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Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

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Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#191

Post by pfranz »

dhagz wrote: post #171
sixstringtheory wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like just about every software job I’ve had over the last 7 years. It sounds like a mgmt problem to me. Either they can’t tamp down the devs who move too fast and break things, or they are driving the devs to do so.

It's a lot harder to demonstrate how the value added by improving stability. Like, what's the difference between 99.93% availability and 99.95% availability? How do you show that increasing test coverage by 5% helps users and brings value to the company? "Hey, so you know how our application is pretty much always working, but will error out once every other blue moon? It does that less now," doesn't sound as flashy a…

A few years ago I heard people talking about Apple over-metric-ing. I think even Tim Cook was touting how few kernel panics and crashes there were in modern macOS. They had been tracking crashes and putting effort to reduce them. However, the the new tallest poppy were bugs without metrics, like unexpected behaviors, performance regressions, etc.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#192

Post by tenebrisalietum »

skuthus wrote: post #75
gman83 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you haven't had Joy-Con drift :)

Nintendo has (usually) made good on their mistakes - I don't know of any other company who does direct exchanges and gives checks back for broken hardware like Nintendo. The Joy-Con drift is embarrassing

What do you think of the Xbox 360 "E 74" issue and how Microsoft handled it?

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#193

Post by lukifer »

gok wrote: post #84

It's interesting to me how widely followed the "Snow Leopard" myth is. It was a total disaster of a release. There were egregious issues in libdispatch which led to the entire API being re-written at least once. There were also random hangs due to major kernel scheduler changes for the first several point releases. Snow Leopard also introduced OpenCL, which has basically never worked. The Finder re-write added no fea…

People remember what Snow Leopard became, not what it was at launch. It's also contrasted in memory with the bold, controversial, iOS-influenced reimagining of Lion, leaving behind an inevitable nostalgia for the stable simplicity of the previous release.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#194

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kaolti wrote: post #123
louwrentius wrote: post #4

Maybe it's easy to say but it feels more like a cultural problem than a technical/procedural one. Why the fuck did they let this happen in the first place? Where is this mentality that even the backside of a cabinet should be build well?

Because it's inevitable at a certain scale. The brand has a momentum, even if things start getting worse for customers there isn't an immediate response on a large scale. A certain quality is important for the "true" advocates, but we're a small minority. Growth is driven by at scale customers who don't notice these issues because they're buying the products for different reasons. In this context, improving quality t…

That's not how it works.

How it works is that your brand suffers, and sales drift downwards.

When you attempt new projects outside of your skill envelope - a Maps application, a self-driving car, VR/AR hardware, a move to ARM - you either don't finish on schedule, don't finish at all and are forced to cancel, or you unleash a shit storm of bugs and negativity that costs far more than any nominal savings you might persuade yourself you've made by not doing QA properly.

It's a cultural problem. Not only is skimping on QA and customer support cheap, it looks and feels cheap. And that's not a good look when you're trying to sell yourself as a premium brand.

To be fair, customer abuse is not unusual among premium brands. Prestige cars are notoriously crap for reliability and build quality.

But Apple is a prestige consumer brand, and the brand experience is the most important asset.

If customers stop believing in the brand, all Apple has left is Dell or HP but with nicer packaging.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#195

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

TheRealWatson wrote: post #33
hylaride wrote: post #17

There have been glaring bugs/issues lasting ages in both MacOS and iOS. For years apple mail on iOS would always show 1 unread message in "all mail" for gmail. On my iPhone 11 pro (and the 6S i had before it) the camera app will sometimes only show a black screen and a freaking reboot is needed to get it working again. I've missed out on many moments with my toddler because of that. Multi-monitor support was so good…

> I've missed out on many moments with my toddler because of that You just missed taking pictures. You were still there to live them :)

While I appreciate the emotional sentiment here, it doesn't absolve Apple of their duty to ship a reliable product. To care about bugs. For what else are we spending upwards $1,000 on a phone for if the manufacturer can't provide us with a reliable operating system for it?

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#196

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

deergomoo wrote: post #140
hylaride wrote: post #17

There have been glaring bugs/issues lasting ages in both MacOS and iOS. For years apple mail on iOS would always show 1 unread message in "all mail" for gmail. On my iPhone 11 pro (and the 6S i had before it) the camera app will sometimes only show a black screen and a freaking reboot is needed to get it working again. I've missed out on many moments with my toddler because of that. Multi-monitor support was so good…

Interestingly, with a few exceptions (looking at you, Xcode), stuff barely ever crashes anymore in my experience. Instead the issues are a lot more frustrating: failure states where no indication of failure is provided (other than what you’re trying to accomplish isn’t happening), no reason is given, and no means to try again is available. It’s become even worse now that most things have some sort of web sync aspect.…

A hard crash would be preferable to the failure states encountered, mostly because it leads to quicker resolution.

For example, when the camera stops working, the first time I tried opening & closing the app numerous times. (Didn't fix the problem). Then I eventually restarted. It probably took me 10 minutes to figure it out. An immediate crash & reboot would take less time.

If their OKR's state to reduce number of hard crashes, congratulations, they did. Doesn't mean they delivered on product quality, however.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#197

Post by month13 »

bluedino wrote: post #46

13 was the worst iOS release I can remember. Photos would crash from scrolling too fast. Mail wouldn't check for new messages for a whole day. Safari blank screens. Replying to messages in Mail was a 50/50 proposition. The phone would freeze for 5-10 seconds more than it ever did before. All kinds of visual artifacts like text appearing where it shouldn't, UI elements getting orphaned and just floating around, effect…

I have this bug where until reboot, some albums from Apple Music would destroy media playback. Changing volume would be delayed by about five seconds, the device would become hot in my pocket culminating in a respring in three minutes.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#198

Post by jki275 »

kick wrote: post #121
novaRom wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and introduces some new. Seriously, why don't they open source it? There are so many so bad security issues in Apple software last years.

What incentive do they have to free it? Morals don't count. There's no incentive, so they won't. That Apple freely releases anything is tied directly to Stallman resisting Jobs's snow jobs during the '90s, and later Jobs's Flash snuff.

wut? Apple releases BSD code, not GPL. They've never played Stallman's game.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#199

Post by nvrspyx »

hylaride wrote: post #17

There have been glaring bugs/issues lasting ages in both MacOS and iOS. For years apple mail on iOS would always show 1 unread message in "all mail" for gmail. On my iPhone 11 pro (and the 6S i had before it) the camera app will sometimes only show a black screen and a freaking reboot is needed to get it working again. I've missed out on many moments with my toddler because of that. Multi-monitor support was so good…

I’ve always chosen Apple because there’s always been very little friction, thus very little frustration. However, the past year or two has been very frustrating.

Taps on my iPhone 11 Pro sometimes don’t register because it’s in the middle of an animation or it’s just unresponsive. Moving apps around has become the biggest pain. Apps are killed in the background after about 5 minutes. Typing has become a huge pain to deal with autocorrect and swiping. Sometimes holding the space bar doesn’t move the cursor and when it does there’s almost a full second until it returns to normal typing mode from “cursor mode”. Sometimes the lock screen is completely unresponsive to touch. Sometimes the screen doesn’t even come on until 30 seconds after hitting the power button leaving me to wonder why I’m staring at a disabled screen. Sometimes the phone will lock and require the pin instead of FaceID for no discernible reason. Some of the stock apps have become the buggiest apps I use.

Finally, I woke up this morning with my phone completely off despite it being on charger and with a full battery, which means my alarms didn’t go off and I was late for work. My guess is it tried to auto update in the middle of the night and wouldn’t turn itself back on. I’m basing that on the fact that I had a notification saying the update failed and I had to start the install again manually once I did finally get to work.

That’s just iOS. macOS is becoming equally frustrating. I’m seriously considering moving to Android, but I don’t know how much better (or worse) that would be considering I haven’t had an Android phone since a couple of years before the iPhone 4 released (had a Windows Phone in between Android and the iPhone 4).

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#200

Post by eyelidlessness »

BurningFrog wrote: post #101
chooseaname wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could go on. The worst part? These have all been ignored open issues that other people have submitted and for years they just sit there...open. When you hire expensive developers, they don't want to work on years old bugs. They only want to work on new features.

I'm an expensive developer. I love fixing bugs. I also don't think my job is to be entertained, but to provide value for the company and its users.

Heck, I love fixing bugs and it gives me a certain kind of entertainment.

Making good quality software, or improving poor quality software, is something I enjoy for its own sake. The fact that it also benefits users and my employer is an additional reward.

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