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How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

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Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#131

Post by cageface »

epistasis wrote: post #99
abalone wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking: Engineer Thinks PM is a Bozo. Film at 11. It's not really context. The real problem here is the premise that "Apple has software quality issues" is taken as a given, without support. Sinofsky makes the point that Apple is operating a such a huge, unfathomable scale and depth -- and this is coming from one of Microsoft's top guys in its heyday -- that even rare bugs that affect 0.01% of users translate into…

It funny, while rare bugs are part of the problem, fundamental design is a problem that confronts me much more. The epidemic spread of animations that reduce functionality and responsiveness are pretty unforgivable. This is something that affects all users that try to interact with their phones, and I'm getting pretty sick of modal switches between "accepts touch input" and "doesn't accept input" when there are no vi…

Animations are one of the reasons I use Android. iOS is just littered with gratuitous animations that needlessly slow down the interface. My two least favorite are the home screen zoom-in effect you get every time you unlock the device and the animated text on typing autocomplete suggestions. And you can't disable either of these without disabling system animations entirety.

This stuff is symptomatic of Apple's love of form over function, also manifested in dumb and costly UI gimmicks like 3D touch.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#132

Post by pjmlp »

staunch wrote: post #128
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s definitely not what made the iPhone unique. It was one benefit, but hardly the only one, or even the main one. You hope that open technologies are the future, but it remains to be seen. Regardless, a rapid shift to PWAs is not at all in Apple’s interest, and I highly doubt they’re going to do that. They want all the best apps, developers, and customers to be concentrated on iOS. That’s how things are now (I’m…

You think Apple needs lock-in to keep customers but it doesn't. That's how Microsoft operates. Apple should move to PWAs because they're better technology than native apps. Users and developers would prefer PWAs if they were well implemented, which is all Apple needs to know.

> Apple should move to PWAs because they're better technology than native apps.

Given the UI/UX of both models, I will keep using native apps whenever possible.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#133

Post by alextooter »

dingo_bat wrote: post #113
AlphaSite wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (and most people I know) have had various issues in major widows 10 upgrades.

Is that true? Personally I have been very lucky with the Win10 updates. I am really enjoying how the OS is shaping up to be.

Very true.I knew a future trader lost lots of money because she's win10 pc get a update, and she don't know how to deal with it, she couldn't stop it being updating.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#134

Post by fastball »

coolwhhip wrote: post #82
cageface wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your experience there what would you say is the cause of the recent slip in software quality in both iOS and macOS? As an outsider it looks to me like they're just pushing too hard to keep up with a yearly release schedule but that's based on no inside knowledge at all.

Shipping gets you power and influence. Outside of personal conviction and judgement, there’s not incentive to do much else.

Right, but engineers probably are going to have some level of conviction and judgement when it comes to something they helped build. They're personally invested in a feature they've worked on.

If I was an engineer at Apple who worked on iMessage, and I heard acquaintances talk about the bugginess about iMessage, I would probably start out being defensive but then I would regret that we didn't ship a better product.

I think an EPM is less likely to feel like that, as they are not so closely tied to the actual product, which is what the Reddit poster was saying.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#135

Post by bsaul »

I hope they don’t only focus on some minor app bugs, but also address the big giant elephant in the room : speed has been going down in a dramatric fashion release after release since ios 7.

There’s one word i wish i’d seen and haven’t so far : refactoring.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#136

Post by saagarjha »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #101
saagarjha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Steve Jobs's vision for apps on iOS was essentially PWAs. He was forced to back down after developer found their way around these restrictions (i.e. jailbroke) and realized they could write much higher quality, faster, and more efficient apps natively.

Could you elaborate on this?

Basically, Steve Jobs didn't want developers spoiling his phone with native apps as they did on Mac OS X. However, it quickly turned out that the native apps could do a whole lot more than the glorified web apps he was proposing, and this quickly led developers to figure out ways to run native code on-device. Apple, seeing the tide turning against it, created the iPhone OS SDK in an attempt to put a modicum of control on the process.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#137

Post by saagarjha »

staunch wrote: post #127
saagarjha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Steve Jobs's vision for apps on iOS was essentially PWAs. He was forced to back down after developer found their way around these restrictions (i.e. jailbroke) and realized they could write much higher quality, faster, and more efficient apps natively.

That's an imprecise version of the history but what does it have to do with modern iPhones? Many people said GUIs were too inefficient to be worthwhile on early PCs. Then PCs got more powerful and no one says that any longer. The iPhone 8 is orders of magnitude more powerful than early versions. The world has changed and those old arguments no longer make sense.

Your argument doesn't really make sense: GUIs made a lot of software accessible to the average user, while web apps does nothing of the sort. To the end user, there are almost no benefits to using a web app; they're slower (yes, computers have gotten faster. That doesn't mean that the gap between web apps and native ones doesn't exist), they less accessible, they look worse, and they can't do half the things because they need to run in a web browser. The only benefits are for the developer since they don't have to spend time figuring out how to write native code for a handful of platforms and can now just write software for the lowest common denominator.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#138

Post by bsaul »

heavymark wrote: post #13

This rumor has been around past few months, hoping it's true. Though while us technies in the minority would rather bug fixes than new features that don't apply for us, the general public would be very upset if iOS12 changes are all under the hood, as they would say Apple has fallen behind and people will insert common statements every years like they are finally considering switching etc. So while I hope the do fix…

I strongly disagree. The « general public » runs on older phones, and so performance and software quality is even more impactful on them.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#139

Post by bsaul »

scarface74 wrote: post #75
toyg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would say Apple has fallen behind "They" already said that when iOS abandoned skeuomorphism, and "they" were damn right. A friend of mine who is not even a tech guy put it very bluntly: "Apple used to change things to make better phones, now they change things to keep up with what others are doing".

They abandoned skeumorphism because pixel perfect design doesn't work when you have multiple size screens. At the time they had two - a 3.5 inch screen and a 9.7 inch screen. Now they have four different iPhone screen sizes and three different iPad screen sizes.

What’s the link between skeuomorphic and pixel perfect ?

Real world objects come in different sizes, so i don’t see what the problem would be in having screens that look like objects having different sizes.

Re: How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software

#140

Post by rowyourboat »

closeparen wrote: post #122
cwyers wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, nothing in the quote suggests that programmers can't submit items to Radar, that they can't lobby for them to be assigned a high priority, etc. Pretty much every software project beyond a certain scale uses an issue tracker of some sort.

If you need to lobby for permission to work on something broadly within the scope of what you're paid to work on, you aren't being treated like a professional. An issue tracker is a communication tool for use in the context of a largely self-directed activity. The only role at my company where your day-to-day activity is dictated to you by the tickets on your screen is customer support. On my team, if you're only wor…

So, you guys are all developers and product managers rolled into one? How do you decided what gets worked on?
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