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Apple’s declining software quality

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Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#471

Post by petra »

nostrademons wrote: post #427
Animats wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is losing market share to Android. The gravy train may not go on forever. Apple today is in the position of GM in GM's glory days, the wonderful days of powerful V8 engines, HydraMatic transmissions, tailfins, and the "longer, lower, wider" wide-track Pontiac. GM didn't think they needed massive improvement in quality. They were wrong. Watch this commercial for the 1967 Pontiac GTO.[1] Looks a little like one o…

I think that the Apple/Google/Microsoft/IBM quadrifecta perfectly illustrates one of the lesser-known points of The Innovator's Dilemma : customers care about different values in different points of the product's lifecycle, and that leads to differing companies becoming dominant. When a new product category is introduced, customers primarily care about ease of use and relevance to their lives. Radical vertical integr…

This seems like a good description of product maturity process in B2B markets. But consumers are motivated by different things(once products are good enough) - the chief among them is psychological/social value/perception, mostly created via marketing or by being first - and in general pretty hard to disrupt.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#472

Post by blakeyrat »

koralatov wrote: post #43
ssharp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's sad that so many people, myself very much included, now stick with OS X merely because ``it's not quite shitty enough to switch''. When I switched to the Mac initially, I switched because it was vastly better option than XP; now, I feel that lead has been eroded and that Windows 10, while different, isn't far behind OS X in most respects.

The funny thing is I actually switched from OS X to Windows XP, primarily because Apple made me angry when they refused to do anything to continue Classic app support. (If I'm going to lose all of my favorite apps anyway and have to start over, might as well start over on the OS that has 10 times more apps, right?) (Also, I still hold a grudge over the "free forever" .Mac service.)

I wouldn't say Windows 10 is behind OS X at all. In some contexts, like a corporate workplace, it's at least a decade ahead, and always has been. (Then again, Apple and Mac fans generally discount that environment entirely.)

The biggest problem Windows 10 has are: 1. Crummy HighDPI support (and yes, they've been working on this, but the work is WAY too slow-- this should have been solved 5 years ago, guys) 2. Crummy third-party apps, made by developers who have no respect for the OS or its users 3. The new "constantly updates, and occasional ads" philosophy Windows 10 is taking. I wouldn't even mind the ads much if they weren't so stupid. (Stop trying to sell me the copy of Office 365 I ALREADY OWN!)

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#473

Post by smrtinsert »

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…

The cult of jobs exemplified. There were absolutely issues under Jobs, but somehow his sheen made people ignore them.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#475

Post by halis »

Aside from getting to the top of Hacker News, I don't think this article achieves much. Listing things like Photos instead of iPhoto is more of a product development decision than a systemic quality problem.

I run Parallels and Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro and Windows runs smoother in there than it does on my Windows laptop...Maybe that points to superior hardware and integration, but I think it's also because OS X is more efficient than Windows and it's 500 lb sack of goiter it drags around in the form of legacy support for everything in the last 30 years.

I used to be a Windows computer, Android phone user. Now I'm an iPhone and MacBook Pro user. Every ecosystem has issues. I find that iOS and OS X still give you the smoothest ride though.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#476

Post by bsaul »

I used to complain a lot about ios sdk. I found it so miserably out of date and clunky, and full of undocumented weird behaviors that i constantly had to fight to create fancy UIs...

Then i went back developping on android for a small project, and found that image file names couldn't have space, or uppercase letters.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#477

Post by garyrob »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #42
garyrob wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I won't write a list of the problems in detail, but I've been a Mac user since the 80's because I've always preferred Apple's elegant design and ease of use. But lately, it's hard to figure out how to do things, and it's very buggy. Both I and my son have had to reset our phones to fix problems. It looks like my wife will have to reset hers to deal with a problem with music synchronization. And the design as…

Good UIs have discoverability, but increasingly the software has - whatever the opposite of discoverability is. Simple example: Mail tries to guess settings for you. If you don't want it to do this - it regularly gets them wrong - you have to uncheck a box in the Advanced tab for every account you have. (Because obviously, that's where you're going to look.) Then, instead of making the change, you have to click any o…

"I have no idea who's in charge now, but whoever it is has no idea what they're doing."

Isn't it Jonny Ives? He has a very sensitive eye for physical design. But he may know, or care, nothing about good software design.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#478

Post by yeukhon »

igrekel wrote: post #429
yeukhon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 comput…

My main computer is an OSX both at work and at home. Honestly it isn't very responsive compared to recent lung desktops or even the latest windows 10. Or at least it mostly feels that way when using Eclipse, so maybe its the JVM.

I usually think UI in most Java-based applications are very slow on Mac OSX but that's just my limited experience with Java-based UI on this platform.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#479

Post by hga »

KirinDave wrote: post #420
melted wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should probably consider using that "static driver verifier" because Surface Pro 4 is crashy as hell.

Yeah, but that's because Skylake is buggy as hell. It's a bit of a bummer. MS cannot publicly blame Intel for the raft of skylake bugs, but it's first gen hardware, first gen software, and first-gen firmware. For what it's worth, my Surface Book (obviously a product they care a lot about) has basically gotten to a crash rate equal to my mac, which is maybe 1 actual problem every 2 weeks). I suspect the Surface 4 Pro…

If Microsoft was serious about enhancing the real and perceived quality of the brand they are establishing with the Surface Pro line (which seems to be very nice based on the my mother's earlier generation model), they should have tested Skylake, and it in the Surface Pro 4 prototypes, detected the problem, and delayed the launch. Intel's problem became their's when they shipped it in their hardware.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#480

Post by AJ007 »

pwthornton wrote: post #454
bluedino wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Apple's software has always been buggy. It was buggy under Sculley, it was buggy under Amelio... Classic Mac OS was buggy by design - it didn't have multitasking and memory protection, it was single user... Windows had that same problem before 2000 (well, NT 4, but not many people used that). I use OS X daily and I use Windows 7 daily. I have far fewer issues with OS X for whatever reason that may be. My computers…

I agree that OS X is more reliable. I have both a Mac and a PC in my office, and my 5K iMac has never crashed. I had some weird issues with Windows 10 after I upgraded my laptop, where it would hang after an update.

I switched from using Windows for 20 years to OS X (excluding Linux for work related stuff.) This is the first time I've been able to work from a laptop with my productivity level as good or better than a desktop. The design and usability surpassed what I expected. I haven't noticed any bugs.
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