Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy • Hacker News Board

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#231

Post by kkarakk » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

rogy wrote: post #167

jl6 wrote: post #71

The only iOS 13 bugs I’ve been bitten by are: 1. Safari’s back button now seems to lose the position on the previous page - sometimes. 2. The share sheet has a row of Messages contacts that I didn’t ask for, don’t want, and can’t turn off - and it creates the risk of super-inappropriate sharing, because all my work contacts are eligible for being on this row, seemingly at random.

God this, my number one share contact is my ex, who i broke up with almost 5 years ago, and literally havent contacted in over 4. This person isn't even a contact in my contacts anymore, yet still top HOW.

Technology is really reinforcing the correct behavior - if you think you don't want to talk to someone, DELETE them off your phone/social media.

I used to have the same problem until i took the plunge and just banished everyone i didn't like out of my digital life. If i don't want to interact with them, i just make their contacts poof/block them

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#232

Post by 2rsf » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #186

thrower123 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because software is just not something you can just throw more money and people at and expect it to get better. In fact, that is the surest way to make a piece of software worse. Software, despite all the attempts to come up with ways to commoditize its production, does not scale.

But we are talking about reading bug reports, not writing software. Also, I would argue that finding and fixing bugs actually does scale, as opposed to designing and writing new systems.

How do you recognize 100,000 reports of the same bug but different manifestation ? What if it's an architectural issue (and many bugs are)? What if you are already working on a total re-write that's going to be released in 2 releases ? What do you do with bugs found internally ?

Also remember that many bugs requires much more then changing a couple of lines of code, they require cross module changes and re-testing which can lead to more bugs.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#233

Post by elicash » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #152

That doesn't make sense. None of this has changed from previous updates and all previous macOS updates were far more stable than this one. This isn't a particularly feature laden update either. But now all of a sudden we get catastrophic (deleted emails) and less catastrophic (missing Music playlists) data loss, crash bugs and generally weird behaviour of many apps. I have identified one particular area where bugs ar…

> all previous macOS updates

My experience is this is true of recent updates, but I don't think the data would support such a sweeping statement beyond that. I remember the dustup around this in 2015/2016 after comments by Marco Arment:

https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-grou... https://marco.org/2015/01/05/popular-for-a-day

I haven't listened to the interview that Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi did with Gruber since it aired, but my recollection is that they said that they actually measure these things and there had been FAR fewer bugs over years (from that date) and that we've simply come to expect less buggy software as a result. Or at least that's my years-old recollection, I could be wrong. And so I think what's likely is that this version is worse than recent versions, but if you compare to, say, 10 years ago it's less buggy. Kind of like what people experience when we have increases in the crime rate -- far better than it used to be, even if people don't recognize it, but (1) still an increase, and (2) we should expect progress, not things getting worse!

https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/02/12/ep-146 (I could be wrong and maybe it was a different interview)

Anyway, there was a ton of chatter here and everywhere else in the tech community around that time. Here's a quick example at the time (but I imagine there are dozens of others, if not hundreds):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11034071

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#234

Post by oflannabhra » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #152

That doesn't make sense. None of this has changed from previous updates and all previous macOS updates were far more stable than this one. This isn't a particularly feature laden update either. But now all of a sudden we get catastrophic (deleted emails) and less catastrophic (missing Music playlists) data loss, crash bugs and generally weird behaviour of many apps. I have identified one particular area where bugs ar…

The article does make sense, although I agree that it is not a complete answer to the question its title poses. For example, if iOS 13 had a higher number of features (it did) that got pulled late due to schedule chicken (they did), that would explain why iOS 13 was rockier than other releases.

All the points are applicable to other releases, but that doesn't mean they don't also explain iOS 13's issues.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#235

Post by 2rsf » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #211

2rsf wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are writing this based on gut feeling, big companies simply can't go over every bug report- it's not scalable. I used to work on a product at a big company, we took users input very seriously, not only from bug reports but also by analyzing telemetrics data and simple users "star" feedback. At the end of the day it's simply impossible to both fix everything and still go forward when the product is big and complex…

> To this day the product has terrible reputation as buggy and unfriendly. In what way is that an argument against paying attention to bug reports? Are you saying that the continuing existence of this product means it does not matter? Arguably that strategy will work, up to the point when something better comes along, and by then you will be too deep in bugs to pivot.

We did fix customers bugs, I don't know that exact investment made but it was not trivial at all- and still bugs were found and not all of them fixed.

This specific product grew to be an abomination which in part is responsible for the many complaints it gets.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#236

Post by mikegioia » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #193

jwr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we are talking about reading bug reports, not writing software. Also, I would argue that finding and fixing bugs actually does scale, as opposed to designing and writing new systems.

You need the small subset of people who actually understand how the software works to fix the bugs, lest you just end up playing whack-a-mole and introducing new bugs. Ideally, it wouldn't be like this, but we don't live in an ideal world, and there's always some unintended consquence when you start pulling the string on anything nontrivial. And there's never sufficient automated testing, especially for the things th…

Fixing the bugs is one thing, but identifying that user reported bugs are in fact bugs is an entirely separate issue. The latter takes a ton of time, requires no developers, and is what everyone above you in this thread is talking about.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#237

Post by 2rsf » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #181

huffmsa wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quickly becoming the main point of differentiation in most reviews since cars in a certain class have become more or less the same performance wise. Speaking from the perspective of just wrapping up the car buying process. All of the reviews had just as many, if not more words devoted to the infotainment experience as to the driving experience. Here I am thinking Bluetooth is peak feature so I can play my musi…

But as I've been saying for a few years now, most people don't want to drive . They'd much rather be driven so they can mess with their phones.

I want to be driven because it's safer and usually more relaxing, even though I like to drive.

And I want my Bluetooth connection to work flawlessly but it never does.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#238

Post by thijsvandien » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #210

SCdF wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I was asking if there was any kind of quality study / survey / anything better than opinions around this, because as you say the anecdotes in my anecdote arsenal seem to be quite a bit different from other folk (or at least other highly verbal folk) on the internet.

I agree with you SCdF. Win 10 has been the most reliable Windows for me since 3.11, except maybe late-stage XP when all the worst bugs had worked out. I think it’s always the case that people that have bad experiences are going to be vocal, because you don’t go around talking about “oh hey, everything worked normally today.” The deletion bug WAS pretty bad, but it also affected a VERY tiny group within the subset of…

All previous versions of Windows stabilized because they were more or less feature complete. The problem with W10 is that it’s continuously in motion. 1809 becomes stable, but before you know it you’re on 1903 and the trouble starts all over again.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#239

Post by oflannabhra » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

My personal feelings are that #2 (crash reporting) and #6 (complexity) are the biggest issues facing Apple software quality. Apple is a metrics-driven company, and when managers see bad metrics going down (like crashes), they think they are doing a great job.

But, just like with police crime reporting, there can be an effect where metrics are massaged or are reported differently. With Apple, I think the issue is that crashes are avoided by design or by nature of growing complexity, which means that metrics will continually be going down, even if user-facing issues go up. An example being that a failed sync does not crash.

Apple has attempted to get ahead of this, recently, with the new Feedback Assistant allowing beta users to grab and report sysdiagnoses, but there's still a lot of work to do. I really appreciate the point the article makes:

> Besides the fact that bugs are expensive, both in support costs and engineer time, they’re starting to become a public relations concern.

Apple would be wise to heed this, instead of continuing to blindly trust metrics.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#240

Post by LeoNatan25 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #152

That doesn't make sense. None of this has changed from previous updates and all previous macOS updates were far more stable than this one. This isn't a particularly feature laden update either. But now all of a sudden we get catastrophic (deleted emails) and less catastrophic (missing Music playlists) data loss, crash bugs and generally weird behaviour of many apps. I have identified one particular area where bugs ar…

That’s not accurate. This year had Catalyst and SwiftUI which sucked a lot of manpower from dev tools and frameworks.