In what appears to be another got ya, in what can only be described as a rough release for Apple with it’s iOS 8 release. That has certainly seen several issues. The companies new Family Sharing has a BUG in it that Agents are being told was a security feature intended to keep folk from moving between Shares. This BUG locks a person out of joining any family shares after they have set one up.
My family encounter this when my wife updated her phone at a different time and location than I did and invited me to her group. A member cannot belong to more than ONE GROUP and if you created a group. You really NEVER LEAVE it and it will LOCK you out for 364 days according to the prompt you get on all of your devices attached to that email. I of course had set my Family sharing up as well when I set up my iPad and iPhone the day before.
In ongoing discussion in the Apple community forums as well as with Tier 1 and Tier 2 agents, neither the iOS or iTune side for the support system have a solution for this issue.
Another thing that was noted while this issue was taking place is the LACK of a location on the Apple Website to provide FEEDBACK to Apple regarding iOS8 or it’s features. The person reporting this issue, had been told by a Tier 1 agent to go to that location and provide feedback regarding this issue since engineering hadn’t found it important enough to address yet and suggested telling the others in the forums to do so as well.
To recap the growing list off issues with the release of iOS 8:
- Live Event, not quite live enough as stream was dropped numerous times during the event as well as having the Chinese translation feed dropped in over the audio and so loud you could not hear the presentation.
- U2 Album forced on to iPhones taking up critical space need for update as well as users chosen apps, photos and music.
- The announcement that Health section of iOS that was presented was buggy and would not be working at time of release so all of the new Health Apps were pulled from the iTunes.
- iOS 8 update weighs in at whooping 5.2gig for some users. Forcing a backup, full reset and restore for users with not enough room or a lot of time to delete apps, photos and music to make space.
- 3-2 hour update times, this has almost become an expected thing for apple updates as everyone rushes the servers.
- Family Sharing not allowing users that have inadvertently set up 2 family shares to cancel one and join the correct one. Causing a lock out of the sharing for that account for 364 days, as well as no tool or method in place to reset such an issue.
- No place to leave Apple feed back regarding their latest release of iOS 8 or any of its features on the their website. It appears no one told the web team it was time to update that Form.
To say this has been a rough release, would be an understatement. I’ve been a die hard user of iOS Devices since iPhone 3 and even spent some time as an employee of Apple. To say the least this has been the worst roll out of any of their products may be an understatement. We are still waiting to see how continuity will work with current and past iOS and OS X devices. One of the latest technical threads indicates it may ONLY work with the very LATEST of Apple products and will not even support a 3rd party bluetooth card that has the latest version of bluetooth unless produced by Apple.
So far this roll out under Tim Cook has left me wishing Steve was still with us. I’m certain some heads would already be rolling over most of this under his guidance. I will continue to follow this till it get’s a resolution but it does leave me wondering a bit, since I’m at the end of my contract with my Mobile Provider if maybe time to take a look at other OPTIONS for my phone. I’ve loved my iOS Device to this point but I’m not certain it will continue to be my choice if this is what we can and will expect over the next 2 years of a contract from the current leadership at Apple.
9-18-2014 Update: Still no word from Apple on repair of this issue. Day 2, so far.
Hear are some recent links regarding issues with the Family Sharing Lockout issue.
Blog by David Roessli – iOS 8 Family Sharing Lockout
Apple Developer Document- Leaving Family Sharing
Apple Discussions – A Guide to Family Sharing
Apple Discussions – Locked out Discussions
Apple Discussions – Reset Family sharing for one account
Apple Discussions – Family Share – need to wait 364 days after 2 attempts
Twitter Chris Espinosa – Apple FamilyShare Warroom on Twitter
9-18-2014 8:30pm Update: Apple phoned Tier 2 representative working long hours of overtime. Call was to let me know that the issue had been resolved and to try family sharing. Unlock was successful and we were able to activate Family Sharing. She appreciated my patient, and we spoke for a bit about the items addressed in this article as well as the many others that growing with concern over the issue around this release. All in all I’ll give them prop’s for getting this fixed before the weekend.