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Apple’s declining software quality

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Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#221

Post by graeme »

kbenson wrote: post #202
cname wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't use any of the default iPhone apps? I find that hard to believe. What about these: - calculator - camera - clock - contacts - messages - phone - photos - safari If you literally use none of these apps, I would be really surprised. Since we're sharing anecdotes: I've never had a problem with WiFi connectivity or Spotlight on El Capitan across multiple devices. I don't use iWork or Siri, so I can't speak to t…

Calling someone a liar without providing any proof, or even good reasoning on why it's likely beyond the minimum "I find that hard to believe." provided, is an asshole move. Please don't do that. > Since we're sharing anecdotes Well, some of his points were anecdotes, some were observations about how he interacts with apple, and some were specific accounts of problematic functionality. > iCloud seems fine to me, but…

They didn't call me a liar. They just implied I was wrong. Big difference. You can be wrong without lying.

I was wrong. I had forgotten that I do use several default apps, taking them for granted, and overstated my case.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#222

Post by x0x0 »

cname wrote: post #147
graeme wrote: post #99

The decline seems real to me. A shortlist of things I've noticed: * Spotlight no longer finds things as easily. I used to use it for everything. Since updating to El Capitan, it has missed some exact match folders. Planning to switch to Alfred. * iWork was gutted in '13. People used to use Pages professionally. I'm now using Pages '09, and planning to transition to Word or Latex. I tested Pages '13 intensively, and i…

You don't use any of the default iPhone apps? I find that hard to believe. What about these: - calculator - camera - clock - contacts - messages - phone - photos - safari If you literally use none of these apps, I would be really surprised. Since we're sharing anecdotes: I've never had a problem with WiFi connectivity or Spotlight on El Capitan across multiple devices. I don't use iWork or Siri, so I can't speak to t…

well, it may be a bit of an exaggeration (I'm not the author), but do you think usage of clock to set alarms (or calculator) is strategic to apple's future? I hope not. Whereas use of the browser or maps or email services is. And most people I see using iphones don't use apple's offerings in those (not trivially substitutable) areas.

As for my SO, syncing iphone 5 to mac (on 10.10) just doesn't work anymore. I'm going to have to spend hours debugging why the fuck not soon. And recently her iphone has stopped connecting to wifi. To make it connect, you have to delete the wifi credentials then reboot the device. She already walked through a reset with apple over the phone but it continues to happen. It's infuriating.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#223

Post by graeme »

wmeredith wrote: post #201
graeme wrote: post #99

The decline seems real to me. A shortlist of things I've noticed: * Spotlight no longer finds things as easily. I used to use it for everything. Since updating to El Capitan, it has missed some exact match folders. Planning to switch to Alfred. * iWork was gutted in '13. People used to use Pages professionally. I'm now using Pages '09, and planning to transition to Word or Latex. I tested Pages '13 intensively, and i…

The gutting of iWork hit my office hard. I'd be using Numbers, Keynote, and Pages for years in a professional environment. The lack of support for some of even the most basic desktop publishing features is mind boggling. (e.g. There is no longer a way to rotate column header labels in the new Numbers. What? Why not?) There are a hundred trivial features like this that were totally scrapped across all iWork software.…

Did your office find a Pages alternative, or are you still using Pages09. (Or Pages13?)

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#224

Post by comex »

VonGuard wrote: post #172
tkinom wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on all the items. Not just Apple, I see similar issues with Google. Google's Youtube IOS app has issue playing video correctly. It can't even buffer the segments correctly. Google latest Android Map crashes all the times 1-2 minutes into the navigation, extremely dangerous when I have to restart the navigate while driving. I can't depend on it at all. I have to roll back to the default factory install older ver…

All iOS issues with Google software, I suspect, have more to do with Apple being dicks to Google than with Google fucking up. Remember, Apple is really trying hard to rid iOS of all Google programs. Remember Apple Maps?

Back when iOS 6 was released with Apple Maps and no YouTube, Google could be forgiven for problems with their replacement apps, as Apple had somewhat surprised them with the timing of the removals. That was three years ago, though. In the present tense, it's hard to imagine what you mean; it's not like iOS has some library to inject crashes into Google apps, or Apple is preventing updates to those apps from being published on the store (as ruled out by the frequency of updates).

There's the fact that iOS currently doesn't allow replacing the system hooks for Maps and Safari with Google Maps and Chrome (or any other store apps), but that's not the type of problem the parent was complaining about.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#225

Post by petra »

mamcx wrote: post #122
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #70

It is not fair to single out Apple - all the software has gone downhill in the past couple of years - browsers, websites, apps, appliances, virtually everything. My suspicion is that it's the proliferation of new ways of doing things - new languages, no-sql/key-value db's, new hosting platforms such as AWS, docker, big data stuff like hadoop, storm and spark, all kinds of embedded software (tv's, cars), etc - we've g…

Agreed. Everything is more complex. Web apps is each iteration harder.. Native App development too (for example, .NET xaml is far harder than winforms and it than VB/Delphi).

And most of this is unnecessary complexity.why haven't anybody came up with better tools to attack that ?

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#226

Post by petra »

mamcx wrote: post #122
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #70

It is not fair to single out Apple - all the software has gone downhill in the past couple of years - browsers, websites, apps, appliances, virtually everything. My suspicion is that it's the proliferation of new ways of doing things - new languages, no-sql/key-value db's, new hosting platforms such as AWS, docker, big data stuff like hadoop, storm and spark, all kinds of embedded software (tv's, cars), etc - we've g…

Agreed. Everything is more complex. Web apps is each iteration harder.. Native App development too (for example, .NET xaml is far harder than winforms and it than VB/Delphi).

And most of this is unnecessary complexity.why haven't anybody came up with better tools to attack that ?

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#227

Post by AngrySkillzz »

tkinom wrote: post #141
graeme wrote: post #99

The decline seems real to me. A shortlist of things I've noticed: * Spotlight no longer finds things as easily. I used to use it for everything. Since updating to El Capitan, it has missed some exact match folders. Planning to switch to Alfred. * iWork was gutted in '13. People used to use Pages professionally. I'm now using Pages '09, and planning to transition to Word or Latex. I tested Pages '13 intensively, and i…

Agree on all the items. Not just Apple, I see similar issues with Google. Google's Youtube IOS app has issue playing video correctly. It can't even buffer the segments correctly. Google latest Android Map crashes all the times 1-2 minutes into the navigation, extremely dangerous when I have to restart the navigate while driving. I can't depend on it at all. I have to roll back to the default factory install older ver…

Yeah, Google web apps must have some scary Javascript bloat going on. I remember when GMail was lightning fast; now it takes 5-10 seconds just to load the first page of my inbox and chat windows.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#229

Post by noelsusman »

partiallypro wrote: post #57
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #7

While I agree that Apple's software quality has declined in recent years, I fear that their hardware and other advantages (even with superior hardware and software I don't trust a Google-or-Amazon-based phone for a second to be anything but a data mine for them), I fear Apple's existing lead in general quality will allow them to become (remain?) complacent and allow things to slide.

I don't even know if Apple owns the hardware quality title anymore. The Surface line from Microsoft is astounding in quality, and it's only a few generations old. This latest line did have some bugs (mostly due to Intel,) but overall when I walk into a Best Buy, and I feel a Surface Book and look over at a MacBook, one feels like the future, while one feels like it's hugging the past. The problem with Apple, and I've…

There's still nothing that truly competes with the MBP. IMO it's the only thing they have left that's clearly better than the competition.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#230

Post by lmm »

ssharp wrote: post #36
dplgk wrote: post #10

There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this and I wish he was alive to tear some people a new one. I didn't like Jobs but respect his ability to achieve things. Perhaps, the years of oversimplifying applications has created an Apple that can't handle complex applications? Or, there's a chicken and egg question: XCode and the surrounding tools are atrociously buggy and hostile to the developer…

OSX doesn't need to handle that many hardware and driver issues, so I don't see how that's relevant to a Windows comparison. I've been using OSX since just after Panther. I generally agree with the idea that some things started getting worse after Snow Leopard, but I still don't think it's come close to a point where I'd actually move back to Windows or try out desktop Linux. And I'd say Windows had far more issues t…

> The way I survive Windows problems is pretty simple: never plug in an ethernet cable. I'm sure things are far better now, but for a large part of the past 15 years, doing so opened you up to a lot of problems and required utilizing software you simply should not have to install in order to have a functional system.

I don't think that's really true. From 2K onwards windows was pretty solid if you kept it up to date. I never used any firewall/antivirus/etc., just disabled unneeded services (admittedly the defaults in 2K and XP were poor), didn't run executables attached to suspicious emails etc.

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