It's been almost a week since Apple killed Group FaceTime and they still havent shipped the actual fix. If you missed it: some 14-year-old kid in Arizona found out you could start a group call, and before the other person even picks up, you can hear their audio. Just hear it. No answer required. He and his mom apparently tried to flag this to Apple through the normal channels almost two weeks before it blew up on Twitter last Monday, and nothing happened until a video of it went viral and every tech outlet ran the story on the same day.
Apple pulled the plug on Group FaceTime server-side that same night, which stops the bug cold but also means the feature just doesn't work right now, full stop. Not "some calls might drop," not "restart your phone" - the whole thing is off. They said a fix was coming "later this week." That was over a week ago now. It's Sunday. It's Super Bowl Sunday, specifically, which is exactly the kind of day my family would normally be doing a dumb group FaceTime call between three different houses complaining about the Rams offense (there is not much to complain about today, three points through three quarters, yikes).
Instead we're doing it in a group text with a lot of GIFs, which is fine, I guess, but its not the same and its a good reminder of how much we've all quietly built our routines around a feature that can just disappear because of one bug. I dont even think Group FaceTime is that good honestly, the video quality tanks the second you get past two people and my dads phone drops out of it constantly, but I didnt realize how often we defaulted to it until it wasnt an option.
The part that actually bugs me isnt the bug itself. Software has bugs, thats not news, thats Tuesday. Its that a 14 year old and his mom apparently could not get anyone at Apple to take this seriously for close to two weeks. Screenshots going around show the mom submitting it through Apple's own bug report form and a support request, and getting basically nothing back until the story was already everywhere. For a company that puts "Privacy. That's iPhone." on billboards, thats a pretty rough look. I dont think Apple is uniquely bad here, every big company's bug intake process is a black hole if youre not a security researcher with a following, but its the gap between the marketing and the actual response time that gets me.
My brother, who is very much not a tech person, texted me Thursday asking if it was safe to use FaceTime at all, one-on-one calls included. Its not the same bug, one-on-one FaceTime was never affected, but I get why he asked. Once you find out an app can secretly turn on your mic without you tapping anything, you stop trusting your assumptions about what "hanging up" even means. Thats a hard thing to walk back with a press release.
Anyway. No group calls in this house today, so its just the TV and a group chat thats mostly people posting reaction pics faster than the plays actually happen. The commercials so far are fine, nothing Ill remember by Wednesday, though I will say the Bumble ad landed better than most of the app ones usually do. If Apple actually gets the real fix out this week like theyre now saying, Ill believe it when the toggle shows back up on my phone and not before, because "later this week" has already meant a week and counting.