Latest watchOS Update Pulled After It Bricked Some Apple Watch Devices

Yesterday, Apple shipped new updates to iOS, macOS, and watchOS. The new update delivered new features, as well as a bunch of new emojis. And that’s not working too well for some Apple Watch devices.

Soon after Apple shipped watchOS 5.1 yesterday, a bunch of weird reports started appearing online. Some users with the latest Apple Watch Series 4 trying to upgrade to watchOS 5.1 had their device bricked, with the watch being stuck on the welcome screen. Apple has since acknowledged the issue, completely pulling watchOS 5.1 until the issue is resolved.

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“Due to a small number of Apple Watch customers experiencing an issue while installing watchOS 5.1 today, we’ve pulled back the software update as a precaution. Any customers impacted should contact AppleCare, but no action is required if the update installed successfully. We are working on a fix for an upcoming software update,” the company said in a statement to CNET.

The bug only seems to be affecting owners of the new Apple Watch Series 4, which only came out back in September. The device launched with the major watchOS 5 release, and though the 5.1 update is only meant to be a very minor release, it’s certainly causing a lot of inconvenience for Watch owners.

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Conversation 11 comments

  • Daekar

    31 October, 2018 - 9:40 am

    <p>Nice to see that Microsoft isn't the only one that can botch an update in a critical way…</p>

  • dontbe evil

    31 October, 2018 - 10:16 am

    <p>ROTFL .. the famous apple quality</p>

    • MikeGalos

      31 October, 2018 - 10:41 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#358600">In reply to dontbe_evil:</a></em></blockquote><p>Apple: It just bricks!</p>

      • George Rae

        01 November, 2018 - 11:21 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#358629">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><em>Glass houses folks. </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • MikeGalos

    31 October, 2018 - 10:45 am

    <p>Kind of amazing that when you have less than half a dozen total system configuration combinations you can't get those few tested.</p><p><br></p><p>I suspect there's more at work than just Series 4 hardware with Series 5.1 software. Even Apple isn't that bad at testing that few combinations and I'd bet that half the Apple devs and testers have exactly that combination so it will be interesting to see the real configuration issue.</p>

  • markbyrn

    Premium Member
    31 October, 2018 - 10:51 am

    <p>Wonder if anybody had reported the bug during 5.1 beta; I had no problem installing the beta or the release version. </p>

  • skane2600

    31 October, 2018 - 11:39 am

    <p>Love the vague "small number of users" trope that companies use when they have flaws in their products. One could argue that the entire user base of smartwatches is a small number of users.</p>

  • Winner

    31 October, 2018 - 12:14 pm

    <p>Well many of the recent Pixel comments were related to "why do people buy basically a beta product". This would seem that Apple is similar.</p><p>Oh, and where's Windows release 1809 these days?</p>

    • skane2600

      31 October, 2018 - 8:16 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#358711">In reply to Winner:</a></em></blockquote><p>Potentially shippable product, baby! It's not just for scrum sprints anymore.&nbsp;It's the new normal.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    01 November, 2018 - 3:33 am

    <p>It looks like Autumn 2018 is a bad time for updates from nearly all the big players…</p>

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