Rumor: Apple plans to roll out remote web diagnostic for iOS devices

August 31, 2011

Pretty soon Apple will be able to tell just how badly your device is broken over the web, without having to ask you to go make a Genius appointment. A rumor has popped up online, and the gents over at HardMac have it on good authority that Apple will be able to diagnose both hardware and software problems over the web. It is reportedly as simple as connecting your phone to your computer, then visiting a link in your email, from Apple Support, in Safari.

According to the rumor, Apple will only collect the UUID, device name, and time of the call. It’s also unknown if Apple will be tracking if a device is jailbroken or not, but we suspect that they will.

HardMac is reporting that Apple’s new diagnostic system, expected to be launched in the coming months, will diagnose the following:

Health of the battery, and duration since the last full charge,
Current battery charge,
iOS version (and likely jailbreak)
The last time the device was restarted,
And finally, if the device normally restarted or crashed on its last boot.

We’re assuming that this process would help weed out the simple solutions from the more difficult repairs, and hopefully alleviate the pressure on the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store. If the only thing a phone requires is a hard reset, then wasting the time of a Genius isn’t necessary. Hopefully Apple will be able to diagnosis these problems more easily over the phone.

Source: HardMac

Joshua Schnell

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Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld… Full Bio