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Apple's Software Quality Crisis

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Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#491

Post by iknowstuff »

cageface wrote: post #485
bondolo wrote: post #390

While I worked at Apple in 2021-22 their issues seemed about the same as nearly every other company producing consumer apps and devices; bloated slow garbage with very mediocre quality. Their engineering culture is terrible, especially as it relates to transfer of the “Apple ethos” to the next generation of devs. Apple is going to be indistinguishable from the rest of the pack within the next decade. But most of all…

You can really see this when trying to build apps with Swift & SwiftUI. The language and the framework seem to be optimized for nice terse WWDC demos but both fall apart pretty quickly when you start to do any heavy UI lifting with them. And I think that's starting to bleed into their own native UI now too. The lousy macOS settings app is a good example. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any good alternatives to A…

Their new wifi network selector is laggy as fuck. The old one was perfectly fine. This is just like windows reimplementing basic UIs in their UI-framework-of-the-year.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#492

Post by resonious »

webdever wrote: post #338
pico303 wrote: post #331

As someone forced to use a Windows laptop for work with the new job, I've stopped complaining about my Mac. It's so much worse on the other side of the fence... Working on Windows makes me appreciate the Mac ecosystem so, so, so very much.

As someone who works on both I don't notice a difference. Mac sucks just as much as Windows (or visa versa). There's things each does better and things each does worse.

I'll somewhat echo this. I think simply switching puts the new OS at a huge disadvantage, because not being used to something can make it seem bad.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#493

Post by rezonant »

Take8435 wrote: post #467
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is better than Windows on most counts for sure, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to use it full-time without making significant concessions on preferences about how desktop environment stuff works. If you’re someone who grew up on Macs there’s almost nothing in the Linux desktop space that tries to replicate that set of patterns… it’s all Win9X-type taskbar setups, mobile-type setups (GNOME, Pantheon), old ni…

> If you’re someone who grew up on Macs there’s almost nothing in the Linux desktop space that tries to replicate that set of patterns… it’s all Win9X-type taskbar setups, mobile-type setups (GNOME, Pantheon), old niche *nix setups (e.g. WindowMaker), and of course minimal tiling WMs. There’s no clones of Mac OS of any flavor. Have you seen https://hyprland.org ?

What about hyprland makes you think of Mac? These two things barely resemble each other at all.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#494

Post by cosmic_cheese »

enlightenedfool wrote: post #337
pico303 wrote: post #331

As someone forced to use a Windows laptop for work with the new job, I've stopped complaining about my Mac. It's so much worse on the other side of the fence... Working on Windows makes me appreciate the Mac ecosystem so, so, so very much.

What exactly did you find so much worse in windows?

With every Windows release since 8, it feels more and more like the OS is actively antagonistic towards the user. This has come to a peak with Windows 11.

Not too long ago I booted up an old laptop and put a fresh install of Windows 7 on it for kicks. Amazing how much of a breath of fresh air that was.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#495

Post by starfezzy »

bigyabai wrote: post #406
kibwen wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm forced to use Apple and Microsoft products at work regularly. They're all so much worse than desktop Linux that it's not even funny.

This is exactly what happens to me. I get the company laptop, think "maybe Linux isn't that great anymore... how is modern FAANG handling things?" Then the ads come in, and any of my doubts evaporate instantly. The home PC runs NixOS, it's been that way for 6 years now and it will probably remain that way until the advertising glut is satiated. Even then, it won't be easy getting me to switch away from desktop Linux.

Linux is nice if, like nixos users, you want to spend hundreds of hours over several years writing every QoL feature totally custom for your unique use case.

For me, Mac is 99% of what I liked about Linux, and there is ALWAYS an existing QoL solution—usually reasonably polished—for everything it lacks.

Windows has none of the benefits ofLinux, none of Homebrew or even the AUR, a tiny fraction of the QoL third party features from Mac (usually unpolished)—to say nothing of the first party QoL features—plus the hardware is comically bad. Diving board trackpads are normal on $3k windows machines in 2025, 500nits displays, whistling fans on about 17 high-end laptops I tried in the past 6 months. Truly the worst experience imaginable. Abominable, even.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#496

Post by cosmic_cheese »

crazygringo wrote: post #366
swat535 wrote: post #212

It's not just Apple guys, it's everywhere. Software quality has seriously declined across the board, from Spotify to Slack to core operating systems like Windows and macOS. I think a major factor is corporate culture, which largely ignores software quality. Another issue is that many engineers lack a solid understanding of CS fundamentals like performance, security, and reliability (perhaps this is why many are not a…

Honestly, I don't think it's a culture thing or a CS fundamentals thing. I think it's the fact that software is 100x, or maybe even 1,000x, more complex that it was just 25 years ago. Apps are built on so many libraries and frameworks and packages that an average application will have 100x the amount of code. And they're all necessary . A typical phone app is 200 MB, when Word 4.0 was less than 1 MB. But it's not jus…

> And they're all necessary. A typical phone app is 200 MB, when Word 4.0 was less than 1 MB.

On native platforms, no it’s not.

I know this for a fact because I maintain moderately complex, functional phone apps that have binary sizes that sit below the 30MB mark. I use multiple desktop and mobile apps from other developers that also match this description.

The cause of the bloat there can be attributed to the following things, mostly:

- Apps including gobs of poorly optimized analytics/marketing garbage

- Third party libraries unnecessarily including their own gobs of poorly optimized analytics/marketing garbage

- Apps being wrappers of a web tech stack project built by devs who have zero dependency discipline, resulting in a spiral fractal tree of dependencies that takes up way more space than it needs to

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#497

Post by userbinator »

tacker2000 wrote: post #140
madeofpalk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire settings app rewrite is the canary of how Apple's software development process is broken, especially for the mac.

I mean ok, the old one was already a bit overloaded and unwieldy, so a redesign was probably overdue and Ill give them the benefit of the doubt here but WTF is with the 1-2 second delay when switching between the menus in there? Are they doing web requests upon opening every settings page or what? This is real amateur hour.

Are they doing web requests upon opening every settings page or what?

At least some of them are actually web pages:

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma...

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#498

Post by inetknght »

danans wrote: post #232
inetknght wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Increased reliability and stability" is not a good consumer sales pitch It is when Apple is claimed to be a quality boutique shop.

> claimed to be a quality boutique shop Have they made that claim anytime in the last few decades? Perhaps that's the vibe behind their marketing, but you'd have to be blind to their size, sales, and market value to believe it.

> Have they made that claim anytime in the last few decades?

I'm not sure that Apple themselves ever really did.

So it becomes even more important when people stop associating Apple's software with quality when it was people who started to associate it as such in the first place.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#499

Post by lunarboy »

karmakaze wrote: post #208
flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Here's my personal canary in the coal mine that something must be fundamentally broken in Apple's software development process: - on a recent macOS version, right click on the desktop, select 'change wallpaper' => the new settings panel opens - click on 'Custom Color' - now hold and drag around the 'color cursor' in the color selection circle for a few seconds - stop dragging and notice how the color cursor continues…

My indicator for if Apple is for the customer vs for Apple is how macOS 'negotiates' YPbPr instead of RGB for non-Apple branded monitors (some LG monitors also get a pass) which results in worse color quality. I believe this to be carefully engineered to be a plausible bug rather than a real one. BTW I have found a workaround using BetterDisplay and an EDID override (to more closely match what the monitor is actually…

I JUST BOUGHT A NEW MONITOR AND WENT DOWN THIS RABBIT HOLE AHHHH Almost returned this perfectly fine monitor thanks to Apple, thank god for BetterDisplay though, actual gem of an app

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#500

Post by gajjanag »

pengaru wrote: post #459
bondolo wrote: post #390

While I worked at Apple in 2021-22 their issues seemed about the same as nearly every other company producing consumer apps and devices; bloated slow garbage with very mediocre quality. Their engineering culture is terrible, especially as it relates to transfer of the “Apple ethos” to the next generation of devs. Apple is going to be indistinguishable from the rest of the pack within the next decade. But most of all…

Having joined a large established FAANG, it's become quite apparent that in any large established entity with so much management and meta work, with strong incentives driving more energy towards the meta work than where the rubber meets the road, it's inevitable for product quality to deteriorate. Internally the prioritized output becomes the meta work, not what reaches customers. What reaches customers is almost som…

Same. The compensation is substantially better at FAANG, but in terms of actual on the ground work being rewarded, almost never the case.

Meta-work (lots of "cross functional" documents, alignment meetings, sync ups with senior tech leads to brown nose, deliberately creating low quality output to justify hiring more people/growing one's "scope") is 90% of it.

Any actual output is largely accidental, coming from the 20% still naive, or idealistic enough to actually care about what they produce.

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