Apple is adding a new feature to its internal diagnostics software. Why this could be an improvement for customers and what Apple is working with.
Support staff in Apple Stores and authorized service providers should be able to check more easily in the future whether an iPhone frequently crashes. Apple has given technicians a new diagnostic tool that checks system stability over the past two weeks. Customers benefit because technicians can make a faster decision about whether to perform a hardware repair or not.
The existence of the new tool emerges from an internal memo from Apple that is available on the Apple blog MacRumors. The prerequisite is that the customer has at least an iPhone 11 or a newer device. The software evaluates the iPhone’s log files and searches them for the occurrence of a kernel panic. Previously, support staff would have had to search for these entries manually. Some also recommended restoring the device from a backup to see if the crashes recur with a cleaned system.
Place of many status reports
Countless status messages from the system and open apps are displayed and recorded in log files in the so-called console of the iPhone. Developers and interested parties can make this visible with the Xcode programming environment and a connected iPhone. Due to the volume of entries, researching crashes is often like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Apple’s silver bullet: The Service Toolkit 2
The System Stability Checker tool is said to be part of the Apple Service Toolkit 2. Apple has very sophisticated diagnostic software that technicians can also run remotely on the affected device in consultation with the user. Technicians can also use this software to manually update the firmware on the AirPods, for example.
The service toolkit apparently works with diagnostic functions that are integrated into the operating systems of iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices. In this way it can be found out whether faults and problems are caused by hardware components. Among other things, audio devices, the battery, Bluetooth, the camera, the display, fans, graphics card, memory, ports, sensors and Wi-Fi are checked. The software supports technicians with hardware decisions, such as problems with Face ID facial recognition.
