iOS6

I attempted to upgrade a New iPad to iOS 6 today. The first download failed. The second download failed. The third one worked, and the upgrade was painless after that.

Then I tried a iPhone 4s. Six failed downloads so far.

OK, I understand that it’s early days for the OS, and that the Apple servers are busy with everybody wanting to see the new goodies. But here’s what I don’t understand. Every time a download fails and the user – that would be me – tries again, the download starts from the very beginning. I’ve had downloads go almost to completion before doing a digital faceplant, but Apple ignores all those good bytes.

This kind of retrograde engineering uses up the users’ bandwidth, for which many of them paid good money and consider a valuable resource. It takes the users’ time, which is valuable to them, although maybe not to Apple. But here’s the self-destructive part: every time Apple restarts the download rather than picking up where it left off, it uses up its servers’ bandwidth, and making it more likely that subsequent downloads will fail, which uses up more bandwidth, and so on down the rabbit hole.

The seventh iPhone 4s upgrade just failed…