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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

#121

Post by CoolGuySteve »

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actually tries, let alone the tickets where they don't. If I tell you to update your shit, it's because it's wildly out of date, to the point that your configuration is impossible for me to reproduce without fucking up my setup to the point that I can't repro 8 other tickets.

Back when I worked at Apple I would just try it in whatever I had installed. If it didn't reproduce I'd write "Cannot reproduce in 10.x.x" and close it. Maybe a third were like that, duplicates of some other issue that was resolved long ago.

Anyone that attached a repro file to their issue got attention because it was easy enough to test. Sometimes crash traces got attention, I'd open the code and check out what it was. If it was like a top 15 crash trace then I'd spend a lot longer on it.

If the ticket was long and involved like "make an iMovie and tween it in just such and such a way" then probably I'd fiddle around for 10-15 minutes before downgrading its priority and hope a repro file would come about.

There were a bunch of bug reports for a deprecated codec that I closed and one guy angrily replied that I couldn't just close issues I didn't want to fix!

Guess what buddy, nobody's ever going to fix it.

The oldest bug like that I ever fixed was a QuickDraw bug that was originally written when I was 8 years old but it was just an easy bounds check one liner.

But the mistake OP is making is assuming this one thing that annoyed him somehow applies to the whole Apple org. Most issues were up to engineers and project managers to prioritize, every team had their own process when I was there.

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

#122

Post by BrenBarn »

All kinds of open source projects do this too. It's really annoying. It's one thing if the authors actually try and fail to verify the bug, but these days it seems like most projects just close "stale" bugs as a matter of course. This is equivalent to assuming that any given bug is automatically fixed after X amount of time, which is pretty absurd.

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

#123

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #105
nradov wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand that from the perspective of individual employees: they have little incentive to do more than the bare minimum to close tickets. But this behavior is typically a symptom of broken corporate culture and failure to align internal metrics. For every customer who takes the trouble to submit a formal bug report there are likely many others who just live with it, and badmouth you to other customers. Do…

There's also going to be mountains of bugs resulting from cosmic rays hitting the computer, defective ram chips, weird modifications of the system the reporter hasn't mentioned. You could sink an infinite amount of time investigating and find nothing. At some point you have to cut off the time investment when only one person has reported it and no devs have been able to reproduce it.

What if no devs even tried to reproduce it, and they have no reason to believe they've fixed the bug with any other changes?

That seems to be the case described in the article. In such a situation, I think it's dishonest to ask the reporter to expend even more effort when you've spent zero. Just close it if you don't want to do it, you don't have to be a jerk to your customers, too, by sending them off on a wild goose chase.

Otherwise, why not ask the reporter to reproduce the issue every single day until you choose to fix it in some unknown point in the future, and if they miss a day, it gets closed? That seems just as arbitrary.

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

#124

Post by ryukoposting »

breppp wrote: post #119
ryukoposting wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think that's entirely dependent on the workload the company is placing on their support staff. If Apple decides the techs should be handling 10 tickets at once, then the techs have a choice:

1. Tell everyone to update their shit, and close tickets if they don't.

2. Waste several hours per day uninstalling and reinstalling 10 versions of the same program.

One of these will allow you to close lots of tickets immediately, and handle the remaining ones as efficiently as possible. Yay! Good job, peon! You get a raise!

The other approach will result in a deep backlog, slow turnaround times, and lower apparent output from management's perspective. Boo! Bad job, peon! You're fired!

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

#125

Post by NetMageSCW »

integralid wrote: post #37
torben-friis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this in many teams and it always drives me nuts: "hey this ticket is old and we didn't bother, let's delete it to keep the board clean". You feeling accomplished by seeing an empty list is not the goal!

Feeling overwhelmed by insurmountable mountain of bugs and issues is not the way either. We can argue that closing the tickets is not the best way, but if realistically nobody will ever look at them, why not make the developers feel better.

Because it isn’t about the developers feelings, it’s about the users. Why not set aside a day or half day a week to fix those bugs instead?

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by tottenhm »

In Scotland, they close an issue by taking a vote of "OK", "Broken", or "Not Proven".

I believe they also have attorneys. Perhaps that's how Apple could make bug-tracking more effective -- hire a prosecuting attorney and a defending attorney for each bug.

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

#128

Post by ryukoposting »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #118
ryukoposting wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how it's an unreasonable request. If you demand that I work with some ancient version, I then have to install and uninstall said program every time I work on your ticket specifically. You will be prioritized last, because my effectiveness is measured by how many tickets I close.

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

#129

Post by MiddleEndian »

masklinn wrote: post #61
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…

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

Or even non-software tickets at large corporations. I reported a water dispenser filling too slowly at my office because it took me a few tries just to fill my 1L water bottle. They said it was fixed and closed it.

It was not fixed. So I took a video of myself refilling my water bottle, attached it to the ticket, and re-opened it. They actually fixed it after that. The video was 2m12s long (and I spent god knows how long making the video file small enough to attach to the ticket lol)

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

#130

Post by cxr »

ryukoposting wrote: post #128
NetMageSCW wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how it's an unreasonable request. If you demand that I work with some ancient version, I then have to install and uninstall said program every time I work on your ticket specifically. You will be prioritized last, because my effectiveness is measured by how many tickets I close.

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