Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#51

Post by linguae » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:54 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #12

I think it has more to do with a gradual industry-wide race to the bottom in terms of quality. Reliability, attention to detail, correctness occupy a tiny fraction of the "budget" compared to security, slopping out features, and beating competition to market. I suspect that startup culture being the crucible where a large portion of engineers learned their chops and the massive amount of new blood in the industry who…

I concur. To add, I wonder how much of the “old guard” is still at Apple? Apple used to be perfectionistic when it came to software, even during the 1985-1996 interregnum when Steve Jobs was absent. Besides Steve Jobs, Apple also had people like Bruce Tognazzini and Don Norman who cared deeply about usability. When Apple purchased NeXT and built Mac OS X, Apple’s usability focus was married to reliable, stable infrastructure, culminating with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which I believe was the pinnacle of the Mac experience. (Though I’m partial to the classic Mac OS from a UI point of view, Mac OS X had a better UX due to its stability.)

I suspect a lot of Apple’s decisions in the past decade regarding software is due to an increasing number of Apple employees who are not familiar with the philosophies of 1970s-era Xerox PARC, the classic Mac, NeXT, and Jobs-era Mac OS X. Granted, it’s possible to be too introspective, too focused on the past. Unfortunately Apple’s software is losing its perfectionistic qualities, which has long been the selling point of the Mac compared to Windows and Linux.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#52

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

ohgr wrote: post #36

PaulHoule wrote: post #23

I recently got an M4 Mac Mini which is an amazing piece of hardware. (When it came in the mail I couldn't believe it could fit in the small box it was in!) My wife was angry about the large volume of advertising, both on web sites and on the desktop, on the machine out of the box. Part of it was needing an adblocker, which meant switching to Firefox, because installing an adblocker on Safari requires an Apple account…

You don't need an Apple account to install an adblocker. You just install it from here https://adguard.com/en/adguard-mac/overview.html And you don't have to pay for it, just close the ask.

Thanks, I'll give it try!

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#53

Post by ohgr » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

tbeseda wrote: post #27

Anecdotally, Apple Music has deteriorated exponentially for me. iTunes was such a stable, usable piece of software, but I can't get reliable use out of Apple Music for the life of me. It _feels_ like a shoddy Electron app. But that's not fair to the actual Electron (or similar) apps that actually work. For all its many design and product flaws, Spotify actually works.

It's a bit hit and miss for sure. If you turn off the subscription and Apple Music portal stuff it works fine though. I use it with a cable to sync to my iPhone with offline files I ripped with XLD from CDs. It's all the network crap that breaks it.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#54

Post by alberth » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

john_alan wrote: post #44

alberth wrote: post #30

Is this a real problem, or a perceived problem? I know people like to complain about Apple's software quality - but is this actually an issue - or just the popular thing to say?

Using macOS since Tiger as daily driven. Never been worse. Needs a “Snow Leopard” year.

> Never been worse.

How so? Would you mind giving examples.

Note: I'm not disagreeing. Just curious what software quality issues you're having exactly.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#55

Post by FredPret » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #32

FredPret wrote: post #7

I would pay a premium for a system that never gets any new features except for bug & security patches. In fact, that's more or less what iOS was for a long time, and I loved every second of it. Once you have a good feature set, you can spend years and years ironing out 100% of the bugs and vulnerabilities and you'd build a rabid fanbase of crotchety tech-saturated users like me. I want something that Just Works.

I've been using fundamentally the same Linux setup for over ten years now. I think the biggest change it went through was migrating the audio system to Pipewire, which took about an hour to figure out and hasn't need attention since. I have no solutions to offer for smartphones sadly.

Amazing. The mental peace you've gained this way probably vastly outweighs the initial investment and missing out on the newest "features".

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#56

Post by drcongo » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #23

I recently got an M4 Mac Mini which is an amazing piece of hardware. (When it came in the mail I couldn't believe it could fit in the small box it was in!) My wife was angry about the large volume of advertising, both on web sites and on the desktop, on the machine out of the box. Part of it was needing an adblocker, which meant switching to Firefox, because installing an adblocker on Safari requires an Apple account…

You can log into your Mac and your AppleTV and your iPhone and your iPad and all the services Apple has to offer with your Apple account. How is Microsoft offering the same thing any better?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#57

Post by skyyler » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

realo wrote: post #37

kome wrote: post #17

but the hardware premium is kinda real... i have been using my macbook air 11 daily for 10 years (I am writing this comment on it), and it works flawlessly. somehow i don't think other brands are so well made, or they weren't so well made 10 years ago.

Yes but... but... Did you update it to the latest version of Mac OS (Sequoia) with all the security patches via official Apple channels ? No you did not.

I don't think you can update any 10-year-old windows computer to the latest version of windows (11) with all security patches via official microsoft channels.

(Also, lol @ "via official Apple channels", you're aware Open Core Legacy Patcher is a thing and have hedged against people mentioning it.)

What are you comparing to?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#58

Post by JoshTko » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

1980phipsi wrote: post #48

tbeseda wrote: post #27

Anecdotally, Apple Music has deteriorated exponentially for me. iTunes was such a stable, usable piece of software, but I can't get reliable use out of Apple Music for the life of me. It _feels_ like a shoddy Electron app. But that's not fair to the actual Electron (or similar) apps that actually work. For all its many design and product flaws, Spotify actually works.

The podcast app is the same shoddy-ness. Re-arranging things in the queue is such a PIA.

podcast app is the worst, I can never find what I'm looking for

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#59

Post by ryandvm » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #7

I would pay a premium for a system that never gets any new features except for bug & security patches. In fact, that's more or less what iOS was for a long time, and I loved every second of it. Once you have a good feature set, you can spend years and years ironing out 100% of the bugs and vulnerabilities and you'd build a rabid fanbase of crotchety tech-saturated users like me. I want something that Just Works.

A side effect of employing tens of thousands of full time people that do product development is that matter how good your product currently is, there is an entire organizational hierarchy that has to justify its existence. The result is that every great product keeps picking up parasitic features and functionality. Intended to add value, but paradoxically removing overall value.

There is a fine line between staying ahead of the competition and enshittification and most companies don't find it.

The most recent examples that come to mind are Spotify and Slack. Products that were, at one time, a pleasure to use, but have since been significantly degraded by a continual assault of minor features and re-working of UI.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#60

Post by layer8 » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

mbrumlow wrote: post #3

Software problems like we are seeing are not something that happen over night. They slowly appear until you can’t see them. It takes years of bad design and decisions to get what we have. I see this throughout the industry and can’t help conclude the problem started about 5 years ago, and we thus we are now seeing the results of Covid and possibly WFO.

You are right that it has been a cumulative process, and the issues will continue to accumulate. But it has nothing to do with Covid or WFH. It started years before that.