Apple iOS 9.3.2 Has A Nasty Surprise

Written by Gordons Kelly Forbes Staff

All Photo Credit: Gordons Kelly

Today Apple released iOS 9.3.2. On the surface it appears to be a minor update and its arrival was met with little ceremony. But beware, just hours after launch, it turns out iOS 9.3.2 is hiding a very nasty surprise indeed…

Apple iOS 9.3.2 is bricking iPad Pros.

‘Great Features’ and ‘Nasty Surprises’ are my regular columns investigating operating system updates for the best features / biggest problems hidden behind the headlines.

News of this first appeared on the popular MacRumors forums (something the site has followed up) before gathering momentum on Twitter where many users posted angry tweets demanding help from the official @AppleSupport account.

So what is going on? A clear pattern is emerging:

When affected devices install iOS 9.3.2 and restart users are presented with an ‘Error 56’ code which tells them to connect to iTunes. The problem is connecting to iTunes does nothing, the device is locked and forced reboots only return it the same state.

As for the error code itself, according to Apple’s code guide, Error 56 is loosely described as a “hardware issue”, which doesn’t sound like a credible explanation.

Interestingly, from my initial investigations, it seems the newer iPad Pro 9.7 is affected far more often than the iPad Pro 12.7 (the two models have key feature differences). But the good news is there are reports of iPad Pro 9.7 models updating without problems and iPhones and other iPad models appear to be getting through unscathed.

So what happens now? I suspect Apple will make a statement about this sooner rather than later (I’ve contacted the press team), and the two obvious paths are to a) Re-release a tweaked version of iOS 9.3.2 or b) quickly issue a new update (iOS 9.3.3?) as an emergency fix.

All of which does little to aid the reputation of iOS 9 which has suffered numerous high profile problems, despite originally being a fine tuning of iOS 8 rather than offer a radical overhaul.

Needless to say I’d advise everyone (regardless of whether they own an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch) to steer clear of iOS 9.3.2 until more is known.

Source:  Forbes Tech