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Apple's Software Quality Crisis

eliseomartelli.it

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Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#211

Post by treve »

sbuk wrote: post #196
treve wrote: post #10

Apple had to switch CPU architectures and build their just to make their OS feel as snappy as KDE and Gnome does on mid-tier hardware. I wonder how long it will take until enough technical debt accumulates to a point where Mac OS feels like it drags again. The absolute worst was the transition to SSDs if you were stuck on a hard to upgrade HDD-based Mac. It became super clear that Apple devs stopped caring in the spa…

Rubbish. You Linux-only guys post this nonsense on any thread criticising competing OSs thinking the rest of us have no experience using them. I daily-drive older hardware (Xeon E5 with 16GB RAM and GTX 1080 ti), which is essentially all midtier is, and GNOME is a stuttery mess. It struggles to drive 4K. It's slow to load software, and what is available is often a UX mess (what have they got against menus?!). Discove…

I use Linux, Apple OS and Windows.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#212

Post by swat535 »

It's not just Apple guys, it's everywhere.

Software quality has seriously declined across the board, from Spotify to Slack to core operating systems like Windows and macOS. I think a major factor is corporate culture, which largely ignores software quality. Another issue is that many engineers lack a solid understanding of CS fundamentals like performance, security, and reliability (perhaps this is why many are not able to solve basic algorithmic questions like linked lists or binary trees during interviews)..

I've seen code written by so-called "senior" engineers that should never have made it past review; had they simply paid attention in their CS 101 courses, it wouldn't exist.

On top of that, as long as poor software quality doesn’t hurt a company's bottom line, why would executives care if their app takes 20 seconds to load?

Consumers have become desensitized to bloat, and regulators remain asleep at the wheel..

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#213

Post by nextos »

dharmab wrote: post #32
FredPret wrote: post #7

I would pay a premium for a system that never gets any new features except for bug & security patches. In fact, that's more or less what iOS was for a long time, and I loved every second of it. Once you have a good feature set, you can spend years and years ironing out 100% of the bugs and vulnerabilities and you'd build a rabid fanbase of crotchety tech-saturated users like me. I want something that Just Works.

I've been using fundamentally the same Linux setup for over ten years now. I think the biggest change it went through was migrating the audio system to Pipewire, which took about an hour to figure out and hasn't need attention since. I have no solutions to offer for smartphones sadly.

SailfishOS is pretty decent on mobile, as in a simple system that moves slowly. You can get support for Android apps with an emulation layer. Even banking apps tend to work well. Sadly, to get a license from the US you'd need a EU IP address.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#214

Post by packetlost »

legitster wrote: post #204
packetlost wrote: post #12

I think it has more to do with a gradual industry-wide race to the bottom in terms of quality. Reliability, attention to detail, correctness occupy a tiny fraction of the "budget" compared to security, slopping out features, and beating competition to market. I suspect that startup culture being the crucible where a large portion of engineers learned their chops and the massive amount of new blood in the industry who…

> a gradual industry-wide race to the bottom in terms of quality I'm going to disagree. This is a false nostalgia. 15 years ago the market for consumer laptops that were not MacBooks straight up sucked. If you walk into a Best Buy today, almost any laptop you buy is going to blow any laptop from back then out of the water in terms of build quality. And credit where it's due, in no small part it came from playing catc…

I am not referring to hardware. Hardware quality has largely improved, software quality has largely gotten worse.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#215

Post by criddell »

SSLy wrote: post #188
criddell wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I use it for ripping CDs may I introduce you to cyanrip or EAC? https://github.com/cyanreg/cyanrip https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/downloa...

I own dbPoweramp which I believe uses EAC, but iTunes is just easier (I rip to ALAC) and is good enough. Apple will probably drop support soon, but until then I'll stick with it.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#217

Post by crossroadsguy »

reader_1000 wrote: post #163

As an iPhone user, I can only agree that Apple's software quality is just going backwards. Keyboard is terrible, it suggests words that are completely unrelated. Control center is becoming worse at every update. You can't still select text in the messages. Wifi is always unstable. You can't turn off wifi, etc. Also my father used to use the feature of announcing outgoing calls when call is made by Siri, they removed…

Yeah!!! What’s with their word prediction? More than 12 years and buggers still can’t predict my first name which I have typed a trillion times at least and is my name in the iOS and iCloud and contact and what not!!!!

The thing is slowly I am moving to so much non-Apple things that at one might I might go back to a much cheaper Android. Because anyway normal sized phones are not coming from Apple either.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#218

Post by [deleted] »

Klonoar wrote: post #147
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.

I mean as a user I haven’t thought about a scroll bar in years. The way the OS works with the hardware for touchpad usage means it’s just not a big deal. Even when I used a mouse on a Mac desktop it still never bothered me. Looks cleaner, feels sleeker and doesn’t impact functionality.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#219

Post by crossroadsguy »

They design AirPods and its cases to break on impact. They make it so slippery that it would be a stretch not to say that they designed it felicitate fatal falls. And after all this, they used glue to glue it in such a way that it comes off if it didn’t fall. Then they just ask you to buy a new case — yes, they don’t glue or do such lowly repairs. They have the gall to explicitly say that it would be repairable by glue but they won’t do that. Not to mention batteries which are designed for obsoletion. Cases and parts are made perfectly irreparable. And that’s just AirPods case!!!!

Premium hardware my foot! They are lucky to be in a convenient duopoly.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#220

Post by EasyMark »

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.

what is Music doing to you? Other than being slow to launch I really don't have any issue. I have made multiple lists and use it daily to listen to music. I don't recall it crashing in recent memory or not doing what I expect? Tbf, I currate my own music and lists and don't use the streaming a lot. Occasionally I use the station feature I guess, and it's passable. I'm certainly no power user though.
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