Please bring us up to date quickly: Apple published fresh updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS on Friday night. Three of the four updates fix an error that could occur when typing and has been driving some users crazy for months. The problem was that entries, particularly in text fields in the Safari browser – but also in Apple Mail and the Messages app – were replaced by unwanted virtual keystrokes. This happened quite randomly, but especially often at the beginning of a paragraph. Sometimes it seemed as if the text was just replaced visually, but in fact it was no longer correct when sent.
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Text duplicated – plus overlaps
As Apple has now admitted, the error was not only contained in macOS 14 aka Sonoma, but also in iOS and iPadOS. With iOS and iPadOS 17.3.1 as well as macOS 14.3.1, a bug was fixed that could lead to “text being unexpectedly duplicated or overlapping during input.” Unfortunately, Apple did not provide any specific information about how this happened or what technical problem caused the bug. What is known is that users have been complaining about this since the first version of Sonoma.
At the same time as the updates for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, Apple also presented watchOS 10.3.1. However, Apple does not provide any information about any new features here, only writes that the update contains “improvements and bug fixes”. It cannot actually be assumed that the text bug was also present on the Apple Watch computer watch, as it has its own special on-screen keyboard that works much more limitedly than those available on the iPad, iPhone and Mac.
No security updates included
Apple also announced that the four updates no security-related fixes contain. “This update has no published CVE entries,” it says. Nevertheless, a quick installation is advisable, if only to avoid running into the text bug (anymore). There were reports of this particularly from the USA.
It is unclear whether visionOS was also affected. Apple is currently preparing version 1.1, which is expected to bring a number of innovations and is currently in a beta version for developers.
(bsc)