Apple’s declining software quality • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#111

Post by pavlov » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

zwischenzug wrote: post #86

jonknee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of awful software shipped under Steve Jobs. X Code has always been a buggy mess, iTunes bloated greatly under Steve (remember Ping?), iMovie '08, etc etc.

iTunes was hideous. I once tried to reverse engineer the XML that stored the library and concluded it must have been designed by a distracted intern.

Why reverse-engineer? The format (known as "Apple XML property list") has always been openly documented:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/...

There are also many libraries available to decode and encode these files in various languages.

The reason why XML property lists look this way is that they were a direct translation of the older NeXT "property list" format, which was sort of like binary JSON. Dumping an alternating list of keys and values isn't pretty XML, but it ensured minimum translation headaches from the old format.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#112

Post by blinkingled » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

mattcantstop wrote: post #9

I love that an article entitled "declining software quality" is not pulling up because of "Error establishing a database connection" :)

Go to his genius bar, ask for a refund ;)

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#113

Post by MonadQueen » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

We "switched back" to Windows 10 here. We always had to use some Windows machines, because to do cinema color grading we needed 10-bit/channel color and wide gamut monitors which Apple never supported. But Windows 10 is now so nice, and the hardware vendors have upped their quality that we even run Windows on our laptops, which we used to not do.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#114

Post by pbreit » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

Irony? "Error establishing a database connection"

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#115

Post by bluedino » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #4

Um, Quicktime? iTunes? Apple's software was always terrible (as a Windows user).

You forgot Xcode. Xcode has always been mess.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#116

Post by SyneRyder » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #88

nilkn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less about Snow Leopard having been supposedly perfect and more about how OS X feels like it's just floundered around randomly since then. In fact, for me, I can honestly say that OS X has almost strictly regressed in terms of my day-to-day experience. Spotlight now covers up way too much of the screen for almost no gain; if I'd wanted that, I'd have just used Alfred. Mission Control is still not as powerful and…

It's less about Snow Leopard having been supposedly perfect and more about how OS X feels like it's just floundered around randomly since then. Agreed. It's not that Snow Leopard was some magic release that can never be bettered, it's that it has never been bettered. I can't think of any new features since then that I really value in OS X. there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again I switched from Wi…

Reviewers seem to think the Surface Book trackpad isn't quite as good as the MacBook Pro, but it's close. (No idea if they're comparing against the new Force Touch trackpads, which I personally think are a regression):

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-surface-book-solving-...

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#117

Post by nextos » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #99

The decline seems real to me. A shortlist of things I've noticed: * Spotlight no longer finds things as easily. I used to use it for everything. Since updating to El Capitan, it has missed some exact match folders. Planning to switch to Alfred. * iWork was gutted in '13. People used to use Pages professionally. I'm now using Pages '09, and planning to transition to Word or Latex. I tested Pages '13 intensively, and i…

I noticed the trend with Snow Leopard. Also the tendency towards iOS-ification of Mac OS, so I decided to switch back to Linux. I think Apple's best hour came with Tiger and Leopard. Simple applications that did one thing well and were robust. Now there's a lot of feature bloat.

A nice Linux set up with minimal software (e.g. xmonad, mutt, emacs or vim) is a joy to use, but takes time to set up and learn to use. So it's not for everyone.

Interestingly, I've experienced the same issue Apple is suffering with Ubuntu. Edgy Eft (6.10) was incredibly simple and nice. Like OS X Tiger. Now there are dozens of services running and something always gives trouble. I guess the old adage applies, make things as simple as possible but no simpler...

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#118

Post by pbreit » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #59

dplgk wrote: post #10

There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his ability to achieve things. Perhaps, the years of oversimplifying applications has created an Apple that can't handle complex applications? Or, there's a chicken and egg question: XCode and the surrounding tools are atrociously buggy and hostile to the developer…

A lot of awful software shipped under Steve Jobs. X Code has always been a buggy mess, iTunes bloated greatly under Steve (remember Ping?), iMovie '08, etc etc.

Jobs didn't care about Xcode. iTunes was decent or even good. He hated social and reluctantly allowed Ping to go forward. iMovie is a tiny niche.

I agree with OP. There is no way Steve would have allowed some of the current stuff to see the light of day.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#119

Post by jsingleton » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

dplgk wrote: post #10

There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his ability to achieve things. Perhaps, the years of oversimplifying applications has created an Apple that can't handle complex applications? Or, there's a chicken and egg question: XCode and the surrounding tools are atrociously buggy and hostile to the developer…

I agree with a lot of the sentiment in this discussion and from the article. It feels like Apple software is getting worse from my perspective but I wonder if a change in the target market has a part to play. Perhaps the HN crowd is not a significant Apple demographic any more?

When I got my first Mac back in the PowerPC days it was definitely a step up. In the past I feel that Apple was targeting power users. Today I think they are going after casual users. Probably capitalizing on the general popularity of iOS.

I've still got a couple of old Macs but they're all running Windows now. Visual Studio still has the occasional lock-up whatever hardware it's on. At least you don't have to sign in to an app store to update it though.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#120

Post by JonCox » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #30

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #22

Is Apple's software quality truly declining? I've been an OS X user for a couple years now, and I'm perfectly happy with my laptop and its updates. Whenever I read articles like these, I wondered if the software quality has actually declined, or if it's received too many features to be properly maintained, or if now it has so many more users that the flaws have become more apparent.

> or if it's received too many features to be properly maintained That means that it's not properly maintained, which means declined. > or if now it has so many more users that the flaws have become more apparent More eyes do find rarer bugs, and hundreds of millions of eyes is a LOT. But I can tell you from personal experience that all sorts of little simple things that used to work don't and it gets very obnoxious.…

+1

Anecdotally I've noticed a significant degradation of quality over the last year or so, everything from updating a new iOS device from on iCloud backup, general iOS bugs, OS X wifi connectivity issues etc etc. It's been noticeable.