I've re-installed various versions of the iOS software. You just go in to iTunes and shift-click the Restore or Check for Updates button and choose any version. I am not an iOS developer and have had no issues in going between 4.2 and 4.3 versions of the iOS software.
I sense some exaggerations here. "Scores of users", "eleven pagelengths", but no link to the discussion. Maybe that's actually just a few dozen people there? Then, "bricked devices", only they are not "bricked" at all, they merely failed to update and you need to restore them.
So, basically, the article says: There are a few users who have problems updating their iDevices.
I wonder if this happens with every update or just with this one? Actually, I would expect every software that is used by several milling people to fail for some eleven pagelengths worth of people.
My wife's iPad wasn't bricked, but it was certainly crippled by a similar bug two days ago (Friday).
When my wife attempted to sync her iPad prior to upgrading to 4.3.3, she was informed that the sync couldn't be completed. No error code or other reason was given. She could not therefore upgrade because the first step in the process is a sync. It got worse. After a few attempts, she powered off and restarted her iPad. Instead of the normal boot up, she got icons indicating she must connect the iPad to iTunes. When she did, she was advised that she was required to reset the device.
Now the real nightmare begins. After resetting the iPad, she had lost all but four of more than 100 mostly purchased applications. This should not be a problem, as the app store knows that an application has been purchased and will re-download it for free. But nobody told iTunes which applications to download. In the apps section, only 67 of her apps were recoverable. And those "updated" (meaning were restored) fine. Over the next day or so by browsing the extremely unhelpful app store, where applications are so excessively categorized it is virtually impossible to browse the huge catalog, and checking her email history she was able to make a list of (some of the dozens) of apps still missing. Then she had to go through the tedious process of using the App Store on her iPad to search for and reload each application separately, which took hours. At the end of this, she has no assurance there aren't still missing apps.
The original bug was bad, having to reset and lose all her on-device application data even worse, but the inability to smoothly restore previously purchased applications through iTunes and/or the App Store exposed a major design flaw that just fixing the bug won't address.
My 3G is still on 4.2.X so this may only be for 3Gs and newer devices.
You may be able to un-brick it by downgrading if you are a developer, I know I've switched versions several times, including recovering from scary notices like the phone only wanting to say 'connect to itunes'.
From my understanding, iOS devices, much like Android devices, are nearly, if not completely, impossible to brick. Can't you just load the old version into the updater and restore a good version of iOS? Or does this actually brick the device? (I have to ask, because it seems no one uses the word properly these days.)
Yea, it's not permanently dead in the traditional meaning of 'bricked' -- but one does have to wait for new firmware before they can get their device working again.
You can only do it for images that the activation server is willing to keep singing for you. Sometimes they go back one or two versions (or a version is know to be jailbreakable, they won't allow it to sign).
The funny part is that the signature is always constant for your device for each version so if you proxy your signing request and cache it (like use Cydia's "on file" thing) you can install and active for older builds.
You may have reverted to older firmware in the past but that's because either you have an older phone (3G and below have no signature checking), did so before Apple started signing firmwares (I believe it started somewhere in 3.x), or you're caching the signatures using TinyUmbrella, Saurik's caching server, SHSHit, or something similar. Apple DOES sign firmwares now and generally refuses to sign older versions soon (couple of hours, maybe a day or two) after a fresh release.
(Unless you use Cydia's "on file" service, which caches the latest firmware's "okay, install this" response whoever you open Cydia for restoring later.)
Everyone with a jailbroken device (~10% of users) is signed up, as well as others who use it just for the ability to downgrade -- useful for testing old firmware revisions for development purposes, for example.
(Seriously, the scale is quite impressive. There are many millions of devices with these "SHSH hashes" saved.)
I've seen you cite that number, 10% of users being jailbroken, a few times. Where does it come from? Have 18.7 million people really jailbroken[1]? That seems high to me. Is it possible that the number is (somewhat) inflated due to people jailbreaking multiple times (i.e.: upgrading and then jailbreaking again)?
a) That number comes from Flurry, the leading iPhone analytics company. For further context on the history of that number (with more accurate renditions and exactly what was last stated to me from Flurry), please read this:
b) I am not even certain how I would count the proposed flawed number: I track unique devices by UDID that see my server, and yes: 18.7 million people is an easy number to claim are jailbroken. 1.5 million of these devices use Cydia every day, and 10 million of them every month (edit| damn it: I said "week" here at first; 5 million per week).
Seriously: jailbreaking is popular, and 10% seems like a "non-issue" number when you go around and start asking random people "have you jailbroken your device or know people who do?".
So far, my favorite story of this is of a cab driver I had while going to a conference in Vegas. She had an iPhone, and was clearly very very non-technical. When asked if she had jailbroken her phone, she didn't even know what that /meant/, and when I explained to her that I had developed "Cydia", she hadn't heard of it.
However, later in the conversation, she started mentioning how much she hated AT&T, and was glad she was using T-Mobile, at which point I realized that all this time I had not been asking users enough questions. I asked her if she was, in fact, using T-Mobile on her iPhone, and then answer was "yes": she had bought her phone from an unlock parlor.
After a few more questions like "do you have a brown icon on your phone that looks somewhat like the App Store?", I realized that she in fact had a jailbroken/unlocked iPhone with Cydia installed on it (and she had even used it a couple times), but was simply not technical enough to recognize that state using any of the terms that I normally have access to while conversing.
I am curious how you are checking, and what your service is: you must have some kind of correlation. (Also, please read my above response, which you will not get a notification of from HN.)
