Apple has had a decent track record in recent years when it comes to its iOS updates, but the latest is being described by reviewers as "rushed out the door," "super messy," and "a clusterf**k." Be warned!
Your iPhone is going to keep telling you to upgrade to iOS 13 — mine already did, but I have so far hesitated because this ain't my first rodeo. Lo and behold, we have The Verge reporting that the update has "significant bugs" like "apps randomly crash when opening them, cellular signals drop, the Camera app can be slow, pictures have randomly gotten new dates assigned to them, AirDrop has had issues, the text field flips out sometimes in iMessages, and more."
Wired concurs, saying it's a "notably buggy rollout," noting that the software had a lot of issues going back to its beta release in June, some of which have been fixed with this week's release, but clearly not all.
iOS 13 has felt like a super-messy release, something we haven't seen this bad since iOS 8 or so. Definitely needs a lengthy period of consolidation and bug fixing; Apple's adding more and more flakey layers between HW and UI, and many subsystems need much more battle-hardening
— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) September 18, 2019
The update comes with a new Dark Mode, new photo browsing capabilities, new maps, and some other bangs and whistles. But maybe you should a wait a sec to see them?
A producer over at KRON 4 updated her iPhone 8 and reports that she "can unlock her phone but none of her apps will open," and "she can’t answer phone calls or open text messages." A restart didn't help either.
Developer Craig Hockenberry wrote earlier this month about a "clusterfuck" involving things saved to iCloud. Users who had the beta release of iOS 13 had entire folders get deleted or encrypted in the cloud, and it's not clear if that issue has been fully resolved.
The Department of Defense even issued a memo to employees today telling them to avoid the update at all costs. As Inc reported, the DOD is telling staff to wait for iOS 13.1, which is due out next week or shortly thereafter.
So if you were thinking about doing the update right away, don't! And if you already did, sorry!