5 ms·

I wish he would have tried on a different iPhone 16 Pro Max to see if the defect was specific to that individual device.

crossroadsguy 8mo ago
So true! And as any sane Apple user or the standard template Apple Support person would have suggested (and as they actually suggest) - did they try reinstalling the OS from scratch after having reset the data (of course before backing it up; preferably with a hefty iCloud+ plan)? Because that's the thing to do in such issues and it's very easy.
- post-it 8mo ago
  Reinstalling the OS sucks. I need to pull all my bank cards out of my safe and re-add their CVV's to the wallet, and sometimes authenticate over the phone. And re-register my face. And log back in to all my apps. It can take an hour or so, except it's spread out over weeks as I open an app and realize I need to log in a dozen times.
  - RulerOf 8mo ago
    There was a magical period. I suspect it ended with the introduction of the Secure Enclave. But maybe it was a little later. An encrypted iTunes backup of a device was a perfect image. Take the backup, pull the SIM card, restore the backup to a new phone with the sim card installed, and it was like nothing had happened. No reauthentication. No missing notifications. No lost data. Ever. It was nice.
    - throwaway132448 8mo ago
      Security theatre killed this. Everyone must be assumed to be a moron incapable of living with the consequences of their own choices at all times.
      - fragmede 8mo ago
        It's not theater. If an attacker can duplicate your device, that's a problem.
        throwaway132448 8mo ago
        Says who? How do you know what’s on my device, how much it matters to me, and what countless other options I have for recourse if that did happen?
        fragmede 8mo ago
        What does that have to do with it being theater or not?
        throwaway132448 8mo ago
        Because I’m saying the threat vector you used to justify it is not an issue for me at all, so it’s a baseless justification for “security”, ergo, theatre.
        fragmede 8mo ago
        That's still not theater though. Annoying? Yes, quite! But according to the definition: > Security theater is the practice of implementing security measures that are considered to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to achieve it.[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater#:~:text=Security%20theater%20is%20the%20practice,or%20nothing%20to%20achieve%20it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater#:~:text=Secur... Just because it's annoying to you doesn't make it security theater.
        throwaway132448 8mo ago
        > while doing little or nothing to achieve it Adding additional security to something that doesn’t need security is basically doing this by definition. It’s adding nothing because nothing was needed. So yes, theatre.
  - JCharante 8mo ago
    > And log back in to all my apps Isn’t this built in when transferring devices? Are backups different?
    - 0x457 8mo ago
      Some information stored in Secure Enclave and cannot be pulled out from there by design.
jajuuka 8mo ago
Latest update at the bottom of the page. "Well, now it's Feb. 1st and I have an iPhone 17 Pro Max to test with and... everything works as expected. So it's pretty safe to say that THAT specific instance of iPhone 16 Pro Max was hardware-defective."
- Someone 8mo ago
  That logic is somewhat [1] correct, but it doesn’t say anything about whether all, some, or only this particular iPhone 16 Pro Maxes are hardware-defective. [1] as the author knows (“MLX uses Metal to compile tensor operations for this accelerator. Somewhere in that stack, the computations are going very wrong”) there’s lots of soft- and firmware in-between the code being run and the hardware of the neural engine. The issue might well be somewhere in those.
TimByte 8mo ago
Yeah, that would've been the cleanest experiment

crossroadsguy 8mo ago

So true! And as any sane Apple user or the standard template Apple Support person would have suggested (and as they actually suggest) - did they try reinstalling the OS from scratch after having reset the data (of course before backing it up; preferably with a hefty iCloud+ plan)? Because that's the thing to do in such issues and it's very easy.

post-it 8mo ago
Reinstalling the OS sucks. I need to pull all my bank cards out of my safe and re-add their CVV's to the wallet, and sometimes authenticate over the phone. And re-register my face. And log back in to all my apps. It can take an hour or so, except it's spread out over weeks as I open an app and realize I need to log in a dozen times.
- RulerOf 8mo ago
  There was a magical period. I suspect it ended with the introduction of the Secure Enclave. But maybe it was a little later. An encrypted iTunes backup of a device was a perfect image. Take the backup, pull the SIM card, restore the backup to a new phone with the sim card installed, and it was like nothing had happened. No reauthentication. No missing notifications. No lost data. Ever. It was nice.
  - throwaway132448 8mo ago
    Security theatre killed this. Everyone must be assumed to be a moron incapable of living with the consequences of their own choices at all times.
    - fragmede 8mo ago
      It's not theater. If an attacker can duplicate your device, that's a problem.
      - throwaway132448 8mo ago
        Says who? How do you know what’s on my device, how much it matters to me, and what countless other options I have for recourse if that did happen?
        fragmede 8mo ago
        What does that have to do with it being theater or not?
        throwaway132448 8mo ago
        Because I’m saying the threat vector you used to justify it is not an issue for me at all, so it’s a baseless justification for “security”, ergo, theatre.
        fragmede 8mo ago
        That's still not theater though. Annoying? Yes, quite! But according to the definition: > Security theater is the practice of implementing security measures that are considered to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to achieve it.[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater#:~:text=Security%20theater%20is%20the%20practice,or%20nothing%20to%20achieve%20it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater#:~:text=Secur... Just because it's annoying to you doesn't make it security theater.
        throwaway132448 8mo ago
        > while doing little or nothing to achieve it Adding additional security to something that doesn’t need security is basically doing this by definition. It’s adding nothing because nothing was needed. So yes, theatre.
- JCharante 8mo ago
  > And log back in to all my apps Isn’t this built in when transferring devices? Are backups different?
  - 0x457 8mo ago
    Some information stored in Secure Enclave and cannot be pulled out from there by design.

jajuuka 8mo ago

Latest update at the bottom of the page. "Well, now it's Feb. 1st and I have an iPhone 17 Pro Max to test with and... everything works as expected. So it's pretty safe to say that THAT specific instance of iPhone 16 Pro Max was hardware-defective."

Someone 8mo ago
That logic is somewhat [1] correct, but it doesn’t say anything about whether all, some, or only this particular iPhone 16 Pro Maxes are hardware-defective. [1] as the author knows (“MLX uses Metal to compile tensor operations for this accelerator. Somewhere in that stack, the computations are going very wrong”) there’s lots of soft- and firmware in-between the code being run and the hardware of the neural engine. The issue might well be somewhere in those.

TimByte 8mo ago

Yeah, that would've been the cleanest experiment