Apple, Amazon, and useless error messages...

Yesterday, I connected my iPhone 8 to my PC in order to copy over a few recent photos. While I was at it, I decided to do a backup of the iPhone so I launched iTunes and was promptly told that the iOS 12.1 update was available for me. Now, I normally do iOS updates over WiFi and not tethered to the PC, so I thought I'd give this process a try and see if it was any faster (the PC has wired internet). Bad decision. At the point where the iPhone reboots with the white Apple logo onscreen, all went dark on the iPhone and iTunes simply said that it was 'waiting for the iPhone'. Ouch. I waited 5 minutes but nothing more happened. I pressed and held the power button and the phone briefly came to life. This prompted iTunes to tell me that 'something had gone wrong with the update' and that the resolution may involve 'restoring a full backup' of the phone.

Really? That's it? What if my most recent backup wasn't actually that recent (I don't use iCloud)? Something as serious as this needs a more informative error message than a dumb 'oops, something went wrong...'

That's the problem with the it just works nature of Apple products. What about when it doesn't just work? They seem to think that meaningful error messages (that would help in resolving the problem) would intimidate the average tech-unsavvy Apple user. Well, for something as serious as my whole phone potentially needing wiping/restoring, I'd like more info so I can troubleshoot. In the end, I tried a different lightning cable and connected it directly to the PC instead of through a USB hub and it (magically) worked ok. Phew. I got lucky. But no thanks to Apple.

It reminds me of a recent issue with iPhones and iPads in the house that would sometimes connect to WiFi, sometimes not. No error message, just no WiFi symbol on the screen. Also occurring with an Amazon Echo Show that had spotty WiFi connectivity. Again, no meaningful error message - just Alexa answering "Sorry, i'm having trouble connecting right now...". The Apple devices at least fell back on 4G connectivity, the Echo became useless. I looked at the Echo's settings page and there was no hint at what was wrong. Now I knew that the WiFi signal was fine because other devices in the house worked no problem and the signal strength was great. What could it be?

Eventually, a ChromeBook also failed to connect to WiFi and it pointed me to the source of the problem because it gave a meaningful error message. It turned out that my router's DHCP pool was full and the router wasn't handing out any more IP addresses. The reason this appeared as a spotty connectivity problem is that if a lease on a (different) connected device expired then a slot became available and a device that had been denied WiFi previously suddenly connected OK. Thanks to the help from the ChromeBook's message mentioning DHCP, in my router settings I upped the maximum pool size and all was solved. For all my devices, Apple and Amazon too.

Now, you may say that the average Apple user or Amazon user wouldn't know what to do to resolve this anyway, but an error-message that describes the actual problem (e.g. your DHCP server failed to give me an IP address - check the router settings) would enable a tech-savvy housemate or neighbor to jump to the rescue. Calling Apple or Amazon tech support for help based on a dumb message is pretty useless as they can also only guess what the issue might be and will suggest plenty of things to try (check cables, move the router closer) that all make sense generically but will miss the mark specifically.

Good UX design is uncluttered and to the point. But dumbed-down error messages miss the mark. Give us an error number to refer to when we call the helpdesk. Better still, under the 'oops, something went wrong...' message, give us a button to click on that opens a proper error description that will assist in resolution. The computer-illiterates can avoid clicking it at all costs...