website now is £1M OP’s point still stands. That’s middle of ground for a private bank. Far from “most exclusive.”
      - mytailorisrich 4y ago
        I don't think this is the sort of bank where you can just show up with 1m and the staff will bend over backwards to open your account. For instance, if the Royal family banks there it means they think the bank will never ever make headlines for the wrong reasons or at all.

jrm4 4y ago

Regulation. Good, old-fashioned, regulation. There's no other meaningful way to prevent this sort of thing. Now that we're dealing with "people's money" there should be energy to push this through. (And to be clear, it's Apple that needs to be regulated.)

frogpelt 4y ago
Prevent what? iOS being updated?
silon42 4y ago
No, the bank apps need to have a web alternative. The browsers need improvements (and not getting worse) on handling TSL + client side certificates.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Apple as a vendor to highly regulated entities, including governments is regulated and is audited for compliance against a vast swath of regulatory requirements. Rapid updates is a core part of a lot of modern security regulations for banks and other sensitive entities. Note, with Apple Pay and Apple Cash and Apple Card, Apple itself is directly regulated for it’s “peoples money” business already. In what way are you thinking regulation applies to this situation? I’d posit this bank is stretching their regulatory obligation to incorporate vendor updates into their customer facing and perimeter products on a timely basis.

tmslnz 4y ago

Their engineering prowess is also demonstrated by their website’s butter-smooth scrolling performance. /s

mark_l_watson 4y ago

What horse shit. I have been running iOS 16 beta (with Lockdown Mode) for quite a while and all business related apps that I use work fine. IOS 16 improves security and privacy, so is it possible that this famous bank could be doing something dodgy?

thro388 4y ago
iOS update bricked devices before. Sometimes Apple removes features and reduces performance. Avoiding software update is totally valid strategy!
morelisp 4y ago
Is data mining royalty more or less dodgy than uncomplicatedly enabling them?

dweekly 4y ago

The reviews of this bank on TrustPilot are rather telling. https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/coutts.com https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/coutts.com

elliekelly 4y ago
They don’t care about the clients who use the app because their bread and butter clients don’t want to use the app— they want to call or they want to text or they want to email. The uber wealthy clients this bank caters to want white glove service with a “private banker” at their beck and call all hours of the day and night. The people leaving these reviews are probably trust benes whose opinion doesn’t matter to the bank in the slightest.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
blackhaz 4y ago
My experience with just pretty much all major banks in the UK as a telecom startup has been beyond horrible. No international trade allowed - whatsoever, on any of them. Opening an account is nearly impossible. And those who open... Inbound payments from Brazil? Not allowed. A transfer from UAE? That's a high-risk country - bloody terrorists. Oman? Just forget about it. Exclude all Africa, Middle East and Latin Americas completely from your user base. EU? Well, maybe, if your client is not too far to the East. Slovakia sounds dodgy. That's all while they are laundering billions of corrupt cash. Never in my entire life I saw a financial system failing and undermining a fundamental function of the society so much. Seriously, I can't wait for the entire UK banking system to go to hell.

csdvrx 4y ago

The EU bank market is weird. Most comments here don't understand that for some customers, not having to upgrade the mobile OS is a feature, not a bug. You might care about safety etc. These users just don't care - it's another person problem, so they don't want gizmos to enhance "safety" if they are cumbersome. The intersection of these customers with Coutts typical clients (>500k in liquid funds according to the comments below) may be just as high as the N26 users (let's say, "less privileged") who want the latest mobile OS version and receive OTPs by SMS to protect their precious $100 purchase.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Going through Byzantine steps to disable automatic OTA updates that apply while you are sleeping seems like the exact opposite of what you’re saying. The disabling is cumbersome, the updates are invisible. That’s not reason this is happening. The reason is clearly they aren’t ready for the update with their own forward compatible update so are shifting the burden to their customers.
- csdvrx 4y ago
  > Going through Byzantine steps to disable automatic OTA updates that apply while you are sleeping seems like the exact opposite of what you’re saying The bank customer will not do this - their personal assistant will. > the updates are invisible If only! Tell me you've never deferred an update? > shifting the burden to their customers. I don't think you understand the type of bank we're talking about.
agsnu 4y ago
Coutts is of course not an EU bank any more. Sigh.

DavideNL 4y ago

Medtronic sends emails to their customers also, for both iOS and Android it is recommended to disable OS upgrades, as they will not update their Minimed Mobile app yet [1]. I imagine they need to test / get FDA clearance first or something similar, since it's a medical app. But... people will forget to re-enable the updates afterwards, of course. The email is send every year, with every update of the OS. [1] https://apps.apple.com/en/app/minimed-mobile/id1464664725?l=en https://apps.apple.com/en/app/minimed-mobile/id1464664725?l=...

altairprime 4y ago
Apple tends to ask people to reconfirm system settings now and then after iOS upgrades. Does iOS ask about automatic upgrades occasionally?
- agsnu 4y ago
  No

gregoriol 4y ago

While it's not clear what the exact problem is in this case, the Triumph motorcycle company seems also to have issued a message about not updating iOS because of a bluetooth connectivity issue with it (https://superbike-news.co.uk/triumph-motorcycles-ios16-update-advice/ https://superbike-news.co.uk/triumph-motorcycles-ios16-updat...). It is annoying that Apple breaks existing apps. System updates should keep existing apps working as they are, and only impose changes to those that are rebuilt/updated after the release.

sfvegandude 4y ago
Why does a motorcycle need an app
- gregoriol 4y ago
  It's actually in the link: to show the turn-by-turn navigation on the bike's display. Useful or not, that's for users who will not be able to use it to judge.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> Apple breaks existing apps. They have a pretty long beta program (source: Apple dev., since 1986). If your app doesn't work with the upcoming release, it's not Apple's fault. Some companies will refuse to start testing, until the OS is officially released. That's a corporate process problem, and not Apple's. I'm not an Apple apologist, though I am often accused of being so (because I develop Apple apps, that is enough to categorize me as a "fanboi"). It's just that Apple (and many, many other companies) goes well out of their way to accommodate prerelease testing of apps on their operating systems, and many many companies don't bother to avail themselves of the opportunity. I do have a problem with people that consider themselves to be "professionals," having these issues, and blaming the operating system, when the fault is PEBCAK. I tend not to do very much testing of prerelease, beyond a simple "make sure it doesn't crash" test. I will turn up an issue, from time to time, but it's rare. When I do get an issue, it is often that I rely on a certain order of calls, in delegate protocols, and they can change, with OS releases (the fact I rely on the order is a bug, and this just exposes my bug, so I need to fix it). This is because I take a very conservative approach to writing apps, use native Swift, but not "bleeding edge," and support one version back. I have deprecation warnings turned on, and all warnings as errors, so I can't compile, if I have stuff that Apple sees will break (usually, the deprecation warnings start a couple of major releases in advance). I also don't use dependencies, or write, using hybrid systems. That helps a lot.

ToddWBurgess 4y ago

To be fair maybe the app is done but not rejected by the Apple review process so there is some back and forth getting the app to pass. A lot of app politics to navigate for both Apple and Google to get your app out and published. More then likely being a bank they probably have a lot of policies and procedures in place to get an app to the point where it is ready to be published and someone just figured out that Apple did an update.

scrlk 4y ago

I'm surprised that they seem to be using a custom app just for Coutts and not a rebranded NatWest app (Coutts is the HNW division inside the NatWest Group). FWIW Royal Bank of Scotland (another brand inside the NatWest Group) shares the same app as NatWest.

amelius 4y ago

This is the difference between Microsoft and Apple. Where Microsoft goes through great lengths to keep new versions of OSes compatible with previous ones, Apple just lets users and developers sort it out.

scarface74 4y ago
Yes and Microsoft has constantly paid the cost by not being able to move as fast and having security issues because of some long forgotten piece of legacy code. Apple was able to have basically the same core OS run on phones, tablets, watches, set top boxes and monitors (yes the latest Apple display runs a version of iOS on an iPhone 11 era chip with 64GB RAM). Back as early as 2005 there were more than half a dozen ways to represent a “string” in C on Microsoft platforms depending on which API you were using. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-between-various-string-types https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/text/how-to-convert-bet... Of course this led to an early easily exploitable security issue in Windows where all you had to do was encode a DOS command and put in the url for the browser and you could run any DOS command with admin privileges on a web server running IIS.
- kennend3 4y ago
  Speaking of security.. tell us, what is involved in "jailbreaking" an iphone? you take some action, and get "root" access to the OS which allows things like bypassing the anti-theft mechanism? Do you remember the days when all you had to do was go to a website and now your iphone was "rooted" Microsoft should have done more to limit "backwards compatibility" as it has stung them over and over again. Apple has a tendency of intentionally breaking things (sorry, your mac isn't supported on this version of MacOS. Apply a very small patch is suddenly is supported?). Pretending that Microsofts legacy support created security issues while Apple doesn't have security problems on its own is misleading.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I never said that Apple didn’t have any security issues. But by definition if you have a smaller attack area, you have less chances of security vulnerabilities. You don’t have to worry about an old forgotten part of the code that was just there to support 32 big apps from iOS 1 have lingering bugs.

jl6 4y ago

What I find really amazing is that we have here an incredibly elite service that the vast majority of people will never be able to afford, and yet its elite clients are dependent on essentially the same mobile devices that everyone else is. You can spend ~$2k on a phone, and it will be the best phone you can buy. There's no $20k phone that will be any better. It's like flying in first class and then having to queue up in the same immigration line as everybody else - except in that scenario you can pay your way into a priority lane. True, ~$2k is still a lot for a phone, but it's within reach of so many more people than the gatekept world of private banking and jets. This is not a comment about wealth disparity - it's about goods which seem to resist the impact of wealth disparity; where there is a relatively low upper bound on how good of a thing you can buy.

scarface74 4y ago
The same thing was said about Coca Cola https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1959/02/14/the-universal-drink https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1959/02/14/the-universal-...
Victerius 4y ago
There is an exclusive version of HN, but I can't tell you about it. Entrance fee is $50k.
- bookofjoe 4y ago
  HN Prime. Or is it HN+?
  - shaky-carrousel 4y ago
    It's HN++.
  - natch 4y ago
    HN λ
msh 4y ago
I completely agree, but people still try to create the premium phone. It used to be vertu before they went bankrupt and now sells strange phones. These days guess it's more rebadget iphones like the ones sold by caviar.

superkuh 4y ago

Everyone is jumping on the bank for not staying up to date with the frequent and massive chanages that Apple makes. But this is only a news story because it is a bank, this scenario happens constantly to a large fraction of all iOS software. The problem here is that modern libs and standards change so fast (similar to JS) that it really is hard for anyone without a megacorp's worth of software dev employees to keep up. This isn't just this bank. This is many. And this is future shock.

dangus 4y ago
I would criticize the bank for suggesting to non-technical customers to disable automatic updates. I think that’s a major security issue for the average person. Companies like this act like their services are special and that customers should bend over backwards to accommodate their own shortcomings.
scarface74 4y ago
Marco Arment (Overcast) and David Smith (slew of apps) would argue differently https://marco.org/apps https://marco.org/apps http://david-smith.org/apps http://david-smith.org/apps
- noirbot 4y ago
  Marco did have a pretty massive rant this year about how terrible the beta process was and how he was getting told that bugs filed in July were "too late" to be fixed. It's certainly not a friendly process for small devs, but OP is definitely overstating how hard it is.
ajaimk 4y ago
They've had 3 months to test the new iOS software. That's the whole purpose of WWDC in June and new OS coming out in September
- svnpenn 4y ago
  oh really? Three whole months? Shame on them /s

bluedino 4y ago

My credit union (well, the company that hosts their banking site) was always MONTHS behind on browser support for Safari. Random shit would break at each major update, I ended up just using browser X for accessing their site. Amazing how you can have millions of customers but don't test the Safari betas.

seaghost 4y ago

If I worked here I would resign immediately.

tatoalo 4y ago

> We’ll let you know when we recommend upgrading to iOS 16. Oh, how kind of you.

ppetty 4y ago

The demographics should not matter, period. The idea that few people use the app or that direct communication is the standard at a wealth management bank like this doesn’t mean lack of preparedness is okay. In other words what omissions or lapses should a millionaire be okay with. I’m not in the market for this type of bank, but software update reliability is important… As important as things like 2FA maybe not? But this seems like a non-trivial mistake.

drexlspivey 4y ago

On the other hand here’s the email I received from Revolut (European neobank similar to cashapp) yesterday: Apple sent out a notification on Wednesday 17 August warning of two security issues within their operating system, and advised users to update their devices to the latest version to resolve them. As you've previously accessed your Revolut account from an iOS device, we advise you to follow this recommendation as soon as possible. You can update your device via Settings > General > Software Update.

MrBump_ 4y ago
As an aside, cash app is pretty different to Revolut. The former is a payments platform and the latter is a bank. I think the US doesn't really have much of a true equivalent given their sclerotic retail banking sector (how on earth do the big banks get away with charging for current accounts, inter-account payments, cash withdrawals... it genuinely beggars belief)
- judge2020 4y ago
  It's effectively a banking app, they just don't call it that: https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/1113-direct-deposit https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/1113-direct-deposit

simonjgreen 4y ago

99% of Coutts and similar customers absolutely will not mind, they're not the demographic. And nobody else should either, because they're not impacted. Speaking as an ex Coutts customer, until recently they didn't even have a mobile banking app. The bank I moved too as a marginally better one, and it's one of the reasons why I moved to them. I absolutely do not operate day to day from these accounts, they are for doing specialist things and making large movements. Only a very small portion of this banks customers will use them for day to day needs. Private banking is more like business banking for personal use. Oh and also networking events for people who speak a certain way to meet other people who speak a certain way. /eyeroll

Zigurd 4y ago

The Santander app has lost the ability to photograph checks a few times on Android devices I use. It is currently not working on a Pixel 6. It is just an inconvenience but it does not make me confident about security.

SanjayMehta 4y ago

I once switched banks to get away from their insistence on Internet Explorer, a fake requirement which could be easily bypassed by switching user-agents. This seems to be equally lazy.

ChildOfChaos 4y ago

Customer tells bank to disable account and upgrades to a different bank.

omarforgotpwd 4y ago

completely normal for large companies just to simplify IT management / make sure all applications used by the company are compatible

JaceLightning 4y ago

Title is misleading. Bank tells customers to not update yet until they have a fix out... Which is unfortunate but doesn't seem super unreasonable. You only have a few months to find and fix bugs before beta software becomes full release. And that's only if you found the bug in the beta version to begin with.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

I’m aware of at least one large law firm telling its employees the same thing.

gene91 4y ago
It shouldn’t be necessary for an employer to “tell” its employees to defer iOS updates. For iOS updates, employers can defer OS updates via MDM by up to 90 days. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/manage-software-updates-depc4c80847a/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/manage-software-u...
- agsnu 4y ago
  BYOD is very common these days, MDM can only defer updates if it's a managed device. Most people don't want to carry two devices and most companies would like to save the cost...

aurelien 4y ago

LOOL we are not secured, please do not upgrade to let the stuff continue to works xD

leeoniya 4y ago

> 3 SIMPLE STEPS TO GET SET UP where Step 2 is to follow additional steps :D kinda like drawing an owl https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/572/078/d6d.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/572/078/d6d...

mikeyinternews 4y ago

Wouldn't the fact that they know ahead of time that their current app is incompatible show that they somewhat care about techmology?

makach 4y ago

Their security department must be up in arms. Making sure your software is updated is a pinnacle in security - you simply do not turn of updating of your devices - I know this is a little bit simplistic but it isn't as if the BETA hasn't been available for iOS 16 for ages. Instead of disabling your updates, you should change your bank. Don't let them get away with it.

mnd999 4y ago
Security departments are generally so unhelpful that most organisations quickly learn to ignore them beyond the box ticking exercises.

mcs_ 4y ago

I suspect many of us can tell more about IT horror-stories in the banking industry. There is simply no way to make agile software in such a gigantic and obsolete environment. And yes... doesn't matter if you do micro-front architecture now... it is still obsolete.

ouid 4y ago

why on earth is no one one the side of the bank here? apple is using a backdoor into their hardware to cut people off from their funds. This is a gairly serious security breach and the bank is asvising customers to mitigate it.

bob1029 4y ago

Fun coincidence. We are telling our customers (the banks themselves) the same thing for our B2B product. We are going back to a web app for everything. Native is a joke if you care about stability over time. We sign contracts that are 5 years long. That’s 5 major apple/google/etc product cycles. We needed a different strategy for our tiny company. There’s not really much you can’t do in iOS Safari in 2022. I’ve even got some customers pushing PWAs over Azure Intune to iPads without any problems. No codesign or apple developer program in sight. Life feels much better this way.

balderdash 4y ago

The better question is does anyone in this category actually have their act together? Most private banking apps I’ve seen are pretty abysmal

monocularvision 4y ago

As one who works on the iOS app for a major US financial company, my guess would be they included some “security” tool/SDK that is having problems getting upgraded to iOS16.

Bilal_io 4y ago
I think this relates to management mentality when management are engineers. Scenario: we should upgrade our .Net Framework from 4.6.1 to 4.7.0. and the answer is: why is that necessary? It's a lot of effort and extra cost. Ok... Now 4.8.0 comes out... The effort is doubled. .Net Core 1.. 2.. 3.. and the effort seems impossible, and you'll have to rewrite a lot of your code base. Now .Net 8 will be released next year, and you're still stuck with the old .Net Framework. This is not to say that every app needs to be updated, but the ones that do will require huge effort. /rant

sizzle 4y ago

FISERV sucks

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Doesn't apple put out APIs and such for developers at least 6 months ahead so they can make sure this doesn't happen?