Apple’s Latest iOS Update Turns ‘iPhone’ into ‘A?Phone’

Apple’s Latest iOS Update Turns ‘iPhone’ into ‘A?Phone’
An Apple employee demonstrates the Animoji feature on the new iPhone X at the Apple Store Union Square on November 3, 2017, in San Francisco, California. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images)
Chris Jasurek
11/6/2017
Updated:
11/6/2017

If you downloaded the latest iOS software update for your iPhone, hoping for interesting new features—well, you got one.

But you probably won’t like it.

A software glitch in the latest Apple operating system software automatically replaces every lower-case “i” with a capital “A’ and a question mark.

https://twitter.com/mcwm/status/927349856544358400

If you have iOS 11.1, you might not be able to type “iOS.”

“I have a $1,150 [£877] telephone that can’t read the letter ‘i’,” wrote Mike Murphy, a technology reporter for news website Quartz, on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/mcwm/status/927357360389218304

So, iPhone users cannot even type “iPhone” to complain to Apple about their iPhones.

https://twitter.com/AhBijBijBij/status/925401312338087937

The same faulty software apparently delivers its auto-correcting annoyance to any iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices that have updated.

https://twitter.com/Emojipedia/status/927300793627181058

Not every iPhone use has been afflicted. Some users have had no issues, but judging from the response on Twitter, plenty of iPhone users do.

https://twitter.com/thefunrevucc/status/927259890153902080

Apple is working on a solution for the problem. In the meantime, it has offered iPhone users a work-around.

https://twitter.com/AppleSupport/status/927305273806589954

Users are advised to edit their keyboard settings in iOS so that the correct character, either an upper or lower case “i”, is used.

“For Phrase, type an upper-case ‘I,’” Apple explains. “For Shortcut, type a lower-case ‘i.’”

Not surprisingly, iOS users are more than mildly annoyed.

From NTD.tv