I’ve had only one report so far of problems with Arc Mini on iOS 16.4, but from my own experience it’s a mess!
On my main device, Arc Mini is being suspended in the background aggressively, making it difficult to impossible for Mini to act as a backup to Arc App for avoiding data gaps. Arc App itself also appears to be more prone to being suspended, even when it’s the active recorder. Something ain’t right.
Unfortunately, if an app is suspended (rather than terminated) nothing is logged, so there’s no data trail for me to use to debug the problem. I’ve been trying a range of increasingly aggressive workarounds, but so far to no success.
If I can’t find a solution soon I’ll escalate it to Apple. And hopefully Apple are aware of the problem and are working on a fix in iOS 16.4.1. In the meantime, I strongly recommend not updating to iOS 16.4!
Oh, just to confirm that it’s really not just me and one other person, please reply if you’re also having problems with Arc App and/or Arc Mini on iOS 16.4. The more details we can collate the easier it might be to debug the problem. Thanks!
I’m seeing it also with Arc App itself, though not anywhere near as bad as with Arc Mini.
With Mini the suspensions are almost immediate and almost always, after the app goes into the background. With Arc App I’m seeing near immediate suspensions if Mini is the active recorder, but if Arc App is the active recorder it’s still getting suspended throughout the day, somewhat randomly.
I’ve filed a bug report with Apple, and if no response by tomorrow I’ll escalate it to a “Technical Support Incident”.
Ok phew, there’s a workaround. I’m still hopeful Apple will revert the change they’ve made, but in the meantime there’ll be new Arc App and Arc Mini updates, hopefully arriving tomorrow or the day after, which get things running reliability again on iOS 16.4.
Yeah I’m not sure what Apple’s goal was with this change.
The way they’ve done it, it’ll be forcing suspension of apps that are using a common method to stay alive in the background with almost zero energy cost. Now those apps will either be suspended, thus degrading their performance (eg data gaps), or be forced to use more energy in the background.
Presumably it’s been done to cut off a loophole some apps were using to stay alive in the background even when they didn’t have a valid use case for doing so. But those apps will just get updated to use the same workaround I’ve used with Arc App / Arc Mini, which will result in likely slightly higher energy use. I’m not sure it’s going to be a win for energy efficiency overall. We’ll see I guess!
Anyway, the updates are live on the App Store now. Yay
