Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#301

Post by WatchDog » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:48 PM UTC

tbeseda wrote: post #27

Anecdotally, Apple Music has deteriorated exponentially for me. iTunes was such a stable, usable piece of software, but I can't get reliable use out of Apple Music for the life of me. It _feels_ like a shoddy Electron app. But that's not fair to the actual Electron (or similar) apps that actually work. For all its many design and product flaws, Spotify actually works.

My last experience with iTunes was a long long time ago, in the iPod days, when you needed to use it to sync music, but it was a horrible piece of software back then.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#302

Post by mrobot » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:48 PM UTC

My canary was the iOS 18 update on my iPhone SE 2nd generation.

In all my years of using iOS, i never had long pauses, but switching between safari and other apps i sometimes had pauses around 10 seconds. Maybe it is the SwiftUI change; i'm not sure.

I did upgrade to the SE v3 and haven't really seen many pauses. But i am not a power user by any means and was seeing the problem often, along with some other glitches.

Just to be clear: it wasn't like the applications were lagging, it was as if the entire OS was crawling.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#303

Post by dmd » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:48 PM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #289

dmd wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try as I might for the last 30 minutes, having read all the other comments in this thread so far, I can't reproduce this on 15.3.1.

Did you try it with numerous pointing devices, or one in particular? It took only one try on a trackpad, M3 MBP

I only tried a trackpad.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#304

Post by layer8 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:49 PM UTC

progmetaldev wrote: post #245

madeofpalk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire settings app rewrite is the canary of how Apple's software development process is broken, especially for the mac.

To be fair, Windows really had the same type of issues going from the old Control Panel to Settings. I still get large delays for some of the screens in Windows Settings.

I wouldn't qualify it as fair, both are pretty horrible.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#305

Post by kencausey » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:49 PM UTC

youssefarizk wrote: post #297

Nothing infuriates me more than the fact that when you get a missed call, tapping on the call notification doesn't call them back, instead it takes you to their contact!!! What's worse is that this is a regression, so they actively made life a little more difficult for everyone in the new release.

Perhaps this should be an option but I far prefer that tapping on a notification not do something that potentially notifies the sender that I saw the notification, certainly not calling them. I want to initiate that action knowingly and intentionally.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#306

Post by ZeroTalent » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:50 PM UTC

youssefarizk wrote: post #297

Nothing infuriates me more than the fact that when you get a missed call, tapping on the call notification doesn't call them back, instead it takes you to their contact!!! What's worse is that this is a regression, so they actively made life a little more difficult for everyone in the new release.

Personally, I prefer that. I don't want to talk to people, usually. I want to go to the contact, see what communication forms we have in common, and send them a message.

I bet that they A/B tested this on users and this is not just a random change.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#307

Post by brailsafe » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:52 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #236

capl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with the "creating products that prioritize user experience over features" - or more accurately what Jobs said: create products that start with the user experience and the user’s needs first and then work your way to the tech (as far as I remember) The opposite approach is starting with some tech and then trying to find a use for it, e.g. folding phones, second 1/2 screen on laptop, etc, instead of tryi…

Folding phones are great though. I love mine, absolutely worth the purchase price. It's like a portable mini tablet and great for reading.

Worth the purchase price seems wild to me, but I guess things are all relative, have never owned an iPhone either, partly due to price and partly due to inferiority of software. That said, despite flagship folding phones seeming insanely expensive for what they are, they do seem like good and potentially better physical products than the standard static rectangle.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#308

Post by dsego » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:54 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #239

lostlogin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as shitty as Microsoft's. If I ever feel down on the Mac, I can go to a PC and try make a pdf or view one. Clunky AF. Mac software might be at a low-point, but it hasn’t burnt down yet.

I don't really get this criticism. If I want to make a PDF, I open up Word and save as PDF. To open it, I double click the file. You can save anything you can print as a PDF since what, Windows 7? And the OS comes with a PDF reader since what, Windows 8?

And Word comes bundled by default on windows?

> And the OS comes with a PDF reader since what, Windows 8?

Which one, the Edge browser? Don't you have to install Sumatra PDF or Acrobat?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#309

Post by hnthrowaway0315 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:54 PM UTC

kyralis wrote: post #290

tbeseda wrote: post #27

Anecdotally, Apple Music has deteriorated exponentially for me. iTunes was such a stable, usable piece of software, but I can't get reliable use out of Apple Music for the life of me. It _feels_ like a shoddy Electron app. But that's not fair to the actual Electron (or similar) apps that actually work. For all its many design and product flaws, Spotify actually works.

It basically is an Electron app; most of the UI is server-driven. It's just not HTML and js. News, Books, and TV are all similar.

Just curious, why did they decide to use Electron instead of native? After all those are Apple MacOS software.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#310

Post by brailsafe » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:55 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #303

brailsafe wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try it with numerous pointing devices, or one in particular? It took only one try on a trackpad, M3 MBP

I only tried a trackpad.

Having now retried it, I wasn't able to reproduce it until re-launching the wallpaper selection screen, then it was chaotic again. Bizarre.