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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

#151

Post by dahauns »

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.

From an enterprise POV, I experience the opposite. We haven't rolled out W10 in production yet, but just looking at the test/key user machines who have it, Windows updates have become markedly worse. A real lottery regarding reliability and stability, no comparison to the past.

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

#152

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

cageface wrote: post #131
epistasis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It funny, while rare bugs are part of the problem, fundamental design is a problem that confronts me much more. The epidemic spread of animations that reduce functionality and responsiveness are pretty unforgivable. This is something that affects all users that try to interact with their phones, and I'm getting pretty sick of modal switches between "accepts touch input" and "doesn't accept input" when there are no vi…

Animations are one of the reasons I use Android. iOS is just littered with gratuitous animations that needlessly slow down the interface. My two least favorite are the home screen zoom-in effect you get every time you unlock the device and the animated text on typing autocomplete suggestions. And you can't disable either of these without disabling system animations entirety. This stuff is symptomatic of Apple's love…

Android has a lot of gratuitous animations as well. To give an example, the Clock app on my Pixel animates the tab icons, which I find dumb and annoying.

At least macOS gives you the option to disable gratuitous animations with their accessibility settings. I'm hoping eventually Android will wise up and follows their lead.

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

#153

Post by izacus »

aetherspawn wrote: post #129
mrkstu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on all of those. Additionally make re-connecting an iPad to an iPhone sharing a connection automatic (optionally) if no known wifi networks are available.

For those of us with personal data limits, that could be annoying. I did that once, forgot to disconnect and it used like 2gb (of monthly 8gb) performing sync “over WiFi”. And Apple cares about this problem you can tell because the WiFi off button now only lasts 24hr before automatically turning back on (to avoid data waste).

Doesn't iPad recognise tethered connections as mobile connections (like Android tablets do)?

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

#154

Post by rwmj »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #81
objclxt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a slightly different perspective (I worked on iOS 7 - 11). One of the things about Apple that's different to many of the other tech conglomerates is that engineering teams are given huge freedom to work the way they want (for better and for worse). Because engineering is so fragmented you should always take what one person says about the process with a pinch of salt. So that means there are hundreds of source…

plain emailed diffs? this isn't LKML

What's not to like? Lightweight, multiple interoperable tools (MUAs and editors), no barrier to entry, easy to review and comment. Compared to shitshows like Gerrit and the awful clunky workflow of Github, I'll take an emailed patch every time.

Does it scale to huge patchsets? ... well not so much. However Gerrit is not the answer to that (in fact, no tool I've found provides a good answer).

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

#155

Post by dingaling »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #152
cageface wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animations are one of the reasons I use Android. iOS is just littered with gratuitous animations that needlessly slow down the interface. My two least favorite are the home screen zoom-in effect you get every time you unlock the device and the animated text on typing autocomplete suggestions. And you can't disable either of these without disabling system animations entirety. This stuff is symptomatic of Apple's love…

Android has a lot of gratuitous animations as well. To give an example, the Clock app on my Pixel animates the tab icons, which I find dumb and annoying. At least macOS gives you the option to disable gratuitous animations with their accessibility settings. I'm hoping eventually Android will wise up and follows their lead.

> I'm hoping eventually Android will wise up and follows their lead.

Settings -> Developer Options -> Drawing

There are various settings there for animation styles and speeds, including 0 speed ( none ).

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

#156

Post by cageface »

lloeki wrote: post #144
cageface wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animations are one of the reasons I use Android. iOS is just littered with gratuitous animations that needlessly slow down the interface. My two least favorite are the home screen zoom-in effect you get every time you unlock the device and the animated text on typing autocomplete suggestions. And you can't disable either of these without disabling system animations entirety. This stuff is symptomatic of Apple's love…

> form over function Properly designed animations are function: they give a sense of place and help in creating a navigation hierarchy instead of having things pop into and out of existence. > iOS is just littered with gratuitous animations that needlessly slow down the interface Their gratuitousness is evaluated by you by the "slowdown" they bring. The only slowdown they bring me is when they're not interruptible/co…

Unless I'm literally trying to race the beam, by the time I move my finger from the home button to a position over the screen the animation has completed.

My brain can't identify the icon I want to tap while the animation is in progress. I have to wait for it to finish then parse the screen for my target.

You just type which triggers the animation yet merrily continue as the animation proceeds while you are already inputting the next words.

Again I can't identify the word I want to tap while it's moving around. I have to wait for the animation to complete, then figure out if I want to tap any of the suggestions or keep typing.

I agree animation can be functional, but both of these animations are purely there for aesthetic reasons, get old very quickly, and actively slow down my use of the device. If I have to use an iPhone for any extended period of time I turn off animations at the system level and use GBoard for typing.

As for 3D touch. I always forget it even exists because it has zero affordance. It increases the manufacturing cost of the device for very little user benefit for the typical user. I think it also forced Apple's hand on FaceID and drove the cost of their flagship device out of the range of a lot of people that would otherwise buy one.

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

#157

Post by bsaul »

scarface74 wrote: post #146
bsaul wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the link between skeuomorphic and pixel perfect ? Real world objects come in different sizes, so i don’t see what the problem would be in having screens that look like objects having different sizes.

When you had a picture as the background of your screen in 2010, you needed different images for different screen resolutions - 1 and 2x for the 3.5 inch iPhone and 1x for the 9.7" inch iPad. Then the iPhone 5 came out with a different ratio - you couldn't just stretch the image and make it look decently. Then two years later you had the 6 and 6+ phones with different ratios. Then different ratios for split screen iP…

Skeuomorphic doesn’t mean using background images, it’s just a matter of trying to have GUI elements look and behave like physical objects would. You can do that using textures.

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

#158

Post by claudex »

chopin wrote: post #148
bri3d wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have existed teams at every company I have ever worked for who argue that this is the Very Best Way (tm) to develop code. It allows for the True Gatekeepers to keep their hold over the perceived software quality and quickly routs any sort of outside interest from modifying the project in any way the True Gatekeepers don't desire. In entirely broken organizations this is an effective way to allow 2-3 good develo…

But how is emailing different from something like eg. Gerrit or pull requests. Ultimately, it's always the maintainers who get to decide what gets into the repo. What you describe is a problem occurring independent of the way changes are merged. I agree that it can be a real problem.

You can allow multiple person to accept a pull request. So you don't have "a" maintainer but some.

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

#159

Post by pdpi »

abalone wrote: post #67
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...

Breaking: Engineer Thinks PM is a Bozo. Film at 11. It's not really context. The real problem here is the premise that "Apple has software quality issues" is taken as a given, without support. Sinofsky makes the point that Apple is operating a such a huge, unfathomable scale and depth -- and this is coming from one of Microsoft's top guys in its heyday -- that even rare bugs that affect 0.01% of users translate into…

It's not "Engineer thinks PM is a bozo", it's a post explaining a very concrete, objectively negative behaviour from the PM team. I've worked at companies where that sort of behaviour was rampant, I've worked at places where it wasn't, and the difference in the end product is palpable.

Second, even if it's just anecdotal, I have personally been experiencing issues with my tMBP at work that I haven't had with any previous laptops going back to a G4 iBook. Stuff like random crashes, parts of the screen failing to render properly, etc. IT says that they're experiencing more of that sort of complaint with the current gen than they have with others in the past. The "sensationalist anecdote-driven news cycle" is blowing things out of proportion, to be sure, but there does seem to be some measurable degradation in their Apple's standards as of lately.

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

#160

Post by gurkendoktor »

masklinn wrote: post #150
cageface wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your experience there what would you say is the cause of the recent slip in software quality in both iOS and macOS? As an outsider it looks to me like they're just pushing too hard to keep up with a yearly release schedule but that's based on no inside knowledge at all.

> Based on your experience there what would you say is the cause of the recent slip in software quality in both iOS and macOS? It's not clear because there have been absolute shit-show releases going back to the early days of OSX. Even the fondest-remembered releases were only so after a ton of polish, and that was with releases slipping significantly (you might see 3 years pass between major updates, and the new ver…

What has definitely changed is the pace with which people are expected to upgrade. When OS X Snow Leopard came out, you had to visit a store to buy the DVD. Nobody would look down on you for running a "legacy OS" if you only upgraded when .3 was out.

The ways in which this has changed affect both tech-savvy and casual users:

1. Older versions of iOS (which didn't exist back then) don't receive security fixes, so the only way to stay safe is to upgrade within days of the initial release (ideally before Apple publishes its security KB article).

2. Older versions of macOS often lag behind when it comes to security fixes. There is no clear policy on whether it is safe to stay on release n-1. Apple needs to be nudged to even document macOS security issues[1]. If you are moderately paranoid about security, you have to install all updates on day one (as on iOS).

3. iOS and macOS automatically download OS upgrades and nag you to install them.

4. There is a narrative on community sites that Apple's products are only good because Apple relentlessly kills legacy code and features (I don't even agree with the latter part). Dropping support for anything older than a year is considered a badge of honor because it means there will be "progress". The more paying customers you inconvenience, the edgier you are.

5. Apple feeds into this "old software is bad" meme by publicly LOLing at Android's adoption curve every year.

6. Emoji. I wish I was kidding, but only seeing squares when other people go out of their way to express their emotions is actually annoying.

7. If you are already on an OS that is buggy, you are more likely take the plunge and update to a brand-new OS in the hope that this time, things will be better.

[1] https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/953416156802703360

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