Since Apple announced iOS 10 and macOS 10.12 at its WWDC, everyone who owns a compatible iOS and mac device is scrambling to get their hands on and install the first beta release of each OS. However, currently they are only available to developers, and they are often in need of a little bit of work in order to get them installed correctly. This is no more evident than with iOS for iPads and iPhones, and as it turns out iOS 10 is no different in this respect.
Error 14 and iOS 10 Beta
Yesterday, I wrote about how you could go about installing iOS 10 onto a compatible device without needing to be a member of the Apple developer program. And whilst many people have manged to do so without any trouble, it seems as though there are a few people who have not been so lucky.
Often when installing iOS 10 or any other beta version of the iOS software, it is usually best to do so via an over-the-air update, as this is the easiest method to do so. All it requires is access to a profile, which lets Apple’s servers know that your iPhone or iPad is ready for a beta software installation. However, sometimes a user may prefer to use a different method, and if that’s you then you probably would us a mac and unfortunately this is where you could run into some problems.
Error 14
One such problem stems from users who have attempted to install iOS 10 beta 1 on their iOS devices with the iTunes restore method. Users have reported that they have been seeing an error 14 message.
As you can see in the image above, at this point iTunes will not allow the installation to continue. Which leaves the user with an iOS device that will not boot, basically it leaves the device stuck in a kind of limbo between iOS 9 and iOS 10.
How to Fix Error 14
If I just described a situation that you or someone you know is in, don’t worry there is a fix and it is simple to do. And if you’re one of those people who read all of the fine detail that Apple publishes, then there’s a good chance that you will already know where these Error 14 users have been going wrong!
It turns out that anyone wanting to install iOS 10 using an IPSW file for restore or to upgrade an iOS device needs to have the very latest beta release of the Xcode software, at the moment the newest version is Xcode 8.
Fortunately, the Xcode software is already available via the Apple developer portal, but it is huge at almost 6GB in size, so you will have to be patient as installing it will probably take some time. If you have not attempted to upgrade to ios 10 yet, I recommend that you install Xcode before you do anything else!
However, if you’ve not seen the Error 14 message, but have had some issues with bugs in iOS 10, you can always revert back to iOS 9.3.2. You can find out how to do that here.
