Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#11

Post by rcarmo » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #4

I drank the "creating products that prioritize user experience over feature checklists" kool-aid back in ~2013 sometime, and got myself a first Macbook when I worked at a software startup the first time. While it certainly gave a more "premium" impression in terms of hardware/UI/UX for the first few years, around 2016 I had to move back to Linux because the software experience and the user experience is just too poor…

The CarPlay "limitation" is likely to be a road safety/liability issue.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#12

Post by packetlost » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

I think it has more to do with a gradual industry-wide race to the bottom in terms of quality. Reliability, attention to detail, correctness occupy a tiny fraction of the "budget" compared to security, slopping out features, and beating competition to market. I suspect that startup culture being the crucible where a large portion of engineers learned their chops and the massive amount of new blood in the industry who are primarily there for money are the biggest factors.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#13

Post by drc37 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

I can't help but think Apple should have focused more on hiring the top engineers/designers than on the diversity of their workforce.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#14

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

The sad thing about this is that in the Android ecosystem, you are likely to get just as shitty software on a much, much shittier hardware. You cannot have nice things. Oh, and just buy a new one while we're at it, lmao.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#15

Post by diggan » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #11

diggan wrote: post #4

I drank the "creating products that prioritize user experience over feature checklists" kool-aid back in ~2013 sometime, and got myself a first Macbook when I worked at a software startup the first time. While it certainly gave a more "premium" impression in terms of hardware/UI/UX for the first few years, around 2016 I had to move back to Linux because the software experience and the user experience is just too poor…

The CarPlay "limitation" is likely to be a road safety/liability issue.

Yes, I agree. If I'm navigating, then an incoming call shouldn't block the entire screen with the avatar of who is calling, the map has to remain visible at all times. If even one person from Apple would have tested the scenario of "I'm navigating with a map and someone calls me", they'd see how dangerous their current implementation is.

I have had to reject/hang up so many calls because someone calls exactly when I'm trying to figure out where to go by looking at the map. In my mind, what Apple is currently doing should be outright illegal.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#16

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #5

Agreed; Apple's software quality is rapidly approaching unacceptability. I'm in a regular video call friend group, every day we call and chat for a bit. A few days ago we "officially" decided to just call in Discord instead of Facetime. Discord's mobile app has its own set of issues, for sure, but we would regularly hit an issue with Facetime where especially as people join and leave the call, other peoples' micropho…

> Agreed; Apple's software quality is rapidly approaching unacceptability.

But since sales go brrrrr and so does the stock, why should they care?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#17

Post by kome » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

but the hardware premium is kinda real... i have been using my macbook air 11 daily for 10 years (I am writing this comment on it), and it works flawlessly. somehow i don't think other brands are so well made, or they weren't so well made 10 years ago.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#18

Post by formerly_proven » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

Mail on iOS doesn’t even have push any more, the new Photos app is garbage, Music randomly spews “content not available” errors and works remarkably poorly with mobile data for a mobile app, watchOS is so chock-full of bugs and glitches that just go unfixed major version after major version etc.

It’s pretty bad. Somehow most other software is even worse. Genuinely impressive at this point.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#19

Post by tempodox » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

> For years, many of us have willingly paid the "Apple tax", the premium price for Apple products justified by superior user experience, design, and ecosystem integration. But if software quality continues to decline, this value proposition becomes increasingly difficult to defend.

Just today I was thinking how the best hardware gets crippled by software that has become as shitty as Microsoft's.

By now it has become incredible that “Doesn't Suck” was once motto and slogan for the user experience on Apple devices.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#20

Post by iknowstuff » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #7

I would pay a premium for a system that never gets any new features except for bug & security patches. In fact, that's more or less what iOS was for a long time, and I loved every second of it. Once you have a good feature set, you can spend years and years ironing out 100% of the bugs and vulnerabilities and you'd build a rabid fanbase of crotchety tech-saturated users like me. I want something that Just Works.

What? iOS without new features? When? Every release since 1.0 had a big splashy feature