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Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

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Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#141

Post by Mindwipe »

Svoka wrote: post #45
dplgk wrote: post #32

After doing some iOS/Mac development, I'd say some bugginiess is caused by changing APIs and behaviors inflicted by Apple, expected to be absorbed/dealt with by developers. They mercilessly do this with every release and no doubt that affects their internal projects. Also, xcode has gone the way of iTunes and ObjC was always a huge pain. It's a really hostile environment to develop in, where you're having to play cat…

Wow. My experience is opposite. Been in iOS development for over 10 years already, little less for Android. App made for iOS still works with very minor adjustments, while on Android it’s a mess. We was forced to change build system several times, breaking changes and just silly API renames, service depreciations, generations of push services, forcing firebase and AndroidX, change of permission model, of concurrency…

> Honestly, I can’t even name single such change for iOS. At worse it is adding interface implementation.

Airplay. Airplay has had several significant behavioural changes over the past five years, some of which still aren't even documented.

Airplay 2 wasn't so much a functionality release so much as throwing out a lot of technical debt.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#142

Post by song »

Macos used to not have a yearly schedule. New versions took the time they needed. I think it's actually a better model, it allows engineers the time to test and make sure things work. Having arbitrary deadlines just increases the amount of crunch time which usually increases the amount of bugs.

Other than that, I wish that Apple did another Snow Leopard and focused for one year purely on fixing bugs in macos x instead of introducing new features.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#143

Post by gherkinnn »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #16

I am also finding text selection in iOS 13 hit/miss. I either cannot activate the text selection or I cannot select without the cursor jumping all over the place. Also, I miss the magnifying glass for text selection. Did Apple remove that?

It either mistakingly selects everything or refuses to select a word and suggests a different word.

It seems to work better in Safari than Whatsapp.

Bloody annoying.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#144

Post by greggman2 »

mrweasel wrote: post #122
greggman2 wrote: post #65

tvOS 13 seems to also be buggy. After the update I can no longer wake it via HDMI/CEC. Once I wake it some other (inconvenient) way then HDMI/CEC control works. Wake up was working on tvOS 12

I had to disable HDMI/CEC a while back because the AppleTV kept switch the TV back to it's own HDMI, stealing "focus" from the PlayStation.

strange, I haven't had that issue. I have 4 devices connected to the TV; A Mac Mini (running Ubuntu), An Apple TV, a PS4, and a Switch. If I turn any one device on it will wake up the TV if off and eventually switch to that device's input. But I haven't had any device switch the input to the TV out of order that I remember. I wonder what the issue is. My Apple TV is only used for 2 things, Kodi and Amazon Prime. I wonder if it's a particular app? I'm using the Apple TV 4k (not sure if that's the newest model or if there is another since)

Frustrating that this stuff is so finicky. It seems as simple as a USB keyboard which seem to generally work everywhere so why is it so hard to make work and keep it working.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#145

Post by wokwokwok »

riffraff wrote: post #47

This article explains why something is buggy. Maybe why Apple's software is buggy. It does not explain why the latest stuff is so buggy. Is Catalina that much more complex than, say, Mavericks? Are managers playing deadline chicken more? I don't see evidence for this.

I agree, the question is more: if that’s the culture historically, and accurately how did it ever work?

This release something is different, which either vastly exacerbates the issues listed, or causes other problems.

...I am interested in what the root cause of it is, but this is just a list of symptoms, and perhaps the output of the issues listed by the OP without whatever the magical Q/A process that historically somehow got things across the line in the end.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#146

Post by xhruso00 »

bluejekyll wrote: post #105
babesh wrote: post #102

I have been told by multiple sources that Apple engineering salaries are not competitive with industry leaders and haven't been for a long time. I wonder if the dissolution of the Jobs anti compete agreements exacerbated the issue. However Apple seems to be willing to pay for highly sought after skills. I have also been told that they don't have company level hiring standards so you should expect uneven abilities acr…

I was just speaking with an acquaintance at Apple this weekend that works in a group in this area at Apple, and they pretty much said exactly what you just said. Also, it doesn’t help that they can’t directly benefit from the general progress the industry is making in virtualization and container areas without rewriting for their own platform.

This is in contrast to this ex-Apple engineer. He recently quit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCGg_12gn-s I also read on twitter that it's the Interns who deal with "fun" bugs -> not professionals! https://twitter.com/meteochu/status/1186701883429273604

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#147

Post by arvinsim »

bluejekyll wrote: post #105
babesh wrote: post #102

I have been told by multiple sources that Apple engineering salaries are not competitive with industry leaders and haven't been for a long time. I wonder if the dissolution of the Jobs anti compete agreements exacerbated the issue. However Apple seems to be willing to pay for highly sought after skills. I have also been told that they don't have company level hiring standards so you should expect uneven abilities acr…

I was just speaking with an acquaintance at Apple this weekend that works in a group in this area at Apple, and they pretty much said exactly what you just said. Also, it doesn’t help that they can’t directly benefit from the general progress the industry is making in virtualization and container areas without rewriting for their own platform.

> Also, it doesn’t help that they can’t directly benefit from the general progress the industry is making in virtualization and container areas without rewriting for their own platform.

Can you expand on this? Are there limitations on MacOS that prevents them from doing so?

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#148

Post by w0utert »

Svoka wrote: post #89
Silhouette wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, just because the developer experience on Android can be even worse, that doesn't mean the developer experience on iOS isn't bad.

Yes. Thing is this are de-facto only two platforms alive. Yes. Mobile (and desktop) developers life suck. But someone has to write all that software. And, IMO, iOS/macOS/Cocoa/Xcode is best out there. And most importantly - most stable. Nice boutique experience, nice API, good documentation, everything is integrated and working. Other platforms are even worse. Way worse. I am also doing Switch, KaiOS, Xbox, PS3/4, di…

Pretty much this ^

All these rants about XCode/iOS/UIKit/ObjC somehow being a terrible environment to develop for are presuming there is something significantly better out there. There isn't, it seems. You will find developers bitching about literally any development platform out there (except maybe Haskell when you are on HN ;-)

My personal experience is limited to C++/ObjC/Java/Python on Linux/macOS/iOS, and I can only agree that ObjC on Apple platforms is by far the easiest and most productive environment for me. I've only dabbled in Swift a tiny bit so far, but my feeling is that it's also a lot less hostile than C++. In terms of toolkits, Cocoa/UIKit is at least as good as Qt, and much better then e.g. GTK or the abominations you have to deal with if you develop Java applications. Don't know about Windows platforms but considering the endless list of technologies and frameworks that are supposed to supersede whatever came before it, it's likely not much better over there.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#149

Post by greggman2 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #129
saagarjha wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't actually have a lot of engineers on most projects.

The resources are there to hire engineers. If they're not being used to hire engineers that's a management choice, not a resource constraint.

I wonder if that is true in reality. I know at one company I interviewed maybe 80 people. Of those I think 3 or 4 were hired. The point being it was hard to find qualified people. You could argue they should offer more money and they'd get more applicants. Say they offered 4x what they are offering now. They'd likely just end up with a bidding war with the other rich tech companies and so in the end nothing would happen (if all the companies raise their salaries then it seems arguable that there'd be little affect on applicants). Other solutions might be longer term like investing in education or hiring less experienced people and training. Others might be opening more remote offices hoping to find more talent in other locations.

All I'm really saying is as rich as Apple is I don't think hiring more engineers is as easy as just deciding to hire more.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#150

Post by leeman2016 »

Svoka wrote: post #89
Silhouette wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, just because the developer experience on Android can be even worse, that doesn't mean the developer experience on iOS isn't bad.

Yes. Thing is this are de-facto only two platforms alive. Yes. Mobile (and desktop) developers life suck. But someone has to write all that software. And, IMO, iOS/macOS/Cocoa/Xcode is best out there. And most importantly - most stable. Nice boutique experience, nice API, good documentation, everything is integrated and working. Other platforms are even worse. Way worse. I am also doing Switch, KaiOS, Xbox, PS3/4, di…

Development on Windows desktop maybe dull, but pretty straight forward/stable/well documented in my opinion
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