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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

#141

Post by lostmsu »

dingo_bat wrote: post #48
vxNsr wrote: post #5

>The company will continue to update its software annually, but internally engineers will have more discretion to push back features that aren't as polished to the following year. Let's hope Microsoft follows suit. I would much rather have a product that works the same way every time over one that can do 1000 things half the time. Hopefully this will also give them time to reconsider some of the more ill-conceived UX…

I don't think Microsoft has a code quality problem at all. On the contrary I'm hard pressed to point at any recent Microsoft software and say it's bug ridden or low quality or badly designed. From iOS to Android to Windows, Microsoft software is excellent.

I dunno, Skype is pretty miserable right now.

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

#142

Post by iaml »

rdschouw wrote: post #89
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #12

This is sorely needed. Every iOS update has introduced bugs and UX gremlins that have been dragging Apple's software quality through the mud. Chief among them is Apple Music, since it is a huge part of Apple's service initiative. - Their latest update now wastes space to tell me it isn't playing anything! - Often times just refuses to work. No error, no graceful recover. Just silence. https://imgur.com/a/VrO1Y - Aird…

Yea, I hear you. For me, Apple Music randomly pauses my music when it is on bluetooth or ipod dock every 60-90s. Googling it revealed that I am not alone and this issue has been going on since the introduction of Apple Music app. Every release I try again, but no fix so far.

I have this problem on mbp + airpods, beyond frustrating.

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

#143

Post by Zeebrommer »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #125
RandomTisk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't encounter many bugs, but I'm considering getting android because Apple's feature/UX choices are beyond insane today. There are two features they're missing, that I feel should have been one of the first few added. 1. You can't view a list of chapters in iTunes, like in Audiobooks from say, Audible. Awful. I mean, I hate to be unkind, but are they seriously this inept to not include a chapter list that you can…

Android does the same thing regarding screen on during calls.

I do believe Windows Phone does that perfectly, if it's any help...

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

#144

Post by lloeki »

cageface wrote: post #131
epistasis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> form over function

Properly designed animations are function: they give a sense of place and help in creating a navigation hierarchy instead of having things pop into and out of existence.

> iOS is just littered with gratuitous animations that needlessly slow down the interface

Their gratuitousness is evaluated by you by the "slowdown" they bring. The only slowdown they bring me is when they're not interruptible/concurrent, but that's a bug, like the calculator app's one.

> My two least favorite are the home screen zoom-in effect you get every time you unlock the device

Unless I'm literally trying to race the beam, by the time I move my finger from the home button to a position over the screen the animation has completed. The animation is interruptible and you can tap or swipe right through it.

> and the animated text on typing autocomplete suggestions

How is that slowing you down? You just type which triggers the animation yet merrily continue as the animation proceeds while you are already inputting the next words.

> costly UI gimmicks like 3D touch

To each his own: I use it everyday to peek at things and multitask, it's a real timesaver.

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

#145

Post by staunch »

saagarjha wrote: post #137
staunch wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The success of the GUI shows why computing is not driven by concerns over efficiency. PWAs being less efficient than native apps is completely irrelevant. What matters is functionality.

Most apps do nothing that requires being native at all. The fact that PWAs have been implemented badly so far does not mean that there's anything inherently ugly, slow, or less accessible.

Apple could go as far as they want in making PWAs and native apps feel completely identical. They could even go as far as enforcing style, performance, and accessibility rules for PWAs.

The benefit of moving to PWAs are many and the downsides are all solvable.

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

#146

Post by scarface74 »

bsaul wrote: post #139
scarface74 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you had a picture as the background of your screen in 2010, you needed different images for different screen resolutions - 1 and 2x for the 3.5 inch iPhone and 1x for the 9.7" inch iPad. Then the iPhone 5 came out with a different ratio - you couldn't just stretch the image and make it look decently. Then two years later you had the 6 and 6+ phones with different ratios. Then different ratios for split screen iPad in different orientations.

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

#147

Post by alexkavon »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #114
dingo_bat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Microsoft has a code quality problem at all. On the contrary I'm hard pressed to point at any recent Microsoft software and say it's bug ridden or low quality or badly designed. From iOS to Android to Windows, Microsoft software is excellent.

Still waiting for this ~2 year old bug to get fixed in Edge: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

FYI, the latest updates state this is fixed and in the insider builds.

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

#148

Post by chopin »

bri3d wrote: post #94
ndesaulniers wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plain emailed diffs? this isn't LKML

There have existed teams at every company I have ever worked for who argue that this is the Very Best Way (tm) to develop code. It allows for the True Gatekeepers to keep their hold over the perceived software quality and quickly routs any sort of outside interest from modifying the project in any way the True Gatekeepers don't desire. In entirely broken organizations this is an effective way to allow 2-3 good develo…

But how is emailing different from something like eg. Gerrit or pull requests. Ultimately, it's always the maintainers who get to decide what gets into the repo.

What you describe is a problem occurring independent of the way changes are merged. I agree that it can be a real problem.

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

#149

Post by dahauns »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #102
RandomTisk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't encounter many bugs, but I'm considering getting android because Apple's feature/UX choices are beyond insane today. There are two features they're missing, that I feel should have been one of the first few added. 1. You can't view a list of chapters in iTunes, like in Audiobooks from say, Audible. Awful. I mean, I hate to be unkind, but are they seriously this inept to not include a chapter list that you can…

The problem here is that the “top 2 features that should have been in place from day 1 and represent an insane usability gap” are different for every user. So if they try and add all the weird corner case niche features, it’ll be the standard unopinionated bloatware that most software is. FWIW, I’ve never played an audiobook in iTunes (Audible), and I hadn’t ever noticed the screen locking during calls thing. TouchID…

>So if they try and add all the weird corner case niche features, it’ll be the standard unopinionated bloatware that most software is.

While I agree with the sentiment behind the argument, these days the pendulum is swinging far too much in the other direction.

Sure, this choice is always a tradeoff.

But today, so many applications and websites are being optimized for the one single most important use case at total expense for everything else. Making the software a true lowest common denominator, but seriously reducing actual usefulness.

Just look at the example: I don't have hard numbers, but I'd wager that "Show table of contents for an audiobook" is only a "weird corner case niche feature" for a very wide definition of the phrase (i.e. "everything below my main feature").

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

#150

Post by masklinn »

cageface wrote: post #65
objclxt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a slightly different perspective (I worked on iOS 7 - 11). One of the things about Apple that's different to many of the other tech conglomerates is that engineering teams are given huge freedom to work the way they want (for better and for worse). Because engineering is so fragmented you should always take what one person says about the process with a pinch of salt. So that means there are hundreds of source…

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.

> Based on your experience there what would you say is the cause of the recent slip in software quality in both iOS and macOS?

It's not clear because there have been absolute shit-show releases going back to the early days of OSX. Even the fondest-remembered releases were only so after a ton of polish, and that was with releases slipping significantly (you might see 3 years pass between major updates, and the new version would still be completely unstable).

I'm sure yearly releases don't help, especially if there isn't a postgres-type culture of "we ship what's ready", but software engineering issues at Apple go back a long time.

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