Software bugs can show up in the strangest and most unexpected ways. You'd assume a giant like Apple would account for performance hiccups when its devices play media, yet a tiny three-second clip is causing headaches for iPhone users, and its effects reach back to very old iOS versions, including 5.1.
Some users might interpret this as a quality control problem, but the truth is that software just does these things sometimes. Basic functions that should work flawlessly present mysterious, spontaneous errors. The situation gets even more frustrating on mobile devices, simply because errors tend to be harder to analyze there. A computer writes a log or shows something like the classic blue screen, while on a smartphone the app closes, or you directly see the operating system hang. Now take this to a very popular platform like the iPhone. Cupertino knows that any sharp edge will be exposed right away, and to be honest, I didn't expect to see such a persistent error. I don't think they did either.
The three-second bug
The latest video published by the EverythingApplePro channel explains that a tiny three-second clip is locking up iPhone after iPhone. No one knows exactly why, though the main suspect is a bug that arises when playing corrupt mp4 videos, which causes either a memory leak or consumption of all available CPU cycles. The strangest part is that the problem doesn't show up right away. The user can keep going for fifteen or twenty seconds before the smartphone stops responding completely.
No permanent damage
Apparently the video doesn't cause any permanent damage, and all the user has to do to get their device working again is restart it. Tests point to the bug being present in iOS for a long time, affecting every version from iOS 5.1 on. Anyone who wants to run the test will find a link to the clip in the description of the video we shared. Needless to say, step carefully.
