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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

#211

Post by david-cako »

bsimpson wrote: post #17
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…

The Mac has had an optimization-centric release following a feature release many times (all the Snow releases, El Capitan). I don't remember mass complaints. (By its name, High Sierra ought to be an optimization of Sierra also, but its bugginess suggests otherwise.)

I think the iPhone has historically had more of an attitude of "look at all of the awesome new computer-ey things your phone can do!", whereas computers have always been treated more like appliances. It's much easier to tell a user "the new version of Mac/Windows has absolutely nothing new you care about." than to sit by the wayside while android devices have split-screen and curved displays.

Consumers and shareholders like cell phones because they're shiny.

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

#212

Post by CodeSheikh »

I wonder if the mixed reviews of iOS 11 have led them to do such major overhaul. Say if iOS was responsibility of one software dev team, and they recently hired a new project manager to overlook iOS 11 development and release then I would definitely transfer that PM somewhere else in the corp along with QA guys.

For example that bug "typing the letter 'I' autocorrects to an 'A; with a unicode [?] symbol instead" might not be that big of a deal, but as we all noticed how such minute change had drastic ripple effect in entire Apple's ecosystem.

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

#213

Post by exBarrelSpoiler »

vlovich123 wrote: post #203
exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QA being divided between Craig and Kim didn't help, either. Nor the organizational wars.

Hmm... I think Kim came in towards the time I was leaving. Last name? When I was there our immediate QA was embedded within SW & reported up through the SW chain. Craig took over all OS SW development early 2015 IIRC. Have things changed? FWIW software quality of iOS has always been a concern in the media and I don't see that iOS 11 is particularly better or worse than other releases. iOS 8 had horrible performance i…

Vorrath.

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

#214

Post by wil421 »

cm2187 wrote: post #26
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…

ITunes on windows has just become unusable to me. Right now when I open it it gets caught in an inifinite loop of login prompts, even if the credentials are correct. It has never been good but right now it is just utterly broken. And every new update brings new catastrophes to the point that I delay them as much as I can.

I open iTunes like maybe twice a year. Last night I opened it and only logged in once.

I plugged in an old iPad 3 the hadn’t charged in 9 months or so and I discovered one thing. The password it was asking for to access the iPad wasn’t my current iCloud password. It was the iCloud password I used to setup the iPad. A little frustrating when I didn’t remember it but once I removed the device from find my iPhone everything worked.

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

#215

Post by avar »

bri3d wrote: post #210
avar wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git hasn't been run by Linus for over 10 years, and uses this workflow. Is it flawed in some ways? Sure, but it works and has its advantages. Furthermore the way patches are submitted, discussed and reviewed has little to do with the process by which they're eventually accepted or rejected by a BFDL maintainer, unlike what the GP is claimnig. If the kernel used say Github pull requests you'd just have Linus rejecting…

The advantage of the Pull Request system is that it lends transparency. Especially in a corporate environment, a team can easily ignore and reject a lot of code sent to a mailing list. When each patch is tracked using tooling built for that purpose, this gets a lot harder. Yes, the BFDL maintainers can continue to operate in whatever system they're given, but the more transparent the system is, the more likely they a…

I certainly wouldn't recommend it for most situations, especially something like a corporate environment where most people have problems with basic E-Mail workflows like inline quoting and preserving In-Reply-To headers.

It's more suited for free software projects like Linux & Git where the participants don't want to be locked out of all their historical discussions just because some company does badly in the stock market, as opposed to being 100% archived in hundreds of places via an open protocol, and trivial to migrate somewhere else.

I'm just saying the problems you had with it seem to come down to a completely dysfunctional corporate culture, not patches over E-Mail.

Sure if you're working with such monumental assholes that they're just going to passive-aggressively and conveniently discard whatever you tell them over E-Mail / IM / at the water cooler that's pertinent to their work area and need to essentially CC their manager on all correspondence, and are using PRs as a way to do that.

Then sure, then an E-Mail-based workflow probably isn't for you, although you could use git-format-patch to CC both your and their manager on every patch you send to achieve similar results.

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

#216

Post by ahartmetz »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #180
dingaling wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm hoping eventually Android will wise up and follows their lead. Settings -> Developer Options -> Drawing There are various settings there for animation styles and speeds, including 0 speed ( none ).

Developer options are not visible to regular users, you have to put the device into developer mode which comes with it's own set of drawbacks.

> developer mode which comes with its own set of drawbacks

Not really, you turn on "developer options". There is no developer mode as such, just many separate options, all with defaults that don't change things from non-developer behavior.

I have animations set to 2x regular speed, it's nice.

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

#217

Post by Crespyl »

lloeki wrote: post #172
cageface wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. My brain can't identify the icon I want to tap while the animation is in progress. I have to wait for it to finish then parse the screen for my target. You just type which triggers the animation yet merrily continue as the animation proceeds while you are already i…

> My brain can't identify the icon I want to tap while the animation is in progress. I have to wait for it to finish then parse the screen for my target. Interesting. I sure don't parse each icon precisely as it moves but the colors and layout allow me to intuitively have my bearings and know which page I'm on and then it's muscle memory. I can see it being an issue though. > I have to wait for the animation to compl…

Regarding keyboard shortcuts, at least, on a desktop there are standard affordances for showing what keys will trigger an action.

When browsing a menu bar or looking at a dialogue, labels will usually have an underlined letter (sometimes revealed by pressing Alt) that indicates you can press Alt+ to trigger that action. Items from the menu bar will typically list their corresponding hotkeys directly.

This is true across pretty much every desktop UI toolkit, even, surprisingly, in the Electron based Slack client I have open right now.

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

#218

Post by chris_wot »

vlovich123 wrote: post #190
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.

It's really hard to put any single root cause on it. Firstly, mobile OSes are massive beasts with lots of different teams working on it. Co-ordinating this becomes very difficult. Additionally, you typically get about 1 build a day which means there's a long lead time to find a bug that's managed to propagate out and then a long lead time for it to get fixed (at least 1 day). I think this decrease in quality has been…

It sounds like they need to issue smaller releases, more frequently.

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

#219

Post by JKCalhoun »

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…

When Android was rolling out feature X it seemed Apple had to rev in order to also have feature X.

Maybe things have calmed down now that both platforms have X, Y, and Z.

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

#220

Post by _ph_ »

vlozko wrote: post #167
closeparen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If engineers really ran a company, progress will often slow down. For example, if you're surrounded but a lot of young talent, the phrase that you just constantly hear is "refactor". Not as many developers enjoy bug hunting as they do new feature development. I suspect that those of us who've been in the field long enough end up growing a much greater appreciation for PMs and they decisions they make make than when t…

It is important to strike a good balance. One should neither ignore input by the engineers, nor give them a completely free hand. Refactoring can be a benefit for the future, but it should not grind progress to a halt. Senior engineers should give valuable input there. And of course, sometimes a seemingly crazy idea by a young talent is actually a good one :).
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