iOS5 Upgrade: Another Apple Horror Story

Today I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 5. It was the worst upgrade experience I have ever had in over 30 years of using computers. I lost all my phone data - as if I bought a new phone that happened to have the same phone number. As far as I can tell, it is unrecoverable.

The Download

I knew Apple's servers were overloaded so I did this early in the morning the day after iOS5 came out. The download went fairly quickly.

Update Hangs

The update process hung on several steps. No "please wait", no response, no progress indicator, just hang. Without any feedback, how long is one supposed to wait before assuming it's broken: 1 minute? 10 minutes? 1 hour? longer?

iCloud? You Better Say YES

The update doesn't take "no" for an answer on "use iCloud"? When I clicked "no", the update doesn't progress - next button does nothing and you're stuck on the screen. I had to click "yes" for the upgrade to continue. Not necessarily bad, as it said it was backing up to iCloud. [yeah right... more on that later]

Emails

Unbeknownst to me, Apple was sending emails to the email address in my iTunes account. One email every minute for about 30 minutes. The update sent these emails:

  • without telling me they're being sent
  • without telling me the update process on the phone can't continue until I reply
  • without being able to check my email on the phone, because it's in the middle of an update!

    • I happened to check using a separate computer (while my my phone was hung for over an hour on one step in the update). I found the emails, replied and activated my iCloud account. The upgrader was still stuck. I selected Back, then Next, and it continued. Was it only a coincidence that it continued after I used a separate computer to check my email and activate my iCloud account? Maybe. Doesn't seem like coincidence, but who knows?

    More Hangs

    The updater hit a complete hang at the "find my phone" step. No "please wait", no response, no progress indicator, just hang. I waited over 60 minutes... Finally I clicked the home button. A menu popped up saying restart, continue, etc. I elected to restart. How much harm could it cause? I saw it back up my phone before the update started!
    [famous last words]

    Where's My Backup?

    After restarting, the latest backup made during the iOS 5 update did not appear in iTunes. It saw a backup I made from 8 days earlier. So, I took a step back and tried the iCloud backup. No cloud backups available.
    I was wondering, "Where the heck is the backup I saw the updater making made when it started this process?" Apparently, nowhere to be found. The backup/restore process on iTunes is automagic and opaque. If it fails, there really is nothing you can do. There are no GZIP or TAR files you can unpack and fetch individual files. At least, if there is, there's no obvious or easy way to get them.

    Set it up as a New iPhone

    With the upgrader's backup mysteriously missing, no iCloud backup at all, and unable to restore the iTunes backup from 8 days ago, and unable to revert back to iOS 4.3.5, I had no choice. I had to set it up as a new iPhone. I tried one more time on iTunes, but it could not restore the backup dated 10/8. No reason, no error message, no troubleshooting info, just "iTunes can't restore this backup".

    Sync, but not Backup

    iTunes did a sync and pushed my apps to the new phone. Big Whup. What did I lose? All the stuff that I trusted iTunes to back up, because it said it backed it up. And due to Apple's closed, proprietary, automagic and opaque system, I had no other way of backing up myself.
    Here is an incomplete list:

  • phone directory (contacts, favorites, etc. hundreds of entries)
  • mail/calendar/contact settings (several, Exchange & POP3)
  • application data (apps restored but all data & settings lost)
  • all SMS messages (one year's worth)
  • VPN setup (Cisco AnyConnect & RSA token)
  • WiFi/network settings (including WEP passcodes)

    • In short, I lost important business contacts and about a day of effort getting my phone even partially back to the state it was in before. Lesson learned: I have now been burned by Apple once too many times. Screw me once, shame on Apple. Screw me twice, shame on me for being stupid enough to trust Apple. I will never trust Apple again.

    This reminds me of a seminar I attended recently. Stephen Brobst, CTO of Teradata, was talking about how Continental Airlines used big data analytics to move from dead last to first in customer service. He mentioned several ways an airline can piss off its customers. Most mistakes are recoverable if a company recognizes them and reacts accordingly. But one is completely non-recoverable. It is called DPOA: Dead Pet On Arrival. My iOS 5 experience today is a DPOA equivalent from Apple. Piled on top of prior bad experiences first and second, I'm done.

    Hello Android, you're way better in many ways.