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Apple locks up gaming in iOS 8.3 |
difenbaker
Joined: Feb 25, 2009
Posts: > 500
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Apple locks up gaming in iOS 8.3
Hyper
by Craig Grannell |
Tuesday 5 May 2015 |
With Apple’s latest update, delete a game and your progress is gone, forever.
Apple’s scorched-earth policy regarding iOS app deletion has always been intensely annoying. Start the process of removing an app and your device helpfully reminds you tapping ‘delete’ will take all of the app’s data with it. This is great if you actually want that to happen, but chances are you quite often don’t.
Take games. You might spend many months trudging around an alien spacecraft, narrowly avoiding getting your face torn off by irate xenomorphs. Or you might spend weeks painstakingly progressing through a tough puzzler, adventure, or RPG. But the second you delete that game from your iOS device, everything you’ve achieved is probably gone for good.
I say ‘probably’ because some iOS developers make use of systems that back-up progress in some way, either to iCloud or a bespoke third-party system. If you’re especially fortunate, not only will the state of your game be restored on a reinstall, but it’ll also sync between multiple devices. The tiny snag is almost no iOS games actually do this, for presumably highly technical reasons or developers making the assumption if you delete a game, you never want to see it again. But modern iOS devices have relatively stingy storage, while high-end iOS games continue to balloon into several GB when installed.
If you want to keep trying new things — or even use your device in a normal manner without it blaring every five minutes that it’s almost full — there comes a point when that behemoth console-style title has to bite the dust, your progress being nuked along with it.
Prior to iOS 8.3, there was at least a way to circumvent this madness. Cunning developers created desktop apps that could peer into and manipulate an app’s sandbox — its Documents and Library folders holding the precious data of your in-game exploits. You could make copies of these folders, safeguarding your progress; and you could ‘sideload’ them back again, restoring where you’d gotten to during a reinstall, on a new or different device, or when an iPhone or iPad suffered a factory reset.
The problem is Apple presumably saw this as a security risk and has finally done something about it, locking everyone out entirely. Now, the aforementioned desktop products see empty folders, and there’s no way to relatively quickly and easily transfer progress to safe storage or between devices.
source:
http://www.pcauthority.com.au[....]locks-up-gaming-in-ios-83.aspx
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difenbaker
Joined: Feb 25, 2009
Posts: > 500
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May 6, 2015
Apple iOS 8.3 Forced On All Users
Gordon Kelly
- Contributor
You have to hand it to Apple, it knows how to get the latest versions of iOS onto users’ devices – one way or another. The positive way is Apple’s unparalleled ability to make updates immediately available to all. But there is also a more sneaky method and Apple has just used it again…
As a result seven week old iOS 8.2 has been unceremoniously killed off by what Apple calls ‘code signing’. This leaves iOS 8.3 as the only version of iOS which the company will allow to be installed on owner’s iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.
How It Works
Code Signing triggers at the point of installation. Every version of iOS has to ‘sign in’ with Apple’s servers first to verify its identity and receive permission to install. If Apple refuses to sign off the software it aborts, and clever Twitter bot @TSSstatus has detected iOS 8.2 signatures are no longer being signed off.
What It Means
The long and short of this is iOS owners can now only install iOS 8.3 from now on (unless they have developer access to betas of iOS 8.4), regardless of which version they are currently running.
The good news is if you don’t want to upgrade to iOS 8.3 – aside from the constant nagging notification on the settings icon – you can stay put. But the problem is if you suffer any issues with iOS 8.3 (and there are notable dangers – including security glitches) then there is no way to ‘downgrade’ to a previous version that worked for you. You're stuck.
This is also bad news for jailbreakers because iOS 8.3 isn’t fully jailbroken. Consequently should you accidentally upgrade there is no route back and any jailbroken apps you use will be lost along with their data.
iOS 8.4 is expected to debut at the Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC) on June 8th. It will bring a radically redesigned music app and is also expected to be the launch platform for Apple’s long awaited, Beats-inspired streaming music service.
Of course none of this really justifies Apple’s brutal habit of using Code Signing to prematurely kill off perfectly good iOS versions. Then again the majority won’t care as long as Apple continues its relentless drive to move iOS forward…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/g[....]15/05/05/apple-pushes-ios-8-3/
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..function cant coffee without in the morning. |
Boinng
Joined: May 11, 2014
Posts: 11
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There's nothing remotely sneaky or new about it, it's the way they've always done things; they support the latest firmware for the device, and that's all. Makes perfect sense from a security standpoint. |
difenbaker
Joined: Feb 25, 2009
Posts: > 500
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On 2015-05-06 12:44:52, Boinng wrote:
There's nothing remotely sneaky or new about it, it's the way they've always done things; they support the latest firmware for the device, and that's all. Makes perfect sense from a security standpoint.
I remember that time when it was 2 years before they signed off an OS. Like that time of the iphone 3G and 4. But killing off an OS that's not even a year old (I think it was out only 6 months?)... something's not right.
If you're a gamer who's been playing a game for years, and that same game is "happy" with the newer version, then everything is fine. But what if its not? Some games (even iphones) run well on iOS 7, for example, but runs slow or not as responsive when on iOS 8. (very obvious on older hardware).
Before this announcement, you can just downgrade to the previous OS, but now that they stopped signing... you're stuck with the new OS and that slow game. And the only solution is to buy a new phone or tablet.
cheers!
..function cant coffee without in the morning. |
Boinng
Joined: May 11, 2014
Posts: 11
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On 2015-05-07 04:16:01, difenbaker wrote:
On 2015-05-06 12:44:52, Boinng wrote:
There's nothing remotely sneaky or new about it, it's the way they've always done things; they support the latest firmware for the device, and that's all. Makes perfect sense from a security standpoint.
I remember that time when it was 2 years before they signed off an OS. Like that time of the iphone 3G and 4. But killing off an OS that's not even a year old (I think it was out only 6 months?)... something's not right.
If you're a gamer who's been playing a game for years, and that same game is "happy" with the newer version, then everything is fine. But what if its not? Some games (even iphones) run well on iOS 7, for example, but runs slow or not as responsive when on iOS 8. (very obvious on older hardware).
Before this announcement, you can just downgrade to the previous OS, but now that they stopped signing... you're stuck with the new OS and that slow game. And the only solution is to buy a new phone or tablet.
cheers!
It's definitely not a new development; you mention iOS 7 from last year, that was the big cosmetic redesign that was quite controversial at the time, look back and you'll find a lot of complaints at the time from people who updated to 7, hated it, and then found it was impossible to roll back as iOS 6 wasn't being signed anymore - again just a week or two after 7's release. Even then it wasn't a new policy, it just hadn't had such a high profile effect before.
It's true that part of this is to do with foiling the jailbreakers, but don't forget that jailbreaks work by exploiting bugs and weaknesses in the OS; of course they want to patch those and keep them patched. |
difenbaker
Joined: Feb 25, 2009
Posts: > 500
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Yup, that is certainly true, more now than before... jailbreaking is becoming increasingly hard to do. I've been wanting to jailbreak my iphone 6 for some time now, but the recent releases haven't been that "stable" (accdg to reviews) - so Im holding off for now.
cheers!
..function cant coffee without in the morning. | |
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Posted: 2015-05-05 06:27
