Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#131

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #87

Workaccount2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that if you "went back to linux" you are the furthest thing from the target audience you can be. Not to downplay your experience, but it is almost certainly not what Apple uses for user feedback.

I went back to Linux because I can at least decide when I'm ready for updates that changes my workflow. Neither Windows nor macOS gives me that experience. I wouldn't put Linux on a pedestral when it comes to UX/UI/design, but at least it doesn't rugpull me once a year (or more often with Windows) with forced updates. As someone who cares deeply about UX that doesn't get in the way and allows professionals to do thei…

I basically stay on whatever macos version I have until they pull security updates for it. Seems to work alright so far. My last two OSs were mojave and now Sonoma (due to the new mac coming with it) having skipped all the rest including the latest sequoia.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#132

Post by hbn » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:15 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.

This is actually a kind of important setting to turn on if you're doing web development. At my work the developers use MacBooks and it's not rare to get bug reports about double scrollbars and whatnot which are caused by certain nested views with bad CSS, but it wasn't caught before release because the developer doesn't have scrollbars turned on, so you don't see it until a Windows user tries it.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#133

Post by eviks » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

> I call on Apple to return to its roots - creating products that prioritize user experience over feature checklists. The company that once proudly created products that "just work" needs to reclaim that ethos.

But this is a mythic past, not the real one, embarrassing software bugs have always been present! Moreover, it's never been limited to just software, remember premium laptop keyboard design fiasco, for example.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#134

Post by int_19h » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #56

PaulHoule wrote: post #23

I recently got an M4 Mac Mini which is an amazing piece of hardware. (When it came in the mail I couldn't believe it could fit in the small box it was in!) My wife was angry about the large volume of advertising, both on web sites and on the desktop, on the machine out of the box. Part of it was needing an adblocker, which meant switching to Firefox, because installing an adblocker on Safari requires an Apple account…

You can log into your Mac and your AppleTV and your iPhone and your iPad and all the services Apple has to offer with your Apple account. How is Microsoft offering the same thing any better?

You can't log into your Mac with your Apple account; you still need a local account created first, and it has its own login and password separate from the Apple ID associated with it (if any).

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#135

Post by AlanYx » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

I've started to wonder whether there might be any internal resistance at Apple to the move to SwiftUI, which has brought some benefits but also a whole host of odd behaviors in all kinds of places.

There's probably an alternate history where they would have stuck with AppKit for a few more years until LLMs got to the point they are now, and then dove in to leveraging LLMs to make AppKit development easier (essentially leaning into human language "declarative" programming rather than conventional declarative programming).

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#136

Post by blackeyeblitzar » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

The big sign of Apple’s deterioration has been iOS 18. It is a disastrous launch with a terrible photos app, worse autocorrect, bugs, … on their flagship product. Hard to trust where they go from here. At some point it’ll affect security.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#137

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

soulofmischief wrote: post #74

tbeseda wrote: post #27

Anecdotally, Apple Music has deteriorated exponentially for me. iTunes was such a stable, usable piece of software, but I can't get reliable use out of Apple Music for the life of me. It _feels_ like a shoddy Electron app. But that's not fair to the actual Electron (or similar) apps that actually work. For all its many design and product flaws, Spotify actually works.

I love that I had to install a shim service [0] with the same ID as Apple Music's since it can't otherwise be turned off, which was causing Apple Music to appear every time I pressed a media key but had no media playing. That's the kind of shiesty KPI-boosting tactic I'd expect from Windows, not a machine I paid almost $4000 for. Apple comes installed with a ton of irremovable bloatware and somehow gets a pass. [0] h…

They’ve been doing that bullshit with the media keys since it was still itunes

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#138

Post by criddell » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

tbeseda wrote: post #27

Anecdotally, Apple Music has deteriorated exponentially for me. iTunes was such a stable, usable piece of software, but I can't get reliable use out of Apple Music for the life of me. It _feels_ like a shoddy Electron app. But that's not fair to the actual Electron (or similar) apps that actually work. For all its many design and product flaws, Spotify actually works.

I use Apple Music on my Windows work computer and it's pretty good. I still have iTunes on my home Windows PC (I use it for ripping CDs) and it takes much longer to start.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#139

Post by 112233 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

JoshTko wrote: post #58

1980phipsi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The podcast app is the same shoddy-ness. Re-arranging things in the queue is such a PIA.

podcast app is the worst, I can never find what I'm looking for

have you tried their "books"? you cannot search by almost anything! Extra-strangely, selecting book language is macos-only feature! Does anyone even maintain it?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#140

Post by tacker2000 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #105

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.

I mean ok, the old one was already a bit overloaded and unwieldy, so a redesign was probably overdue and Ill give them the benefit of the doubt here but WTF is with the 1-2 second delay when switching between the menus in there? Are they doing web requests upon opening every settings page or what? This is real amateur hour.