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Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

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Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#71

Post by Razengan »

kenshi wrote: post #69
Razengan wrote: post #30

I'm one of the most staunch Apple supporters but even I must admit that since WWDC 2019, I have spent more time fighting Apple's bugs than actually using any of the new features...or the old features that used to work flawlessly (like iTunes/Music.) Not just on the user side, but the developer end as well. Perfectly valid code which used to work up till Xcode 11.1 throws errors inside the Swift runtime or toolchain o…

Why be a "staunch supporter" at all? It's one thing to admire the work/output of a company, but once you identify as a "Company X" supporter you are just closing yourself off to being critical of "Company X". I cringe at every WWDC session when people applaud for minor features (new themes in Xcode!) and long overdue bug fixes. I am embarrassed whenever someone online talks about a problem they have with Apple hardwa…

> Why be a "staunch supporter" at all?

Because they consistently make what I want to see. For example SwiftUI, which I had been waiting for my entire life.

Call it the lesser evil, compared to my experience with other companies, if that's more acceptable for you.

Here's a funny observation: I have 20+ upvotes on my previous comment criticizing Apple, but a negative score for the supportive statements on this one.

So you see, some people will staunchly attempt to bury anything remotely positive about something they begrudge, so others feel they have to balance that out. :)

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#72

Post by einr »

benbristow wrote: post #67
java-man wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's always developers' call.

Well then they leave and you have no developers to fix the old bugs

I'm sure Apple Incorporated, the most profitable tech company in the world, market cap $1 trillion, can manage to hire a few competent developers that want to fix bugs.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#73

Post by bangonkeyboard »

saagarjha wrote: post #27
georgespencer wrote: post #19

Apple parrots their OS update metrics as a leading indicator of customer engagement / satisfaction with the platform & how sympathetic they are to the difficulty for developers of putting out software for new hardware every year. I'm interested to know the rationale for them putting out weekly releases vs. fortnightly or monthly. It seems like they could burn a lot of goodwill with casual users.

> I'm interested to know the rationale for them putting out weekly releases vs. fortnightly or monthly. Apple doesn't push out weekly releases to the public. Are you suggesting that they should?

iOS 13 was released exactly 9 weeks ago. There have been 8 public releases so far (13.0, 13.1, 13.1.1, 13.1.2, 13.1.3, 13.2, 13.2.2, and 13.2.3), not counting the 13.2.1 update that stopped 13.2 from bricking HomePods.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#74

Post by sambe »

faitswulff wrote: post #56
bluedino wrote: post #46

13 was the worst iOS release I can remember. Photos would crash from scrolling too fast. Mail wouldn't check for new messages for a whole day. Safari blank screens. Replying to messages in Mail was a 50/50 proposition. The phone would freeze for 5-10 seconds more than it ever did before. All kinds of visual artifacts like text appearing where it shouldn't, UI elements getting orphaned and just floating around, effect…

I'm still holding off on updating my iPad, even though I really want to use sidecar. Has iOS 13 stabilized now?

I'm on 13.2.3 and a lot of the worst things seem to be fixed. That said, I still find some of the design changes odd and unintuitive (e.g. new editing gestures, new Music/Mail layouts). Mail is still infuriatingly slow at almost everything. I think you could probably call it stable (for my usage).

Note that there were also some... "interesting" iCloud sync design choices. You need to upgrade all devices (including macOS) to be sure of proper syncing in some cases, with odd behaviour ensuing if you don't.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#75

Post by skuthus »

gman83 wrote: post #59
Razengan wrote: post #30

I'm one of the most staunch Apple supporters but even I must admit that since WWDC 2019, I have spent more time fighting Apple's bugs than actually using any of the new features...or the old features that used to work flawlessly (like iTunes/Music.) Not just on the user side, but the developer end as well. Perfectly valid code which used to work up till Xcode 11.1 throws errors inside the Swift runtime or toolchain o…

I guess you haven't had Joy-Con drift :)

Nintendo has (usually) made good on their mistakes - I don't know of any other company who does direct exchanges and gives checks back for broken hardware like Nintendo.

The Joy-Con drift is embarrassing

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#76

Post by coldtea »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #15
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #6

The same thing happened when we were working on Leopard under Bertrand. Because the developer toolchain switched to Objective C 2.0 with garbage collection enabled, the OS was unusable for development for months at a time. Development took twice as long as planned, the release was fairly bloated, and required 2 or 3 updates in the first month or two. When Craig took over he introduced a sprint model so that there wer…

I hate that Rich Hickey quote. Sprints are just the classic computer science "divide and conquer" strategy applied to development.

>Sprints are just the classic computer science "divide and conquer" strategy applied to development.

The classic computer science "divide and conquer" (quicksort being a canonical example) has no state to carry over from one divided part to the next.

Divided parts should also be interchangeable -- whereas in sprints they aren't -- they're different stages of a release/feature, with different stuff to be done in each.

Finally, sprint is a total misnomer for "divide and conquer" -- as its very definition is about giving it all for a short time from start to end (a small race). It's not about dividing parts of a larger race.

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#77

Post by saagarjha »

kenshi wrote: post #69
Razengan wrote: post #30

I'm one of the most staunch Apple supporters but even I must admit that since WWDC 2019, I have spent more time fighting Apple's bugs than actually using any of the new features...or the old features that used to work flawlessly (like iTunes/Music.) Not just on the user side, but the developer end as well. Perfectly valid code which used to work up till Xcode 11.1 throws errors inside the Swift runtime or toolchain o…

Why be a "staunch supporter" at all? It's one thing to admire the work/output of a company, but once you identify as a "Company X" supporter you are just closing yourself off to being critical of "Company X". I cringe at every WWDC session when people applaud for minor features (new themes in Xcode!) and long overdue bug fixes. I am embarrassed whenever someone online talks about a problem they have with Apple hardwa…

I generally consider "X supporter" as "X routinely does things that I agree with", not "I would support anything that X does".

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#78

Post by saagarjha »

einr wrote: post #72
benbristow wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then they leave and you have no developers to fix the old bugs

I'm sure Apple Incorporated, the most profitable tech company in the world, market cap $1 trillion, can manage to hire a few competent developers that want to fix bugs.

Adding developers to a project by just "buying them" is unfortunately not as easy as you make it sound. (Note: I'm not saying Apple couldn't use more engineers. It's just not something they can throw money at and fix by next week.)

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#79

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Razengan wrote: post #61
gman83 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you haven't had Joy-Con drift :)

Ohhh yes, now you made me even more depressed. But at least the Switch OS has no oopsies (that I've seen.) :) My [New] 3DS has also been rock solid for years, hardware and software.

The 3DS did have that issue where the lower half of the device could scratch the upper screen.

But I never minded much, because they kept replacing my 3DS because of the scratches, and back then, your 1-year warranty would reset every time a repair was done. So I just kept sending it in, and kept getting a brand new 3DS every year...

Re: Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut

#80

Post by wlesieutre »

criddell wrote: post #8
saagarjha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just did that with iOS 12/macOS Mojave. I guess they need another one?

iOS 12 and Mojave are fine. Just stay there, fix bugs, and add support for new hardware.

iOS 12 is fine for phones maybe, but iOS 13 (or iPadOS if you prefer) is a pretty big change for iPads in terms of power-user features.

USB storage support, network drive support, multiple instances of apps, multiple apps switchable in slide-over, major improvements to Safari.

I've run into some bugs, but I wouldn't switch back to 12.

EDIT - Forgot to mention the contextual menus, which are new to iPads this year as well. I think iPhones with 3D touch hardware had similar actions available in some places, but it's a big addition for iPads and the fact that it's supported across all devices now means that 3rd party devs will bother to implement it.

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