Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

tuaw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 98 posts

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#61

Post by pfranz »

tolmasky wrote: post #48
stock_toaster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Couple this with the stark reality that Apple has simply run out of ideas in terms of software I dunno. Continuity seemed to me to be novel and useful when it was presented. Healthkit is new, and not really "just a refinement".

Continuity is really interesting since it really highlights just how far we've gotten from the original promise of seamless integration between Apple products. For starters, its taken years to get to this feature (with incredibly confusing pitstops in the middle, such as the existence of a feature called Airdrop on Mac AND iPhone that didn't work between them....). All in all though, continuity is another disappointm…

Apple (and others) have clearly double downed on an app-centric metaphor. This is obvious from App Store and home screen only showing apps--interestingly they did add recent people to the multitasking menu). They're also struggling with trying to reinvent documents (and haven't done much). Services/Workflow-centric and people-centric are the other approaches I've seen attempted[1] with only minor success. I don't blame Apple, none of the other approaches have gained any traction and Apple has really streamlined app centric management: centralized finding apps, purchasing, encapsulating installing/uninstalling, updating, etc. All of those things were pretty inconsistent and terrible before OSX/iOS.

I also wished they refined more of the Bluetooth integration that OSX had 10 years ago (sending/receiving txt messages, using it as a remote, etc). Sadly, it only now seems to be coming back and in an iPhone-specific way. But other than the iPhone tie-in, what would be different? If you had your phone Bluetooth paired to multiple devices, wouldn't they all buzz? If you don't want them to buzz, can't you just disconnect them (as you would un-pair bluetooth)? If you had a remote tethered to multiple devices, would "Play" trigger them all at once?

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhyIsntPeopleCentricUIDesignTa...

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#62

Post by sneak »

rayiner wrote: post #12

My iPhone 6+ has shown more bugs in 2 weeks than the three iPhones I had prior to that (the original, 3G, and 4). Has hard locked at least half a dozen times, particularly when receiving calls.

iOS 8 does this weird thing where notification banners half the time can be dismissed with a swipe up (the normal way) and half the time with a home button click (they don't respond to swipes). Same app, same notifications.

Also don't even get me started on the orientation confusion (in app - clicking back to the home screen is fine) and general lagginess and freezing on 8.0.2 on a €999 phone that's a week old.

It feels like it's missing even some of the most basic QA.

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#63

Post by tolmasky »

macspoofing wrote: post #56
tolmasky wrote: post #37

I'd just like to point out that this is likely not to get better with this (arbitrary) decision to release a new OS every year. It used to be that we'd have a new release roughly every 2 years (from 2003 - 2011). This meant: 1. it was in development for 2 years and thus probably stabler to begin with, and 2) there were then 2 years to iron out the bugs. You'd get the new OS, there were some understandable kinks, but…

>This meant: 1. it was in development for 2 years and thus probably stabler to begin with No. Shorter release cycles don't imply loss of quality. I claim the opposite in fact. Rolling releases are much better for quality. You're releasing smaller more focused features and battle-testing them in the field. >There is no stabilization phase. There are always stabilization phases. Not every major release will be an overh…

> No. Shorter release cycles don't imply loss of quality. I claim the opposite in fact. Rolling releases are much better for quality. You're releasing smaller more focused features and battle-testing them in the field.

The jury is out on this. We have seen that longer release cycles with teams that take things seriously can be very successful (mission critical software). We've also seen that short release cycles can be very effective. The context of your software matters a great deal here, as well as the basic mechanics of how your software is delivered. You can't just take the philosophies of web sites and apply them across the board and declare it objective fact:

1. Take for example the fact that with a web service you can deploy quickly to a small subset of users, and grow it as it proves itself. This is quite ideal, but regardless of whether its even practically possible with OS software, its certainly not what Apple does. The combination of a short release cycle with a worldwide release means that "catching your bug" may mean catastrophic data loss for a large amount of customers.

2. With a web service you have the option of rolling back a bad version, or, simply deploying yet another release. Again, whether its possible with OS's or not, Apple certainly doesn't (or can't?) employ this strategy. The best they can do oftentimes is simply remove the update, but everyone that has it installed keeps having the bug until a) your fix is out and b) they actually install said fix.

> There are always stabilization phases. Not every major release will be an overhaul. Most will be incremental updates.

There certainly could be stabilization phases, but the proof is in the pudding and thats not how it feels. All the last releases have seen major additions, and most the regressions I run into either take years to fix (dual monitor support) or still remain increasingly broken (Messages to name just one example). There is a simple reality to having a year to stabilize without the pressure of a PR push of new features vs. balancing your stabilization with coming up with compelling things to slap on a website and show in a keynote.

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#64

Post by bsaul »

jdp23 wrote: post #24
rayiner wrote: post #12

My iPhone 6+ has shown more bugs in 2 weeks than the three iPhones I had prior to that (the original, 3G, and 4). Has hard locked at least half a dozen times, particularly when receiving calls.

Similarly, Safari frequently locks up or crashes on my iPad -- behavior that started with 8.0.0 and has continued through 8.0.2. I rarely remember this happening in the past.

Safari doesn't even properly recognize half the links on webpages now. I need to slightly zoom/unzoom the page to make them work...

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#65

Post by tvon »

rayiner wrote: post #12

My iPhone 6+ has shown more bugs in 2 weeks than the three iPhones I had prior to that (the original, 3G, and 4). Has hard locked at least half a dozen times, particularly when receiving calls.

On a 5s with iOS8 I have seen the Touch ID system completely vanish. It wouldn't lock and I could launch Mint without any kind of authentication (the mint app has integrated Touch ID which previously worked well).

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#66

Post by feld »

ffreire wrote: post #31
jordhy wrote: post #27

You took the word out of my mouth! It is by far and it is also losing some of its legendary attention to detail. I've noticed the amount of patches going up as well as the stability of software go a little bit down. But that's not all, most major unix tools in Mac OS X are 2 to 3 years outdated and Safari is a bug nest. To bring some balance to my criticism I fell that innovation at Apple has not decreased but the qu…

As referenced in this article[0] a major blocker for shipping newer versions of the command line toolchain is the fact that newer versions of these tools moved to an incompatible GPLv3 license. [0]: http://robservatory.com/behind-os-xs-modern-face-lies-an-agi...

Oh come on, that's far from serious. There are 6 pieces of software there that are old because newer versions are GPLv3. Grep could be replaced with bsdgrep, and nano could be replaced with pico and nobody would notice. The other 4 aren't that important for day to day use except bash and OSX should have switched users to zsh a long time ago, or simplified the shell by using tcsh as default.

The older version of openssh is rather perplexing, though, but they haven't updated any of the other bsd utilities really and the pf firewall is ancient too.

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#67

Post by MBCook »

tolmasky wrote: post #37

I'd just like to point out that this is likely not to get better with this (arbitrary) decision to release a new OS every year. It used to be that we'd have a new release roughly every 2 years (from 2003 - 2011). This meant: 1. it was in development for 2 years and thus probably stabler to begin with, and 2) there were then 2 years to iron out the bugs. You'd get the new OS, there were some understandable kinks, but…

There's nothing wrong with yearly release cycles, Apple's problem seems to be that they've tied their OS to the hardware cycle.

It doesn't really matter if the OS is completely done, or still has a fair number of bugs. It MUST release at the same time as the new phone.

Combined with this is the fact that the apps are bundled with the OS. While certain enhancements definitely need operating system support, there's no good reason they couldn't be updating Safari or mail or notes to quash little bugs throughout the year. Instead you have to wait for a .1 release or the next full OS (since they never seem to do .2s).

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#68

Post by dfischer »

fidotron wrote: post #10

Apple has had a decline in software quality since around the Intel transition. Prior to that OS X had become really very respectable, but during it lots of typical things started happening, like suspend not quite working sometimes, and external display support going to hell. It doesn't seem like they ever recovered. It's hard to admit now, but at one point I even liked XCode, but again, that was before they iTunesd i…

I disagree with the decline after Intel. I'd say their quality grew a lot more after the Intel transition. That's when Apple started picking up steam and gained a higher adoption rate for their operating system. Especially with developers.

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#69

Post by adamnemecek »

DrJokepu wrote: post #60
adamnemecek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The later versions have been decent but I installed the first public beta and really regretted it for like a month or two until it got a bit more stable.

Surely you did not disregard all the warnings on the download website and the installer itself and installed it on the main partition of your primary work computer?

Whether I did or not is irrelevant. Grandgrandparent was saying that the betas have been solid, I disagreed.

Re: Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?

#70

Post by Animats »

The first rule of Apple software quality is that you don't talk about Apple software quality. It's like complaining about Rolex watches not being accurate.

Typical error on a Rolex is a minute or two a month, sometimes worse. Rolex doesn't even provide chronometer certification for their watches. As their CEO says, "We are not in the watch business. We are in the luxury business".

That's the market Apple is aiming at.

Post reply on HN