Earlier this week, news broke of a strange networking issue that can permanently disable all WiFi activity on iOS devices. It’s currently known to affect iOS 14 only, and can cause quite a mess. The news was originally revealed by reverse engineer Carl Schou (via BleepingComputer (story sourced via MacTrast), and while there was originally very little information revealed about the issue or how it functions, we decided to put our research hats on and see what we could discover. On iOS 14, the problem can be quickly fixed by performing a network reset – but all is not quite as well as it seems. Here’s what we found. After joining my personal WiFi with the SSID “%p%s%s%s%s%n”, my iPhone permanently disabled it’s WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~) pic.twitter.com/2eue90JFu3 — Carl Schou (@vm_call) June 18, 2021 The issue also affects iOS 15 developer beta Resetting network settings does NOT resolve the issue in iOS 15 developer beta 1 Restoring a device and setting it up again as new on iOS 15 resolves the issue, but restoring from an iCloud backup (even one from before you attempt to connect to the unusually named network) causes the device...

Naturally, following Apple’s WWDC announcements on June 22nd, there has been a great deal of chatter and discussion regarding the future of the Mac now that Apple is transitioning to using it’s own custom designed chips. And naturally, we may have heard a thing or two from sources who have served us well in the past (including one of the sources that gave us great information on Apple’s AirPower plans). That being said: I have an immense dislike for rumors on an existential level. The level to which rumors can be verified varies greatly; the level to which even a once-accurate piece of leaked information can adapt or develop over time, equally so. And this happens for a number of reasons: false information, Apple changing their plans, so on ad nauseam. As such, rather than to continue the pattern of rumor bombardment for nothing more than the sake of rumor itself, while not discounting that we have definitely heard some pretty fascinating and worthwhile things from folks we have good reason to trust, I’m going to weed through what we’ve heard and break it down into the “bigger why,” focusing on the ideas beneath what we’re hearing, and why it...