Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,795,750) for “auto bug capture” that involves a “novel architecture for debugging devices. “
This architecture includes numerous devices such as Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches that automatically detect and report bug events to a set of servers that aggregate and process the bug events without user intervention. When a device detects a potential bug event, the device in some embodiments generates a description of the potential bug event, and sends the generated description to the server set through a network. In addition to generating such a description, the device directs one or more of its modules to gather and store a collection of one or more data sets that are relevant to the potential bug event, in case the event has to be further analyzed by the server set. The data is archived, and these data archives can be further analyzed to identify the root causes of the bug events.
In the patent filing, Apple notes that, with the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, the typical household today has numerous electronic devices performing numerous tasks. This proliferation had also led to a proliferation of the number of applications that execute on these devices and the numbers of application vendors. Apple says that bugs are a common occurrence on many of these devices, often because some of the applications aren’t developed properly. Also, when devices interact in an ecosystem, such interactions can cause additional unexpected bug events as it is often hard to account for all possible device interactions in all possible environments.
Apple wants its devices to be able to “capture” bugs for evaluation. This evaluation can help in eliminating them.
