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Apple’s declining software quality

sudophilosophical.com

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Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#541

Post by dghughes »

erickhill wrote: post #527
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…

"...magically reboot or bluescreen nearly as much." Mine never magically reboot. Ever. (OS X)

My Macbook Pro did which reminds me the extended warranty period is ending.

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#542

Post by dkonofalski »

elliotec wrote: post #528
reitanqild wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you missing an /s tag there or am I temporarily dumb?

Neither? Not sure which part you are referring. I really believe that it's the best dev platform, I've tried all of them. Ubuntu can come close, but orders of magnitude less user friendly. In my opinion and the opinions of folks I've discussed this with.

I would agree. I love my Macs for dev work. Web dev and app dev alike are an absolute treat with a Unix-style backend but a much more polished front-end. Ubuntu is probably the only Linux distro that comes close to giving me that terminal power without rubbing it in my face constantly when I'm just trying to manage my day to day stuff and, even then, it's not even close to OS X. Windows, on the other hand, is only usable for me with third-party software for everything and then I feel like I'm spending just as much time futzing with everything as I am doing anything productive.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#543

Post by dkonofalski »

outworlder wrote: post #496
melted wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should take your Mac to the store and have them take a look. Or at least run hardware diagnostics. I've been using Macs for well over a decade and in that time I have maybe seen 4-5 crashes total, across multiple laptops and desktops. A crash every two weeks is not a normal situation in OS X.

Depends on what you are doing. Just yesterday, OSX was convinced that I had an external monitor. I did, but that was 2 hours back when I was at the office. So I got to the preferences screen and.. the kernel crashed.

Do you have some kind of third-party display or window manager installed? I regularly (as in "every day") have my Macbook hooked up to dual monitors and I've never had the kernel crash due to a disconnect or a change on the preferences screen. Does that happen regularly for you or was that just a one-off occurrence?

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#544

Post by baudehlo »

bluedino wrote: post #414
nostrademons wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, I think it's a perception problem. As someone whose starry-eyed Mac obsession predated Windows 95 - Apple's software has always been buggy. It was buggy under Sculley, it was buggy under Amelio, and it was buggy under Jobs. I remember getting plenty of sad Macs under System 6 and 7, and early versions of OS X weren't any better. We just didn't care because Steve Jobs was really good at distracting us with promis…

>> 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…

Actually NT 3.51, which I used for dev and was great compared to my colleagues on plain windows.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#545

Post by mikeash »

kbenson wrote: post #532
mikeash wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying means you believe X but say Y. If you believe Y, say Y, but the fact is X, that's not lying.

I didn't say he lied, I said he was called a liar (but really, it's more that the strong implication was that he lied, that was overly strong wording on my part). Specifically, I think the wording "I find that hard to believe" has different connotations depending on whether you are talking to the root source of some information, or someone relaying that information. For example, if I state "I had chicken for lunch" a…

I simply don't see the implied accusation of lying with "I find that hard to believe." It's merely implying that the statement is wrong. You seem to be interpreting it as an accusation based on the idea that a person making this statement about himself is very unlikely to be incorrect. I don't see that as at all unlikely, and you'll observe here that the statement was in fact quite wrong.

As for levels of uncertainty, I think blanket statements cover a pretty wide range. "I don't use the default apps" could be low or high certainty. If you said something like "I totally definitely absolutely never use the default apps" while you are actually somewhat unsure, then sure, that seems like a lie to me.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#547

Post by doomlaser »

macintux wrote: post #390
doomlaser wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they weren't going to do a public SDK, until after the huge sustained public outcry. I understand the plan was to work with select third parties on a case by case basis, sort of akin to standalone game consoles.

I hear that repeated a lot, but I haven't seen any real evidence to back it up. It seems equally plausible, especially given how quickly they announced the SDK after the iPhone release, that Apple was preparing for it but not ready yet (and/or wanted to give themselves time to work out the early kinks in all of the other parts: working with AT&T, supporting the new device and new OS, etc, etc).

It was reported in the Isaacson biography:

"Apple board member Art Levinson told Isaacson that he phoned Jobs “half a dozen times to lobby for the potential of the apps,” but, according to Isaacson, “Jobs at first quashed the discussion, partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth to figure out all the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers.”

Apple had already established a model for selling third party software on the iPod video line through iTunes -- with select partners only.

When WWDC 2007 rolled around, after the release of the iPhone, Jobs presented web apps as the solution for developers, without the need for an SDK. It was only after months of sustained outcry from the development community, and the nascent jailbreaking scene, that Jobs announced that they would prepare a public SDK for the next year, after they decided on a method of signing and sandboxing applications.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#548

Post by arrrg »

rconti wrote: post #308
pi-err wrote: post #76

> it’s tragic that Aperture and iPhoto were axed in favor of the horrifically bad Photos app (that looks like some Frankenstein “iOS X” app) I find Photos.app to be the best Apple app I've ever used. It's simple, modern, works amazingly well between iOS and OS X, transparently manages 100GB of data between iCloud and local storage. This entire piece is surfing on Mossberg's take and goes way too far. From what we kno…

I don't see how anyone could call Photos.app the best app they've ever used. Right off the bat, I can never tell you why I'm in a mode where I can multi-select or not. When I double-click on a photo, all of a sudden an intermediate navigation thumbnail bar thing pops up, but it doesn't let me do the things the main thumbnail view does. I don't know when I can use the back arrow or not. Flagging no longer shows up on…

Eh, I think you could say a lot of similar things about iPhoto. That was one shitty app, certainly much, much, much, much more shitty than Photos …

There are always many things “wrong” (in your case it’s mostly your specific use case and the place you are coming from, basically mostly your own preferences and biases?) with something, always, always, it’s impossible to avoid. Can’t design for everyone, just can’t.

PS: Check the menu. It’s absolutely crucial for OS X software. It’s a design paradigm Apple has been unflinchingly following forever, with iPhoto, with Aperture, with everything. They will hide all the custom stuff and little features there that depends on subjective preference there. For example, check View, then Meta Data to get your hearts on the thumbnails.

(Deactivate My Photo Stream. It’s deprecated and Apple will hopefully mothball it soon. I agree, it’s confusing, but that’s the debt you acquire when unthinkingly doing stuff. I agree that sucks, definitely. The All Photos album is also confusing, I agree. Apple should have abolished it and had, but people were whining about it. Basically, the Photos view has all your photos in chronological order, the All Photos album has all of your photos in the order you imported them. Also, don’t you have to explicitly share photos for them to be shared? Which is exactly what you want? I’m not sure what your multi-select point is all about. You obviously cannot multi-select when Photos just shows an overview. I agree that’s a tradeoff, but in my view one that’s very well worth it.)

In summary: Photos is modern, blazingly fast, cruft free and extremely logical. I love it. So much better than iPhoto ever was.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#549

Post by dkonofalski »

mahyarm wrote: post #359
microtonal wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I don't buy the "Apple software went downhill as of late" thing. First, because as said there were always issues. I fully agree. I jumped on the Mac and OS X bandwagon in 2007. The first few releases of Leopard (10.5) were quite hellish, because I was constantly having Wifi problems. My HP Laserjet didn't work until 10.5.2 (in 10.5.0 and 10.5.1 it would just print a few pages and get stuck). Snow Leopard w…

I agree that photos is a lot better than iPhoto & co. The performance is blazing and I migrated from lightroom to it because of it. I can't find a faster and easier to use photo library management app. Lightroom is really slow compared to it.

You just convinced me to give Photos another chance. I absolutely hated it when they gave up on iPhoto and Aperture because I felt like I lost a lot of features if I moved to Photos. Ever since then, though, I haven't found a photo solution that works quite as well as any of the Apple products I've used in the past so I'm willing to give it another shot.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#550

Post by dkonofalski »

Kalium wrote: post #333
coldtea wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You probably wasn't paying attention when Job was running things. OS X 10.1 was a mess -- it took until several updates to become somewhat usable. The Finder was half-arsed for a decade. Mail.app had several issues. The Windows vers…

I remember the initial Windows release of Safari. Apple insisted on doing their own font rendering, and the result was blurry headache-inducing text.

Wasn't that a Windows issue, though? I feel like font-rendering on Windows, in general, is far inferior to font-rendering and aliasing on the Mac. Especially with the new HiDPI displays popping up, Apple's stuff looks far better to me than any display I've ever seen on Windows.
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