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Apple's Software Quality Crisis

eliseomartelli.it

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Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#741

Post by afandian »

kazinator wrote: post #417

My work Macbook sometimes drops random characters from the lock screen password input. You hit a key and a black dot does not appear; the password is consequently rejected. It's not exactly this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/458099/macos-lock-... The system is not lagging at all. It's not this: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/08/29/mac-wont-accept-correct-l... It's a bit like this, but only for the system p…

I use a 6-digit PIN to unlock my iPhone. I get it right less than half the time. Often one or two numbers just fail to register. ISTR someone else confirmed this bug.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#742

Post by latexr »

whstl wrote: post #728
latexr wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I’m so frustrated, and thinking of my options - it’s either move to Android, or go get hired at Apple with a mandate to fix bugs in various products… Those aren’t options, they’re fantasies. Like dreaming of suing out of existence a company that wronged you, or fixing the world by ruling it, or winning the lottery without playing. Android isn’t perfect either, it’s a different set of frustrations. And why…

While I agree that it's Tim Cook's responsibility to set the course and influence the culture, I doubt a new CEO will be able to so. I'm not saying nobody can be like Steve Jobs, but Steve Jobs was an anomaly when it comes to C-Levels, and even when it comes to management in general, at least from reading things like www.folkore.org and interviews with people who worked with him. And I'm not even talking about talent…

Tim Cook overrides the advice of high-ranking employees in the name of greed and profit, even when warned such decisions will sour long term relationships.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/26/testimony-on-external-pur...

I’m not saying anyone will be better than Tim Cook, I’m saying he’s actively bad. Will his successor be actively bad too? Maybe, but the sooner we find out, the better.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#743

Post by RubberbandSoul »

latexr wrote: post #700
yalok wrote: post #685

This has been going on for years. I used to do a lot of iOS development, and have an eye for bugs. Almost every Apple app/service has been regressing in quality. Take basic functionality - a phone app (calling). After certain audio sessions use (calling via WhatsApp) I can’t make regular calls over cellular - the UI app immediately cancels the call. Only reboot helps. Or notes - for many years/iOS versions, they live…

> Sometimes I’m so frustrated, and thinking of my options - it’s either move to Android, or go get hired at Apple with a mandate to fix bugs in various products… Those aren’t options, they’re fantasies. Like dreaming of suing out of existence a company that wronged you, or fixing the world by ruling it, or winning the lottery without playing. Android isn’t perfect either, it’s a different set of frustrations. And why…

Most consumer electronics companies are like this. It's not only a yearly release cycle but a Christmas release cycle. New Shiny Thing has to be in the stores by late November so all development has to be done in August so the factories can start producing the first trial batches.

I never buy products when they are first released. I prefer to wait at least 3-4 months so that production has had time to tweak all the settings and weed out the funky first component deliveries. Also the software devs will have fixed the worst bugs by then.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#744

Post by lynx97 »

flessner wrote: post #713
yalok wrote: post #685

This has been going on for years. I used to do a lot of iOS development, and have an eye for bugs. Almost every Apple app/service has been regressing in quality. Take basic functionality - a phone app (calling). After certain audio sessions use (calling via WhatsApp) I can’t make regular calls over cellular - the UI app immediately cancels the call. Only reboot helps. Or notes - for many years/iOS versions, they live…

I have run into these same issues, it's particularly frustrating once you see a Reddit thread from a couple years ago outlining the exact issue. For a large consumer-focused company like Apple this can only be explained by ignorance. From a developer perspective many of these inconsistencies are rooting from inconsistent access patterns - operating system (ABI?), applications (ICP?), remote (TCP, HTTP, LDAP, FTP, ...…

[dead]

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#745

Post by mike_hearn »

brailsafe wrote: post #307
mike_hearn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folding phones are great though. I love mine, absolutely worth the purchase price. It's like a portable mini tablet and great for reading.

Worth the purchase price seems wild to me, but I guess things are all relative, have never owned an iPhone either, partly due to price and partly due to inferiority of software. That said, despite flagship folding phones seeming insanely expensive for what they are, they do seem like good and potentially better physical products than the standard static rectangle.

I'm not that price sensitive when it comes to phones, but I open and close my Galaxy Fold several times per day minimum.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#746

Post by makeitdouble »

legitster wrote: post #202
capl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with the "creating products that prioritize user experience over features" - or more accurately what Jobs said: create products that start with the user experience and the user’s needs first and then work your way to the tech (as far as I remember) The opposite approach is starting with some tech and then trying to find a use for it, e.g. folding phones, second 1/2 screen on laptop, etc, instead of tryi…

Can I ask what the fascination with the Apple trackpad is? My other daily driver is a Thinkpad and I actually vastly prefer using the smaller one on it. You're not flinging your wrist across the zipcode and the clicks are more tactile.

The trackpad works extremely great with macos. The acceleration curve, smoothness of scrolling, multi-gesture support that closely matches the UI paradigms, click anywhere and it perfectly registers, etc. It truely is to me the primary pointing device for mac and I immediately bought the external trackpad when trying external keyboards.

But none of that properly transfers to windows, and most of its hardware tweaks become irrelevant. I also didn't mind the Surface laptop trackpads, but vastly prefer a mouse with extra buttons for windows machines TBH (there are a ton of great mice too, so all things considered it's fine that way)

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#747

Post by bergfest »

Apple really should slow down their release cycles and focus on quality for a while. Apple Music on macOS is such an embarrassment. The UI is a mess. Airplay is broken. I just want my old fashioned but decent Mac applications back.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#748

Post by smnscu »

I used to do thousands of interviews across the industry and I vividly remember Apple backend devs being almost always unmitigated disasters. They would always pick Java and could barely use it - to the point where a for loop would be challenging. Their Swift guys were fairly decent though IIRC.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#749

Post by grub5000 »

jwr wrote: post #364

I think a major part of the problem is Apple's attitude towards bug reports: they basically DO NOT WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. Which means that rare bugs go unnoticed and get swept under the rug. I know that it's difficult to triage and process bug reports at scale, but I guess that's where some of those hundreds of billions of dollars could be put to good use.

This rings so completely true to me. Every time I notice a reproducible bug and try to report it to Apple I'm stunned by how difficult they make the process. Even reporting something as basic as incorrectly transcribed podcasts is an awful experience.

Triaging and categorising bug reports at scale really feels like something LLMs should be able to assist with significantly.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#750

Post by genewitch »

int_19h wrote: post #502
webdever wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works on both I don't notice a difference. Mac sucks just as much as Windows (or visa versa). There's things each does better and things each does worse.

Until fairly recently, I would have agreed, but Microsoft is actively enshittifying Windows now by pushing things like cloud-only logins and ads in Start while simultaneously removing configurability (e.g. vertical taskbar was removed in Win11). I'm not a fan of macOS, but at least Apple is not all in on ads the way Microsoft seems to be these days.

I don't have a cloud login. I log into windows with a windows user account. I don't have ads in start, and i can make my taskbar vertical.

literally everything you said was false, but i can only disprove a majority of it with a single screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/XR1aj5b.png

not only no ads in start, no ads anywhere, ffs

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