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Apple’s declining software quality

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Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#321

Post by greggman »

zwischenzug wrote: post #86
jonknee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of awful software shipped under Steve Jobs. X Code has always been a buggy mess, iTunes bloated greatly under Steve (remember Ping?), iMovie '08, etc etc.

iTunes was hideous. I once tried to reverse engineer the XML that stored the library and concluded it must have been designed by a distracted intern.

It's still hideous. Case in point, although this is a combination of things I guess but, when I upgraded to a iPhone6S+ 2 months ago I backed up my 5s in iTunes then restored on the 6S+. 22 apps could not be restored, among them 6 of Apple's own apps.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#322

Post by drawkbox »

It seems at Apple, engineering and software quality has taken a further back seat since maybe iOS7. Success can do that to the company, high flying bizdev starts to dictate over engineering and solid deliveries, sometimes forgetting what business they are in. Similar to what happened to Microsoft under Ballmer for a decade with Vista/Windows Phone etc.

Apple computers in 2005-2006 became awesome when they went Intel and OSX was solid, everyone loves to code on a pretty front end backed by *nix. Then iOS in 2007+ was solid for many versions. Slowly, it has been getting worse.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#323

Post by elsurudo »

_pmf_ wrote: post #310
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…

> 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. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs ... that's the guy with the skeuomorphic preferences, right? The one who, at the first iPhone release, told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough, right? Just to make sure we're on the same page here.

Not everybody hates skeumorphism, especially when not taken to an extreme (okay, Apple under Jobs often did take it to an extreme... like the leather Calendar app). But skeumorphism, when used properly, provides affordances and hints to the user.

> told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough

That's because the SDK wasn't ready for developers yet. You must remember that, first and foremost, Jobs was a great salesman. If you don't yet sell it, it's a piece of crap and unnecessary, right? And when you _do_ sell it, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#324

Post by jff »

Wasn't there an article some years back that pointed out how whenever someone dares criticize Apple, they're always careful to mention how they use Apple products everywhere and Apple stuff is still very nice, but please Mr. Jobs if you could refrain from deleting everything on my phone when I plug it in I'd be ever so grateful...

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#325

Post by arprocter »

diogenescynic wrote: post #179

The UI and UX has also become much less intuitive and more complex. iTunes used to be very easy to use. Every few updates and they are constantly making you relearn where to find things which is annoying. The same thing is happening to the Music app on iOS. It's not nearly as good as the original iPod software. They've added features that don't improve the experience at all.

The 'maximize' button now making a window take over your whole screen being one of the oddest.

And disappearing scroll bars - why?!

Didn't this company write the HIG book?

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#326

Post by eric_h »

_pmf_ wrote: post #310
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…

> 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. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs ... that's the guy with the skeuomorphic preferences, right? The one who, at the first iPhone release, told developers that they don't need native apps because using HTML + WebView is enough, right? Just to make sure we're on the same page here.

I'm rather firmly convinced that the "they don't need native apps" was Jobs merely stalling til the SDK was stable enough to release to the public.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#327

Post by petra »

CaptSpify wrote: post #291
petra wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because we don't need better tools. If things are getting worse, that shows we had the tools already. The problem IMO: We keep trying new tools where they aren't needed. #grumpy #getoffmylawn

OK not new tools. But great tools. Most of the tools the web offers are pieces of shit - many developers will agree to that.

And many complain that the web stack sucks. The simple example - you have to learn css, html, javascript, and some backend language - just to build say a business site, when you could do so, at a higher level, just by pointing and clicking and entering some code with something like microsoft lightswitch(which was discontinued).

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#328

Post by yeukhon »

coldtea wrote: post #296
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…

> 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. You probably wasn't paying attention when Job was running things. OS X 10.1 was a mess -- it took until several updates to become somewhat usable. The Finder was half-arsed for a decade. Mail.app had several issues. The Windows vers…

> The Windows versions of iTunes was crappy.

Oh joy. I remember those days when people were angry because plugging your iPod into a new PC means wiping your library!

> That said, I don't buy the "Apple software went downhill as of late" thing.

Perception on Mac after people switch from Windows to Mac OSX immediately is awesome. The perception is different if you use Mac OSX for a long time and suddenly you see computer frozen every few days and requires a hard reboot. Many of that have to do the software you are running at the time, but why a sudden OS freeze, mouse couldn't move? That can't be a fault with Office / Skype, it has to be either a OS issue, or underlying hardware issue.

Mac OSX is generally really great, it doesn't feel slow compare to a lot of the PC out there. Polished UI and very responsive. In some release you do see slowness opening between finders or moving from one setting view to another. Those are defects people will cry and ask those defects weren't caught by the performance team.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#329

Post by arc0re »

mikey_p wrote: post #216
dineshp2 wrote: post #180

It would seem sensible for Apple to fork an OS like Debian and focus on the distinguishing features of Mac OS such as the UI,gestures,power usage optimizations and Apple specific applications. From the user and developer point of view, the only major drawback would be applications. Devs porting over apps to linux and users not having some of their favourite apps available. It's becoming clear that Apple is not paying…

Except Apple already did this once, and honestly the under the hood bits are mostly fine. Virtually all the bugs that people complain about are in userspace programs, like Mail, Safari, or especially Finder. Using a different kernel and switching form BSD to GNU under the hood isn't going to fix any of that.

If Apple made a new OS, using a Linux kernel, and getting rid of the NeXT framework stuff (no more Objective C bullshit, no more deprecated Carbon, or Cocoa/ObjC/Swift), I think it would work pretty well.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#330

Post by etler »

My theory on the decline of Apple software is that they're starting to have the Windows legacy problem. Years ago Apple was able to wipe the slate clean and build a modern toolset exactly the way they wanted without having to worry about legacy support, but now they don't have that luxury. Refactoring technology is hard, and it's way harder when you have a lot of developers dependent on the things you want to refactor, and it's even harder when you have a huge ecosystem like an OS.
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