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

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

#111

Post by crest »

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…

I've worked with enterprise software. The result its that people will eventually just wait a few hours/days and lie if they even care enough to do that. The perverse incentives destroy what utility a bug tracker could bring. Int theory transparency could help by changing the incentives if third parties analyze the metrics and call out bullshit to an audicence that matters.

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

#113

Post by vovavili »

cletus wrote: post #55

Story time. I used to work for Facebook (and Google) and lots of games were played around bugs. At some point the leadership introduced an SLA for high then medium priority bugs. Why? because bugs would sit in queues for years. The result? Bugs would often get downgraded in priority at or close to the SLA. People even wrote automated rules to see if their bugs filed got downgraded to alert them. Another trick was to…

What an interesting display of a principal-agent problem.

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

#114

Post by ryukoposting »

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…

Hi, bigcorp employee getting showered with tickets here.

I don't have enough time in the day to deal with the tickets where the reporter actually tries, let alone the tickets where they don't.

If I tell you to update your shit, it's because it's wildly out of date, to the point that your configuration is impossible for me to reproduce without fucking up my setup to the point that I can't repro 8 other tickets.

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

#115

Post by jiggawatts »

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").

My favourite variant of this merrygoround is when they ask you to demonstrate the issue live in a Teams session, you do so, and there's this moment of silence followed by an "Oh... I see".

Then you assume, naively, that this means that they've recognised that there really is a product problem and will go off and fix it. However, then in turn the support tech needs to reproduce the the issue to the development team.

They invariably fail to do so for any number of reasons, such as: This only happens in my region, not others. Or the support tech's lab environment doesn't actually allow them to spin up the high-spec thing that's broken. Or whatever.

Then the ticket gets rejected with "can't reproduce" after you've reproduced the issue, with a recorded video and everything as evidence.

If you then navigate that gauntlet, the ticket is most typically rejected with "It is broken like that by design, closed."

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

#116

Post by youarentrightjr »

eminence32 wrote: post #54
youarentrightjr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keeping the bug open when realistically I can't really do anything with it might be worse I've heard this from others before but I really don't understand the mindset. What's the harm in keeping the bug open?

I used to think that there is no harm in keeping the bug open. I think if you honestly feel that you have the time and resources to go back to the bug and fix it, then by all means keep it open. But I find that sometimes I can tell from experience that the IR is not actionable and that it will never be fixed. Some examples: * There's not enough info to reproduce the issue and the user either can't or won't be able to…

I think asking someone if they can still reproduce an issue is valid. Especially if it was trivially reproducible for them, and now it isn't, that seems like a fine resolution, and the bug should be closed.

But in the other cases, closing the bug seems to me to be a way to perturb metrics. It might be true that you'll never fix a given bug, but shouldn't there be a record of the "known defects", or "errata" as some call them?

For your specific scenarios:

- lack of information on how to reproduce or resolve a bug doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that it's not well understood.

- For the "new version" claim, I've seen literal complete rewrites contain the same defects as the previous version. IMHO the author of the new version needs to confirm that the bug is fixed (and how/why it was fixed)

- I agree there are high cost bugs that nobody has resources to fix, but again, that doesn't mean they don't exist (important for errata)

- Similarly with proprietary data, if you aren't allowed to access it, but it still triggers the bug, then the defect exists

In general my philosophy is to treat the existence of open bugs as the authoritative record of known issues. Yes, some of them will never be solved. But having them in the record is important in and of itself.

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

#117

Post by youarentrightjr »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #107
youarentrightjr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keeping the bug open when realistically I can't really do anything with it might be worse I've heard this from others before but I really don't understand the mindset. What's the harm in keeping the bug open?

What is the use in keeping it open when no one will ever look at it again after it goes stale? It still exists in the system if you ever wanted to find it again or if someone reports the same issue again. But after a certain time without reconfirming the bug exists, there is no point investigating because you will never know if you just haven't found it yet or if it was fixed already.

See my reply to eminence32 - bug tracking serves as a list of known defects, not as a list of work the engineers are going to do this [day/month/year].

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

#118

Post by NetMageSCW »

ryukoposting wrote: post #114
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…

Hi, bigcorp employee getting showered with tickets here. I don't have enough time in the day to deal with the tickets where the reporter actually tries, let alone the tickets where they don't. If I tell you to update your shit, it's because it's wildly out of date, to the point that your configuration is impossible for me to reproduce without fucking up my setup to the point that I can't repro 8 other tickets.

Please tell us where you work so we can avoid all of your company’s software. Unless it’s Microsoft, because we’ve already seen the results of that attitude there.

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

#119

Post by breppp »

ryukoposting wrote: post #114
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…

Hi, bigcorp employee getting showered with tickets here. I don't have enough time in the day to deal with the tickets where the reporter actually tries, let alone the tickets where they don't. If I tell you to update your shit, it's because it's wildly out of date, to the point that your configuration is impossible for me to reproduce without fucking up my setup to the point that I can't repro 8 other tickets.

Yes that's a thing, but never with external customers in public betas

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

#120

Post by NetMageSCW »

afdbcreid wrote: post #109
masklinn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As an open source maintainer, I feel that statement is really unfair. Yes, we do sometimes close bug reports without evidence they are fixed. But: - We owe you nothing! And the fact that people still expect maintainers to work for them is really sad, IMHO. - Unlike corporate workers, nobody is measuring our productivity therefore we have no incentive to close issues if we believe they are unfixed. That means that whe…

Why do you close the issue then?
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