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How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

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Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#71

Post by [deleted] »

objclxt wrote: post #62
chuckdries wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think some level of standardization of process would help apple as a whole? Would it help eliminate the relatively poor experience of reddit-OP?

I think it's both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it makes it very easy for teams to find an approach that works for them, and does away with a lot of bureaucracy. On the other, it promotes a lot of inefficiencies (I knew of at least 8 separate instances of Phabricator being used by different teams), and makes it very difficult to centralize core tooling and operations. It also makes it very hard for engineer…

[deleted]

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#72

Post by toyg »

dingo_bat wrote: post #48
vxNsr wrote: post #5

>The company will continue to update its software annually, but internally engineers will have more discretion to push back features that aren't as polished to the following year. Let's hope Microsoft follows suit. I would much rather have a product that works the same way every time over one that can do 1000 things half the time. Hopefully this will also give them time to reconsider some of the more ill-conceived UX…

I don't think Microsoft has a code quality problem at all. On the contrary I'm hard pressed to point at any recent Microsoft software and say it's bug ridden or low quality or badly designed. From iOS to Android to Windows, Microsoft software is excellent.

> badly designed

Teams. Whoever thought a Slack clone needed threads, should never work in a UX team ever again.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#73

Post by toyg »

heavymark wrote: post #13

This rumor has been around past few months, hoping it's true. Though while us technies in the minority would rather bug fixes than new features that don't apply for us, the general public would be very upset if iOS12 changes are all under the hood, as they would say Apple has fallen behind and people will insert common statements every years like they are finally considering switching etc. So while I hope the do fix…

> they would say Apple has fallen behind

"They" already said that when iOS abandoned skeuomorphism, and "they" were damn right. A friend of mine who is not even a tech guy put it very bluntly: "Apple used to change things to make better phones, now they change things to keep up with what others are doing".

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#74

Post by csomar »

toyg wrote: post #70
csomar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you got the last update? Because Apple music has been a PITA for me too (especially that I use it with my car bluetooth) and I had the same issues you mentioned here. However, all the issues were fixed in the last update and so far it is pretty solid. No complaints. (iOS v11.2.5)

> all the issues were fixed in the last update Eh, no. I have playlists I made years ago. I click on them, crash. Probably some of the items are not available in Music, as they were from my personal iTunes library, but do I care? Nope. It just ensures I will never pay for this sub-standard service.

To be honest, I'm not sure why you think your experience is the truth out there. I have found that when it comes to Apple hardware/software, the experience can differ greatly from a person to another by cheer luck.

For example, I had no wifi issues with my MBP Late 2014. However, I remember lots of people raged about my particular edition's Wifi. It just happened that my particular laptop was fine while a significant batch was affected.

I had a horrible iPhone experience before the last update. The crashes were daily, the bluetooth dropped a lot, car integration was working 1/3 of the time and the interface was sluggish.

As of the last update, many (maybe most) of the issues were fixed. There is still a bit of sluggishness of Chrome and the very occasional crashes. But nothing for me to rage about.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#75

Post by scarface74 »

toyg wrote: post #73
heavymark wrote: post #13

This rumor has been around past few months, hoping it's true. Though while us technies in the minority would rather bug fixes than new features that don't apply for us, the general public would be very upset if iOS12 changes are all under the hood, as they would say Apple has fallen behind and people will insert common statements every years like they are finally considering switching etc. So while I hope the do fix…

> they would say Apple has fallen behind "They" already said that when iOS abandoned skeuomorphism, and "they" were damn right. A friend of mine who is not even a tech guy put it very bluntly: "Apple used to change things to make better phones, now they change things to keep up with what others are doing".

They abandoned skeumorphism because pixel perfect design doesn't work when you have multiple size screens. At the time they had two - a 3.5 inch screen and a 9.7 inch screen. Now they have four different iPhone screen sizes and three different iPad screen sizes.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#76

Post by scarface74 »

staunch wrote: post #10

What originally made the iPhone unique and powerful was that it included a full blown web browser, in the form of the Safari app. Steve Jobs announced the iPhone as a "Phone," "iPod," and "Internet Communicator." The name "Internet Communicator" indicates how different it is from the other two apps. The Phone and iPod functionality are really a subset of the Internet Communicator. And because the future is open web t…

The future of mobile being Web has been promised by Apple, Palm, RIM, and Microsoft. Everytime the "future" has been worse than native apps.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#77

Post by draw_down »

askafriend wrote: post #7

This comment from a former employee on the iOS team provides some more context around the software quality issues. I think this is the more interesting point around which we should have this discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7x0eif/how_apple_pla...

No idea if that’s Apple’s issue, but I find it easy to believe. Many PMs have made life shitty in the course of my career.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#78

Post by exBarrelSpoiler »

throwaway7187 wrote: post #63
askafriend wrote: post #7

This comment from a former employee on the iOS team provides some more context around the software quality issues. I think this is the more interesting point around which we should have this discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7x0eif/how_apple_pla...

Perfect time for the ol' throwaway... I'm a former iOS EPM (not speaking for Apple, obviously, since I don't work there anymore), and although the Reddit commenter got the atmosphere of constant crisis right, he/she is misplacing the blame and misunderstanding the power dynamic. EPMs at Apple essentially have zero power over engineers' workload. They take the list of stuff the engineering managers said they want to g…

The comment was half-right in describing the situation radar-obsessed culture (Radar-Driven Development?)

It places the blame on EPMs because EPMs are just the bearer of bad news, middlemen who carry out the whims of the UI Gods and VPs. The original commenter couldn't see those above the EPMs, the ones overseeing the BRBs and other inquisitions.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#79

Post by cwyers »

askafriend wrote: post #7

This comment from a former employee on the iOS team provides some more context around the software quality issues. I think this is the more interesting point around which we should have this discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7x0eif/how_apple_pla...

> Nothing could be worked on if it wasn’t in Radar with a priority number attached and signed off by the teams’ EPM.

Is this supposed to sound bad? Because it just sounds... professional.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#80

Post by Kognito »

dkonofalski wrote: post #45
randyrand wrote: post #19

If they just added the ability to jump to a given date in text messages, I'd be happy. That's a long overdue simple feature.

That seems a lot less useful than a functional search for messages. I hate the fact that I can only search for 1 instance of my search within a conversation. There's no way to go to a previous or next instance from the instance that the search feature already found. That sucks.

This! The Mac Messages app has the same UI for search and its possible to jump between the found messages using a keyboard shortcut. Makes me wonder if the functionality exists in iOS too but someone forgot to build it into the UI.
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