How does Apple get GM onto packaged phones?

[wrightchad1]

Question - Apple has been producing these phones for months... long before the GM of IOS 12 came out. How do they get the GM on the phones after they are already packaged??

 

[danieldavis3924]

Question - Apple has been producing these phones for months... long before the GM of IOS 12 came out. How do they get the GM on the phones after they are already packaged??

They don’t. They are loaded with the current software at the time they were packaged. Meaning a lot of the phones will need to be updated to iOS12.

 

[gwhizkids]

They don’t. They are loaded with the current software at the time they were packaged. Meaning a lot of the phones will need to be updated to iOS12.

That is absolutely not true. Every new phone (Xs/Xs Max) has iOS 12.0 on it. The answer to how they do this is that iOS 12.0 was complete (for Apple’s purposes) more than a week (or even 2 or 3) before the iOS 12.0 GM was released to beta testers. It is then flashed on phones during the production and packaging process.

 

[JPack]

Production ramping began late August, which is the same time iOS 12 went GM.

Keep in mind Apple's internal betas are weeks ahead of what they release to the public.

 

[danieldavis3924]

I was thinking back to the 20 odd iPhones I updated last time around when installing MDM for my customer. Thinking more into it, it may have been a quick xx.0.1 update. I apologise.

 

[JPack]

Surely that means that the phones are then shipped with Beta software installed, or the Beta testers are doing work for nothing if Apple had iOS 12 finalised weeks ago?

Public beta testers test code that is several weeks old.

Apple doesn't need the public to report obvious and simple bugs. They have paid people to do that. Apple is hoping the public catches obscure bugs that remain in the code even after several builds apart.