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Apple’s declining software quality

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Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#61

Post by DigitalJack »

knughit wrote: post #46
daheza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read much about Jobs but I wonder how he achieved the perfection in his product. Force the teams to work overtime to correct the bugs? Did he double the QA size in order to catch all these bugs? Did he demand that all code checked in must be at incredibly high standards, thus forcing the devs to QA more of their own code?

He went on stage and gave a sock presentation that made everyone forget about the bugs. Users judged the book by it's well-kerned prettily animated cover. This is the same old tripe about the young generation's moral decline, and rose-tinted rearview glasses.

Exactly this. Snow leopard was a great release in terms of quality, but leopard wasn't.

Many releases had critical flaws that needed a point release in less than 2 weeks.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#62

Post by monkmartinez »

koralatov wrote: post #19
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #7

While I agree that Apple's software quality has declined in recent years, I fear that their hardware and other advantages (even with superior hardware and software I don't trust a Google-or-Amazon-based phone for a second to be anything but a data mine for them), I fear Apple's existing lead in general quality will allow them to become (remain?) complacent and allow things to slide.

I agree with your concerns about a Google or Amazon phone being a datamine in your pocket, but I think that, for most people, it's not an issue: they simply want a phone that works for them and don't give much thought to how much information about them is being squirrelled away. A huge factor in Apple's sliding software quality is lock-in: once you're on iOS using an iPhone, it's so much easier to simply stay on iOS…

Then you decide to pull the trigger and move. I did and I am happy that I did. I still have a mac for my primary machine, but literally everything else is Android and Windows. I consciously make sure my data is portable. No lock in and it's not that hard.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#63

Post by pljns »

zzzeek wrote: post #28
pljns wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't suspect so much traffic, we're back up now :)

apple's stock symbol is AAPL, not APPL. also: > consumers know that Apple’s hardware is the very best, but more and more their using apps made by Google and Microsoft and Facebook. "they're", not "their".

Thank you!

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#64

Post by bpicolo »

roymurdock wrote: post #25

Here is the author's list of gripes: On OS X this is especially true: OpenGL implementation has fallen behind the competition, the filesystem desperately needs updating, the SDK has needed modernizing for years, networking and cryptography have seen major gaffes. And that’s with regards to the under-the-hood details, the applications are easier targets: it’s tragic that Aperture and iPhoto were axed in favor of the h…

Feature bloat is a problem in virtually every piece of software people have ever used.

Time and time again a startup comes along with "-foo- simplified", gets people to switch with it's ease, bloats up the product over time, and then loses to the next guy.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#65

Post by planetjones »

It's surprising just how bad Apple's software has got in a seemingly small space of time.

Yosemite was the biggest disgrace of all. My mouse or keyboard would not wake the iMac after it went to sleep. And the beach ball was seen so frequently that my 1500 CHF iMac was useless after just 2 years. El Capitan finally fixed the sleep issue and the beach ball is seen much less, but I'd expect much more for the price I paid. The profiteering of Apple with regard to having an SSD with the iMac also severely annoys me.

My iPhone seems to have numberous glitches and software issues too. And for a fine example of just "what the hell are apple thinking" - the original incarnation of the battery monitor in iOS was it. What's the use of seeing the percentage of the battery an app has used - a completely useless statistic unless it included the time too. I still don't find it a particularly useful feature, as I am sure my battery is draining too fast, but the battery monitor gives me no simple way to prove this.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#66

Post by robmcm »

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 software that had "the focus of Steve" was generally very high quality. However there were a number of rotting products at Apple while he was still in charge.

The problem now is none of the SVPs seem to have that attention to detail, or they are too stretched doing numerous things.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#67

Post by jwcooper »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #22

Is Apple's software quality truly declining? I've been an OS X user for a couple years now, and I'm perfectly happy with my laptop and its updates. Whenever I read articles like these, I wondered if the software quality has actually declined, or if it's received too many features to be properly maintained, or if now it has so many more users that the flaws have become more apparent.

Indeed, I rarely have any kernel panics, or system crashes on OS X, and especially iOS with the latest iPhone. Other than iTunes, their software (that I use) has been pretty good lately.

I've actually had more problems with the hardware. My late 2011 Macbook Pro was just returned from the offsite Apple Repair with it's 3rd logic board (that being said, it's still under an extended warranty from Apple, which is at least a consolation prize).

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#69

Post by nilkn »

ebbv wrote: post #33
koralatov wrote: post #12

It feels a little clichéd to say it, but I do feel that Snow Leopard, outdated now as it is, was some kind of fortuitous confluence of factors that resulted in OS X being as close to perfect as it's ever been. Even putting aside the iOS-style elements being added, my experience has been that each version of OS X has been slightly worse than the last, and tends to introduce strange little anomalies and instabilities o…

I think you have rose colored glasses about Snow Leopard. It had plenty of bugs and hiccups. People deride the "iOS style" features of El Capitan but first, what specifically are you referring to besides Launcher? Do you think adding Notifications to OS X is bad? I find them extremely useful, and like the integration better than the spotty support Growler had among third party software. I never use Launcher but it's…

It's less about Snow Leopard having been supposedly perfect and more about how OS X feels like it's just floundered around randomly since then.

In fact, for me, I can honestly say that OS X has almost strictly regressed in terms of my day-to-day experience. Spotlight now covers up way too much of the screen for almost no gain; if I'd wanted that, I'd have just used Alfred. Mission Control is still not as powerful and flexible as Expose + Spaces, and now it even goes so far as to hide desktop thumbnails even on my dual 27" monitor setup. Seriously?

What's most shocking to me is how much Windows has caught up from a UX perspective. I have Windows 10 on my (primarily gaming-oriented) desktop. Since I don't use the desktop for much programming, I almost never find myself wishing that it was running OS X instead. That's a real blow to the magical grip that OS X once held over me. Cortana is just as good as spotlight -- better, even -- and it manages to be much more space efficient as well. Windows Explorer is so much more useful than the bafflingly overly simplistic Finder. On Windows, if I want to tile windows, I can -- get this -- just drag them to the side, top, or any of the four corners. On OS X, I have to either fiddle with their impressively clunky split-screen full-screen app disaster or use a third-party tool like Spectacle or BetterTouchTool.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again because I felt OS X was so much better. Now I find myself only really sticking to OS X for two reasons: (1) it still has better touchpad interaction on a laptop; (2) it's still based on Unix so I prefer it for programming.

Re: Apple’s declining software quality

#70

Post by gtrubetskoy »

It is not fair to single out Apple - all the software has gone downhill in the past couple of years - browsers, websites, apps, appliances, virtually everything.

My suspicion is that it's the proliferation of new ways of doing things - new languages, no-sql/key-value db's, new hosting platforms such as AWS, docker, big data stuff like hadoop, storm and spark, all kinds of embedded software (tv's, cars), etc - we've got a lot of new stuff lately, a lot of us don't understand what we're doing and we've introduced a ton of bugs.

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