Reverting to the stock IPSW causes Health app to botch up

Sep 25, 2014 12:41 GMT  ·  By

After almost a full day of suffering for iPhone 6 customers wielding crippled devices, Apple has finally admitted officially that iOS 8.0.1 is a bad seed. The iPhone maker promises to deliver a new update shortly, and in the meanwhile affected customers are shown how to downgrade.

Whenever these things happen – and it’s happened pretty much every time a new iOS came out – Apple does the right thing and acknowledges all its mistakes. It’s also not the first time it has pulled an update altogether. In other words, no reason to panic. It’s all standard procedure.

Apple’s admission

Via support document HT6487, the Cupertino giant states, “We have a workaround for you if you have an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus and you lost cellular service and Touch ID functionality today after updating to iOS 8.0.1.”

The company confirms to affected users that “You can reinstall iOS 8 through iTunes by following the instructions below. We are also preparing iOS 8.0.2 with a fix for the issue, and will release it as soon as it's ready in the next few days.”

So while iOS 8.0.2 is being cooked up, you’ll need to follow these exact steps to get back up and running with your shiny new iPhone 6. You can review Apple’s document in full, as well as our own guide.

For the lazy types, the short version of the guide is: back it up > download your appropriate IPSW (iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus) > selectively restore to that IPSW in iTunes. That’s it! Apple offers download links and everything, so go ahead and do it their way. It’s guaranteed to work.

Downgrade breaks Health app

Apple is famous for its one-more-thing tidbits, and this support document is no exception to the rule.

The Mac maker adds that, as a result of the downgrade, your Health app will break: “The Health app won't work in iOS 8 after these steps. It will be fixed in our upcoming iOS 8.0.2 software update.”

Why, it isn’t clear. But it probably has to do with the fact that it hasn’t been prepared for any downgrade procedures, something Apple allows very rarely.

iOS 8.0.1 doesn’t seem to be affecting devices other than the newest two iPhones. Which is surprising, considering the poor performance experienced by iPhone 4 customers when iOS 7 came out. It looks like iOS 8 has been optimized much better to run on older hardware than its predecessor.