TUAW Hits on iPhone/iPod Touch Instability

When I first began writing here about my stability issues in the 2.0.2 firmware on my iPod Touch, I was disappointed that none of the big Apple blogs and rumors sites had touched on this issue, unlike other bugs and problems users were experiencing.

However, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has finally posted on the issue in a post today. The post was apparently prompted by a discussion on the iPod Touch Fans forum that includes a workaround. Unfortunately, that workaround requires a jailbroken device and some hacking in the terminal. As of this writing, there is no workaround for this issue, other than reducing the number of apps installed on the device or avoiding the device altogether.

I was pleased that the article on iPod Touch Fans called the issue with the watchdog process I discussed in my previous post as a design flaw, making a clear distinction between that and a bug. When adding 3rd party app support, Apple should not have included a timeout killswitch that renders the device useless until restored.

While TUAW has reported on the problem, there is still no response from Apple. Interestingly enough, one of the commenters said they had been in contact with Apple support and Apple engineers could not replicate the problem. I sent steve@mac.com an email a few days ago in a desperate attempt to get an answer from Apple as to whether or not they knew about or were fixing this issue, but did not receive a response.