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Apple’s declining software quality

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Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#401

Post by jcoffland »

This will be controversial but I believe Linux will become the desktop of choice in the long run. Here's why. Tech like Docker is making it easier to deploy whole systems of software, not just in the cloud. Google has put most of the apps 99% of users use 99% of the time on the Web. Everyday users are moving away from the desktop anyway. And the whole litany of other typically quoted reasons to use Linux like security, package management, lack of viruses, performance, ect. Finally companies like Microsoft and Apple will find it too expensive to maintain their subpar OSes when they make all their money elsewhere anyway. E.g. iTunes, iPhone, enterprise software[1]. It probably still a long ways off though.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-google-microsoft-where-do...

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#402

Post by mixmastamyk »

coldtea wrote: post #301
mixmastamyk wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improvements of a new OS are happily received. However, we're talking about the reverse, deterioration of mature products.

What mature products deteriorated (apart from iTunes) and in what concrete ways? Mail is much better than it was even a year ago, XCode too, the OS is stable... And FCPX didn't deteriorate over 7 -- it was a written-from-scratch reboot of the platform that just happened to cut some features people used (most got back with a vengeance).

There a number of examples in the surrounding threads. I find most software getting worse these days on all platforms. See CADT: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#403

Post by spinlock »

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…

It's funny, I was just regretting the latest OSX update that I made. My MacBook Pro (work laptop) is 2 years old and was great when I first set up my dev environment. Now, I need to restart every couple of days.

I should spend some time partitioning the disk and installing Linux.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#404

Post by aroman »

martin1975 wrote: post #399

This is for entertainment purposes only type of question - what if they moved just the desktop to Linux instead of OS X and port Cocoa atop Wayland? Leave the mobile stuff on iOS, which it seems it's good for. This is the kind of revolutionary thinking Jobs had when he went OS 9 -> OS X... could Linux set them free on the desktop by open sourcing the desktop OS X? I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, but there's bit…

If this happened I would be unimaginably happy. Actually, one could argue that the move to open source Swift and invest resources into making it run on Linux could be keeping this option open.

And really, I don't think it's very ridiculous. As you've said, it's more or less exactly what Apple did with BSD/Mach and the OS 9 -> OS X transition.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#405

Post by rqebmm »

gearoidoc wrote: post #393
jonknee wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iLife was very important to Steve, he dedicated a lot of time demoing the apps on stage. He was a huge fan of ripping out all the features of iMovie. Same with iTunes (which has gotten a ton of criticism over the years), he was the one that kept cramming everything under the sun into it. I don't know if he was as passionate about X Code, but he sure liked to brag about having the best development environment. Interfa…

Interface Builder is superb once you get the hang of it.

It does a great job of getting you from zero to an app, but it breaks down terribly once you try to do anything custom with it. The fact that it hides code from the developer drives me nuts.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#406

Post by rmc »

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.

Remember Antennagate? The iPhone 4 had a serious hardware fault that significantly degraded it's signal. Jobs himself was the one who said to a customer "You're holding it wrong"

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#407

Post by freehunter »

leetNightshade wrote: post #377
vannevar wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, good software applications from Apple have been the historical exception rather than the rule. Great hardware, good OS, mediocre software for the most part. This reflects the company's priorities as a hardware vendor: they make very little money from software, and hence have little direct incentive to put a lot of resources into it.

I don't agree with great hardware, if we're talking about durability and easily fixable. At least the Macbook line seems designed to fail after a number of years or be too expensive to continue fixing in favor of buying a new one. Apple products, besides the high end desktops, seem disposable, no matter how well made it looks.

Years is still a long time to measure the lifespan of a laptop. Plenty of less-expensive laptops fail at the one-year mark, some fail at two, some laptops equally as expensive as a Macbook will fail before five years are up. Some Macs fail before five years, some last beyond that.

And five years is a long time when it comes to computers.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#408

Post by Jtsummers »

edgyswingset wrote: post #232
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…

> Google latest Android Map crashes all the times 1-2 minutes into the navigation I haven't had these issues, but I have had significant issues with its performance. 15+ seconds to initialize. At least 3+ seconds needed to swap between transit options. Moving to navigation mode feels sluggish. And this is on a Nexus 6, with no issues with other apps. When I choose "walk" as the navigation mode it puts an Uber route o…

That Uber ad was seriously misleading and annoying when I was traveling last month. I wanted to walk across the city. WALK. I get directions, it gives me a route and a time, it seems quicker than I expected, but not by too much. Start moving and look at it while I'm going and realized they wanted me to get in a car. The time it would've taken a driver to get to me, I'd have been halfway to the destination on foot.

Don't insert ads into an app in a way that misleads users. You'd be pissed if you opened a book, started reading at Chapter 1 and found that the first 3 chapters you read were just a tease of another book, yours starts on Chapter 4.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#409

Post by bsbechtel »

mwfunk wrote: post #367

I blame the stock market pressure towards growth. The stock market rewards growth at the expense of everything else. It's like a kid pinching his arm to blow up a mosquito that was biting him- it's forced to grow and grow and grow until it pops. It's no longer acceptable to simply run a profitable business with happy employees and customers. It creates a push towards constant acceleration in all things- shorter relea…

I don't think it's the stock market. If anything, it's the CEO not focusing on making products that make people's lives better and instead focusing on what everyone else in SV (and the tech industry in general) is making.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#410

Post by bluedino »

Animats wrote: post #372

This has to be a management problem. Apple has total control over the hardware, total control over third party developers, and $203 billion in cash. What are they doing wrong? Apple has the resources to approach software like aerospace. Formal interface specs, heavy Q/A, tough regression tests, formal methods. It's expensive, but Apple ships so many copies that the cost per unit is insignificant. Microsoft did that,…

>>Apple has the resources to approach software like aerospace. Formal interface specs, heavy Q/A, tough regression tests, formal methods. It's expensive, but Apple ships so many copies that the cost per unit is insignificant.

They don't have the time, however.

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