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Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

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351–360 of 368 posts

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#351
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, when I upgraded from Mojave to Catalina, an 'Moved Files' directory appeared that contained some files (that was once) in /usr/local/ This is a consequence of the read-only root filesystem in Catalina: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210650 Even with SIP disabled you can't do shit to that volume until you remount rw (at least, this was reported to work in betas, haven't seen anyone test the shipped O…

This isn't true, /usr/local is one of the writable firmlinked directories. How else would homebrew work?

Huh, I definitely have some moved files, and they're definitely from homebrew. But you're right, they're not from /usr/local. Perhaps the OP made the same mistaken assumptions of origin as I did?

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#352

Operating system should stop trying to do everything and just focus on giving basic functionalities in almost perfect way. Let third party developer use those building blocks and add this magic!

I think this is where Apple's walled-garden approach is actively harming the growth and resilience of their operating system.

Unlike GNU/Linux, only Apple's in-company devs get to work on the proprietary code base, to build features based on a small number of decision-makers, and test them before release. Questionable decisions in the core don't get questioned by a wider community of devs before they get released to the public.

In Jobs' days, this approach might have worked better due to (maybe smaller code base and) higher quality and dedication of their internal dev teams.

Open-sourcing macOS maybe wishful thinking, but it's not an unreasonable idea, considering it's not their main money-maker (anymore?). In my opinion, this would vastly improve its future development, active participation by motivated community, and quality control.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can’t understand why there is no option to remove it. You can i think... but not sure; Settings > Siri & Search > Messages > Learn from this app < uncheck

Didn't work for me. I unchecked all boxes for Contacts, Phone and Messages, rebooted my phone, it's still there.

Strange. At some point after i changed multiple settings this feature stopped working for me. Instead of the "suggested contacts" i only saw a sort of blurred panel without any contacts.

So i started searching and re-enabling things and suddenly the suggested contacts were back. Not sure what caused it then, might have been a bug...

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#354

That doesn't make sense. None of this has changed from previous updates and all previous macOS updates were far more stable than this one. This isn't a particularly feature laden update either. But now all of a sudden we get catastrophic (deleted emails) and less catastrophic (missing Music playlists) data loss, crash bugs and generally weird behaviour of many apps. I have identified one particular area where bugs ar…

> That doesn't make sense.

I thought all those reasons sounded good, and the problems he described could have easily become worse in recent years.

Also, FTA: "David Shayer was an Apple software engineer for 18 years. He worked on the iPod, the Apple Watch, and Apple’s bug-tracking system Radar, among other projects."

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#355

That doesn't make sense. None of this has changed from previous updates and all previous macOS updates were far more stable than this one. This isn't a particularly feature laden update either. But now all of a sudden we get catastrophic (deleted emails) and less catastrophic (missing Music playlists) data loss, crash bugs and generally weird behaviour of many apps. I have identified one particular area where bugs ar…

iCloud incompatibility between various macos and iOS versions has been going on for YEARS. As someone who deals daily with 4-5 different devices, I've long run into this issue. Random bits of iCloud just refuse to sync between certain versions without any word of warning. Not at all new in Catalina.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#357
post #262

Yesterday a coworker was frustrated with his computers, and said something insightful: "When software gets past a certain age it just gets bad." He was referring primarily to Android and Windows (10) but it applies to every piece of software that suffers from feature creep. If it's a cash cow they have to keep stuffing new things in and periodically repainting it to make it look new again. Around 10.9, MacOS reached…

I'm reading this on a late-2013 MBP retina running 10.9.5 and not only does it do everything I need it to do, "upgrading" from here would actually cause me to lose essential functionality (which is why I haven't done it). I have a stash of replacement MBPs to replace this one with when it finally does die, but I don't know what I'm going to do when they're all gone because AFAICT everything Apple is producing nowaday…

Same here!

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Library validation has nothing to do with drivers. Depends on the type of driver. For GPU drivers, it is indeed a problem. I'm going to assume from your comment that you haven't actually written many (any?) device drivers on macOS, so let me explain roughly how GPU drivers on macOS work: - One or more kexts provide an IOFramebuffer implementation, plus an IOAccelerator object which listens for various types of user c…

> I'm going to assume from your comment that you haven't actually written many (any?) device drivers on macOS, so let me explain roughly how GPU drivers on macOS work I have written a couple toy ones, but nothing major and I'll admit I have no specialized knowledge of graphics drivers. > Drivers which are implemented entirely as kexts or which are loaded into a "server" user space process are not affected by this, wh…

I generally call the user-space portion of a driver that's loaded into applications to be plugins and keep them outside of the umbrella of "drivers" but in this case I think we both understand what's going on and are just disagreeing on what the terminology is.

Given that the kext is essentially useless without the userspace component (and vice versa), I don't think it's unreasonable to call the plugin part of the driver. Note also that it's installed in /Library/Extensions. This certainly also matches the user experience: they download the NVIDIA "driver" installer which happens to install a bunch of kexts and also the user space components at the same time.

These are plugins that implement AudioHardwarePlugIn, right?

Correct.

More generally, the IOCFPlugin mechanism, which paired user space components with kexts, is essentially dead for third-party driver developers thanks to the increasing lock-down of user space processes.

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#359
post #104

I have a slightly different take on this. I think every company should dedicate a certain percentage of their revenue to handling bug reports from users. Yes, many bug reports will be bogus, but many will be pure gold (I speak from experience). Yes, it involves a lot of manual work. But it is so incredibly worth it — you get to catch the odd bugs that you will never catch with automated or in-house testing. In contra…

> If Apple also spent 10% of its revenue on processing bug reports and fixing bugs Just to be clear, you're suggesting they dedicate $25B/year to bug fixing? Seems high, given their total R&D budget for 2018 was only ~56% of that. https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/05/apple-2018-form-10-k-hi...

[deleted]

Re: Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy

#360

Yesterday a coworker was frustrated with his computers, and said something insightful: "When software gets past a certain age it just gets bad." He was referring primarily to Android and Windows (10) but it applies to every piece of software that suffers from feature creep. If it's a cash cow they have to keep stuffing new things in and periodically repainting it to make it look new again. Around 10.9, MacOS reached…

You'd be amazed at home much time and how many resources useless UI animations take up. Go turn "Animation Scale" to 0 in the android developer settings page, and it will feel like your phone is 10x faster.

This really is incredible, it totally fixes my frustration at waiting for animations to finish and occasionally stuttering as it tries to uselessly slide things off the screen.

Btw, I also have an option under Accessibility that says "Remove animations" that doesn't require having Developer Mode enabled. Seems like an easier shortcut if you only want to turn off these animations.

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