Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#101

Post by lostlogin » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

tempodox wrote: post #19

> 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…

> as shitty as Microsoft's.

If I ever feel down on the Mac, I can go to a PC and try make a pdf or view one. Clunky AF.

Mac software might be at a low-point, but it hasn’t burnt down yet.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#102

Post by markus_zhang » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

ohgr wrote: post #76

markus_zhang wrote: post #66

I just don't understand why Apple UI designers hate scroll bars with such a passion. It's probably just me, but I feel that many apps on Apple follows the same pattern. For example checkout and compare the scroll bar experience on ChatGPT website (Chrome) between a Mac-book and a Windows laptop.

Yeah annoys me too. You can turn them back on everywhere in Settings -> Appearance -> Show scroll bars always.

Yeah that was already done. But it doesn't help too much. They kinda still fade in and out sometimes -- but I can't get a proof right now. In addition, they are still too narrow.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#103

Post by zimpenfish » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Here's my personal canary in the coal mine that something must be fundamentally broken in Apple's software development process: - on a recent macOS version, right click on the desktop, select 'change wallpaper' => the new settings panel opens - click on 'Custom Color' - now hold and drag around the 'color cursor' in the color selection circle for a few seconds - stop dragging and notice how the color cursor continues…

Just checked this in 15.4 Beta (24E5206s) on this 2023 M3 Max and it doesn't happen for me.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#104

Post by czk » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

could this complaint be generalized to the software quality of anything that's been built upon for many years? as the churn in the workforce happens you lose nuance and expertise and systems become more and more complex to maintain and understand. management demands new features be slapped atop legacy systems. they want software to ship faster (look at how AAA game developers use nvidia AI features as a crutch to ship unoptimized games).

i often think back to ryan dahls infamous nodejs rant:

"There will come a point where the accumulated complexity of our existing systems is greater than the complexity of creating a new one. When that happens all of this shit will be trashed."

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#105

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Here's my personal canary in the coal mine that something must be fundamentally broken in Apple's software development process: - on a recent macOS version, right click on the desktop, select 'change wallpaper' => the new settings panel opens - click on 'Custom Color' - now hold and drag around the 'color cursor' in the color selection circle for a few seconds - stop dragging and notice how the color cursor continues…

The entire settings app rewrite is the canary of how Apple's software development process is broken, especially for the mac.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#106

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Here's my personal canary in the coal mine that something must be fundamentally broken in Apple's software development process: - on a recent macOS version, right click on the desktop, select 'change wallpaper' => the new settings panel opens - click on 'Custom Color' - now hold and drag around the 'color cursor' in the color selection circle for a few seconds - stop dragging and notice how the color cursor continues…

Arguably a worse bug in that same panel is how their hyped up live photo desktops don’t work at all and its been that way for years. They all need to be pulled from apples servers that silently time out your download. If you are lucky you can get maybe one or two downloaded.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#107

Post by someonehere » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

I still remember the story of an IMAP bug Apple mail had for years and years. I forgot exactly what the bug was that was open with Apple, but Apple’s way of addressing the bug was turning off the feature in an update and closing out the ticket.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#108

Post by catlover76 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 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…

> around 2016 I had to move back to Linux because the software experience and the user experience is just too poor, outright buggy and changes all the time.

Honestly, I have difficulty believing someone could find these kinds of issues to be less of a problem on Linux than on Mac

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#109

Post by written-beyond » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

alberth wrote: post #30

Is this a real problem, or a perceived problem? I know people like to complain about Apple's software quality - but is this actually an issue - or just the popular thing to say?

Idk but sometimes slack just takes over the screen and crashes the display drivers pretty regularly. You could put that to badly written software but I don't think display drivers should crash.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#110

Post by IgorPartola » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #73

IgorPartola wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal pet peeve: CarPlay not pausing what you are playing when you hit the infotainment power button is really dumb.

That's not been my experience. If I hit power off on my volume knob, it's effectively pause to CarPlay. Does your car treat it more like mute?

Yeah both cars where I have had it treat it as mute. Maybe a setting I guess.