Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

lapcatsoftware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 314 posts

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#91

Post by conductr »

beembeem wrote: post #78
freediddy wrote: post #23

Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. That's a classic trick where the developer will push back on the bug author and say "I can't reproduce this, can you verify it with the latest version?" without actually doing anything. And if it doesn't get confirmed then they can close it as User Error or Not Reproducible. Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actu…

Yep. On the other side of the curtain this often isn't nefarious. It's a simple cost/benefit analysis of spending time on something that one user is complaining about versus a backlog of higher business priorities. I've seen this in my work and it makes me sad for the user, but it often does take a bit of effort to spear these bug reports through.

I’d argue that there should be no higher business priority than shipping a product you already sold. If you sold a product and your customer spends their time documenting exactly why and how you sold them something that’s broken, you should make that a high priority. As a natural progression, you’ll start shipping less buggy / better tested products and that’s how you unlock yourself from the obligation you made to your existing customers to do other work.

Not directed at you of course, just the proverbial “you” from the frustration of a purchaser of software.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#92

Post by loloquwowndueo »

lapcat wrote: post #88
freediddy wrote: post #23

Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. That's a classic trick where the developer will push back on the bug author and say "I can't reproduce this, can you verify it with the latest version?" without actually doing anything. And if it doesn't get confirmed then they can close it as User Error or Not Reproducible. Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actu…

> Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actually verifying it. I'm not going to lie. That's not who I am. If Apple really wants to close a bug report when the bug isn't fixed, that's on their conscience, if they have one.

Companies have no consciences.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#93

Post by orthoxerox »

stefan_ wrote: post #3

My favorite is the Claude Code bugtracker, on GitHub of course: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues There is some bot that will match your issue to some other 3 vaguely related issue, then auto close in 3 days. The other vaguely related issues are auto closed for inactivity. Nothing is ever fixed, which is why they can't keep the thing from messing with your scroll position for years now.

> that will match your issue to some other 3 vaguely related issue, then auto close

Well, it was trained on StackOverflow.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#94

Post by tetromino_ »

eszed wrote: post #29
methodical wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every single old bug report I've ever seen is essentially a red-herring that is usually not able to be reproduced anymore after N years and takes away time from focusing on newer and more solvable issues. I don't see the issue with removing that noise if it's no longer being reported, but to each their own I suppose.

Sure. So try to reproduce on a current build, and close with a "No longer reproduceable on ___". That'd be good practice. Closing silently because no one can be bothered to evaluate at all is horrendous, and creates the user expectation that "no one looks at these, so I'm not going to keep reporting it" which "justifies" developers closing old bugs.

> try to reproduce on a current build

Good luck doing that when the bug report (like virtually all bug reports in nature) doesn't provide sufficient reproduction steps.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#95

Post by monster_truck »

IshKebab wrote: post #75
masklinn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. Or with open source projects. Fucking stalebot.

Fuck stalebot.

All my homies hate stalebot

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#96

Post by b112 »

Leherenn wrote: post #44
freediddy wrote: post #23

Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. That's a classic trick where the developer will push back on the bug author and say "I can't reproduce this, can you verify it with the latest version?" without actually doing anything. And if it doesn't get confirmed then they can close it as User Error or Not Reproducible. Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actu…

From experience with Microsoft (paid) support (after doing 5 tickets because it's never the right team and apparently moving tickets internally is for losers), they will ask for proof of the reproduction. And they will take every opportunity to shift the blame ("Oh I can see in the log you're running an antivirus, open a ticket with them. Closed").

It'd kind of sad, how the market went. I suppose there are pluses too.

But back in the 80s and 90s, margins were significantly higher. If you look at hardware, I recall selling hardware with 30% margin, if not more... even 80% on some items.

Yet what came with that was support, support, support. And when you sell 5 computers a month, instead of 500, well.. you need that margin to even have a store. Which you need, because no wide-scale internet.

On the software side, it was sort of the same. I remember paying $80 for some pieces of software, which would be like $200 today. You'd pay $1 on an app store for such software, but I'd also call the author if there was a bug. He'd send an update in the mail.

I guess my point is, in those days, it was fun to fix issues. The focus was more specific, there was time to ply the trade, to enjoy it, to have performant, elegant fixes.

Now, it's all "my boss is hassling me and another bug will somehow mean I have to work harder", which is .. well, sad.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#97

Post by parasubvert »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #92
lapcat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actually verifying it. I'm not going to lie. That's not who I am. If Apple really wants to close a bug report when the bug isn't fixed, that's on their conscience, if they have one.

Companies have no consciences.

Companies are made of humans who do.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#98

Post by larkost »

eminence32 wrote: post #16

I recognize that this is annoying from a user perspective, but I do understand it. Not all bugs are easily reproducible (and even if they are 100% reproducible for the user, it's not always so easy for the developers). Also sometimes you make a change to the code that you think might be in a related area, and so sometimes the most "efficient" thing is just to ask the user to re-test. When I close an old bug that is n…

Back in another part of my career I worked a lot with putting Macs on ActiveDirectory. And there was a common refrain from Apple about bugs in that implementation: "works on 17!".

The joke is that Apple owns the 17.x.x.x class-A range on the Internet (they got in early, the also have a second class-B and used to have a second class-B that they gave back), and what engineers were really saying is that they could not reproduce on the AD systems that Apple had setup (lots of times it was because AD had been setup with a .local domain, a real no-no, but it was in Microsoft's training materials as an example at the time...).

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#99

Post by Natsu »

Leherenn wrote: post #44
freediddy wrote: post #23

Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. That's a classic trick where the developer will push back on the bug author and say "I can't reproduce this, can you verify it with the latest version?" without actually doing anything. And if it doesn't get confirmed then they can close it as User Error or Not Reproducible. Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actu…

From experience with Microsoft (paid) support (after doing 5 tickets because it's never the right team and apparently moving tickets internally is for losers), they will ask for proof of the reproduction. And they will take every opportunity to shift the blame ("Oh I can see in the log you're running an antivirus, open a ticket with them. Closed").

I recompiled OpenSSL to make s_server -www return the correct, static XML blob for a .NET application that was buggy to make a reproducer for them that didn't rely on our product at all and which could be self-contained on a very barren windows VM they could play with to their heart's content and which didn't even care about the network because everything was connecting via loopback, so they couldn't blame that, eitehr.

Turns out there was a known bug in Microsoft schannel that had yet to be patched and they'd wasted weeks of our effort by not searching their own bug tracker properly.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#100

Post by gib444 »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #71
freediddy wrote: post #23

Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. That's a classic trick where the developer will push back on the bug author and say "I can't reproduce this, can you verify it with the latest version?" without actually doing anything. And if it doesn't get confirmed then they can close it as User Error or Not Reproducible. Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actu…

If you are a veteran of software in a big company, we all know there will be weekly or bi-weekly meetings that some PM will set up. All the PM will do is go over the JIRA tickets and be like "is this still happening". Default answer is "no", as in "I didn't even try to reproduce it, do you think I have time to even do it?". Default answer by spineless QA person is also "didn't try it again yet". Then, the PM closes t…

Absolutely spot on LOL
Post reply on HN