Apple's Software Quality Crisis

I think there was a sweet spot in the late 2000s and early 2010s, more specifically, the Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard eras.

On the Windows side of things, this was when Microsoft got serious about security, with plagued earlier versions of Windows XP (worms were so rampant around 2005) until later service packs helped fix things. Windows 7 was solid and performant. While my favorite version of Windows is 2000, 7 was another high mark for Windows.

Much has been said about Snow Leopard, but it was the pinnacle of Mac OS X, the refinement of an already great OS, Leopard. I would gladly used Snow Leopard today if it weren’t for needing current web browsers and up-to-date security patches.

Even the Web was better back then. By 2008 many mainstays of modern Web life, such as social media and YouTube, were already in existence. Google was excellent. Internet Explorer’s dominance was successfully challenged, and there was an ecosystem of standards-compliant browsers (later IE versions, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera). Web developers were coding to standards instead of only writing for one browser. Yes, ads existed, and there was also malware, but ads were less intrusive, and malware can be avoidable with more careful browsing.

I miss 2009- and 2010-era computing, when Windows and Mac OS X were at their peaks, when the browser ecosystem was diverse, and when many commercial websites like Facebook were still pleasant to use.

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Ha. I have to use Linux (Arch) sometimes, and it's made me appreciate OpenBSD :)

For me the biggest gripe is that I cannot configure it as I want and that it assumes I'm computer-illiterate. On top of that a lot of the approaches chosen by Apple regarding e.g. the UI are simply counterintuitive to me.

I still prefer it to Windows but (at least for me) it is inferior to a properly setup Linux box with stuff like a titling WM. But if I would to recommend someone a computer just for browsing, email, etc. then a Mac would be my top choice.

While I worked at Apple in 2021-22 their issues seemed about the same as nearly every other company producing consumer apps and devices; bloated slow garbage with very mediocre quality. Their engineering culture is terrible, especially as it relates to transfer of the “Apple ethos” to the next generation of devs. Apple is going to be indistinguishable from the rest of the pack within the next decade.

But most of all it seems like it was designed by people who don’t even know what it is for. That combined with the superficial “implement my Figma masterpiece in code” development approach that includes little to no user testing. Tog weeps. Don Norman weeps. Observe how much breaks when you do something as trivial as bump the default font size by one notch. I am sure it is pixel perfect at default size though.

Enter a birth date in a contact entry without a year. Watch as it jumps to the next day when you save because you are editing the date after 0000 of the next day in utc time. That bug has now been in MacOS/iOS for at least 17 years.

Sorry, got in to rant mode. I really want “less but better” from things in my life. We as consumers aren’t rewarding companies that take this approach apparently.