Apple will fix the latest major iMessage bug soon (updated)
No word on when updates will come for the Mac and Apple Watch.
Every so often, a Mac or iOS bug works its way into the wild that'll crash your phone or computer with a single character send via iMessage. The latest iteration of such a bug arrived last night, affecting iOS, Macs and even the Apple Watch, but fortunately Apple is already working on a fix. As reported by The Verge and confirmed by Apple, a fix for iOS is on the way. It'll arrive sooner than the upcoming iOS 11.3 update. All we know so far is that the bug fix update will be available "soon," whereas iOS 11.3 wasn't expected to arrive until the spring. Unfortunately, there's no word about a corresponding fix for the Mac or Apple Watch yet.
iOS 11.3 is expected to be more extensive than most mid-year updates, with new Animoji, battery health monitoring features, Face ID for family account purchases and more. But before that, users should see this bug fix, probably in the next week or so. Going forward, iOS 12 is expected to help iron out the many issues that have cropped up in Apple's mobile software recently. It may come at the loss of some new features, but that'll probably be worth it if Apple can avoid users getting stuck with crashing phones every few months.
Update 2/15/18, 4:30PM ET: Apple has confirmed that it is working on similar updates for macOS and watchOS that'll come out ahead of their next scheduled major updates. While we still don't have a specific timeframe, it seems this whole issue should be remedied before too long.
