On Monday Apple AAPL -0.02% released iOS 11.2.2, its most important update for some time, but it seems in the rush to upgrade some users are encountering a very nasty surprise indeed…
‘Great Secret Features’ and ‘Nasty Surprises’ are my regular columns investigating the best features / biggest problems hidden behind the headlines.
In fairness to Apple AAPL -0.02%, this one was necessary. After months of badly rushed (and problematic) iOS updates, the release of iOS 11.2.2 is timely because it addresses a serious vulnerability on iPhones, iPads and iPod touch. But does iOS 11.2.2 cause any new problems which mean you shouldn’t upgrade?
iOS 11.2.2
Released January 8, 2018
Available for: iPhone 5s and later, iPad Air and later, and iPod touch 6th generation
Description: iOS 11.2.2 includes security improvements to Safari and WebKit to mitigate the effects of Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715).
We would like to acknowledge Jann Horn of Google Project Zero; and Paul Kocher in collaboration with Daniel Genkin of University of Pennsylvania and University of Maryland, Daniel Gruss of Graz University of Technology, Werner Haas of Cyberus Technology, Mike Hamburg of Rambus (Cryptography Research Division), Moritz Lipp of Graz University of Technology, Stefan Mangard of Graz University of Technology, Thomas Prescher of Cyberus Technology, Michael Schwarz of Graz University of Technology, and Yuval Yarom of University of Adelaide and Data61 for their assistance.
About the security content of iOS 11.2.2
This document describes the security content of iOS 11.2.2.
About Apple security updates
For our customers’ protection, Apple doesn’t disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until an investigation has occurred and patches or releases are available. Recent releases are listed on the Apple security updates page.
For more information about security, see the Apple Product Security page. You can encrypt communications with Apple using the Apple Product Security PGP Key.
Apple security documents reference vulnerabilities by CVE-ID when possible.
Who Is iOS 11.2.2 For?
Just like previous iOS 11 releases, iOS 11.2.2 is compatible with the iPhone 5S or later, iPad mini 2 or later and 6th generation iPod touch or later.
You should be prompted to install iOS 11.2.2 automatically, but if this hasn’t happened you can trigger it manually by navigating to Settings > General > Software Update. Apple iOS beta testers, remember you may have to unenroll your device for the update to appear – especially if you are running the mysterious iOS 11.2.5 beta.
iOS updates vary in size (features/patches apply to different devices) but iOS 11.2.2 isn’t a big update at roughly 60-85MB. Be aware that if you are still running iOS 10, then iOS 11.2.2 will also roll up the large iOS 11 update into a single major update causing it to weigh in at several gigabytes.
Across over 30 single-core and multi-core benchmarks, Mughal found single-core and multi-core performance of his iPhone 6 fell by an average of 41% and 39% after updating to iOS 11.2.2. The results are broken down on his blog. It is worth pointing out Mughal upgrade to iOS 11.2.2 from iOS 11.1.2 not iOS 11.2.1, but that shouldn’t be relevant as the throttling Apple introduced in iOS 11.2 was specifically for the iPhone 7 only.
Melvin MughaliPhone performance before and after updating to iOS 11.2.2
Instead the obvious finger to point is at the sole feature of iOS 11.2.2: mitigations for the serious Spectre vulnerability which is impacting just about every platform around the world. Apple even warned users in advance the patch could have a performance impact in some situations, but said it was not expected to be higher than 2.5% in any situation. So are the big drops the consequence of an error in these mitigations or a problem elsewhere in the update?
Article Source : Forbes
Article Source : Apple
