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

Apple's Software Quality Crisis

eliseomartelli.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#751

Post by jeffhuys »

flohofwoe wrote: post #68

Here's my personal canary in the coal mine that something must be fundamentally broken in Apple's software development process: - on a recent macOS version, right click on the desktop, select 'change wallpaper' => the new settings panel opens - click on 'Custom Color' - now hold and drag around the 'color cursor' in the color selection circle for a few seconds - stop dragging and notice how the color cursor continues…

Can't reproduce. Second one this thread where someone had this error "for years" but I can't reproduce. Smells of a setting that's been migrated for years from an old version, as where I'm writing from is a clean macbook with a clean account (M3, about a year old now).

EDIT: can repro. But it's very important to note: you need to have a color selected already. So select a color with the + sign, close the app, open it, top right click custom color, and then the bug appears, although not like you describe: the color selection is easy, it jumps around for 20ms during dragging. If this is what we call "low quality" I'm happy to stay on Mac.

Might be a reason why it wasn't fixed if you didn't include that vital step in your repro.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#752

Post by cageface »

grishka wrote: post #538
cageface wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can really see this when trying to build apps with Swift & SwiftUI. The language and the framework seem to be optimized for nice terse WWDC demos but both fall apart pretty quickly when you start to do any heavy UI lifting with them. And I think that's starting to bleed into their own native UI now too. The lousy macOS settings app is a good example. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any good alternatives to A…

All of these modern "declarative" frameworks seem to be optimized for hello world kinds of apps. Jetpack Compose, too. And SwiftUI is just being too smart sometimes: https://tonsky.me/blog/swiftui/ Not sure about other people, but for me, my UI framework making its own heuristic decisions about how to lay out and style my views is the last thing I want. It robs me of the certainty that my UI will look and work the wa…

Yeah that view builder syntax is a perfect example of optimizing for the wrong thing. It makes for nice short examples but in real apps your compile times explode trying to untangle these crazy generics and the compiler very often just throws up its hands and tells you to figure it out. This means you just start commenting out bits of code until you find by trial and error what it doesn't like.

That this is shipping in the native UI framework for a trillion dollar tech company is astonishing.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#753

Post by ThinkBeat »

robinsonrc wrote: post #611
roody15 wrote: post #268

When you upgrade MacOS 15.3.0 apple automatically enables Apple intelligence and then turns on Apple intelligence reporting (15 min intervals) by default. You are not prompted or asked to enable. After disabling Apple Intelligence when you do the next mini update to 15.3.1 Apple intelligence is enabled. Again no prompt and your previous choice to disable is ignored. This IMO is a bad sign for Apple software quality.…

My current plan is to basically never move on from macOS 14 and perhaps move away from macOS entirely when the time arrives that I’d be forced to upgrade (new hardware needed, etc)

For reasons I am not sure about,

When a new major version of macOS is released macOS developers seem obsessed with quickly releasing a new version of their apps that will only run on the newest operating system.

From then on any updates and bug fixes are only available on the latest macOS

If you don't upgrade to the latest and greatest macOS you are out of luck.

I fear the day when all new apps must target the M* chip and everyone on the x64 side has a paperweight

This made even worse when Apple dictates when your computer is no longer allowed to run the latest and greatest OS¹.

On the Windows side, a majority of applications tend to work on a wider range of operating systems.

¹ There are various ways of bypassing this and installing the latest OS in a most unsupported manner.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#754

Post by Shinchy »

I was literally just talking about this the other day—every app on my Mac that gives me trouble is from Apple (Music, Podcasts, Keynote). And don’t even get me started on the declining UX quality in iOS. It feels like the cracks are really starting to show now. I know Apple’s developer quality has been on a downward trend for a while, but at this point, it’s impossible to ignore.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#756

Post by alexashka »

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…

> What these companies need to do is slow down and stop chasing every shiny thing

Who is dealing in fantasies now, friend? :)

Apple's software really isn't in crisis. It's just very low quality relative to what people who've written software for a living know to be possible.

But it doesn't matter - Apple is a prestigious jobs guarantee program for rich kids first, entity that delivers value to consumers second.

It's not that they're chasing shiny things. They're cosplaying competence and they genuinely don't know it. They think they're actually competent, elite really, because they attend 'elite' schools, get good grades and go work at the 'best' places.

They have it ingrained in them that anything a poor person says can be disregarded because poor people are losers, because they're poor. They're an unintentional suicide cult. They genuinely don't know it. You can't convince them of anything because they are rich. If you complain - go see a therapist, there's something wrong with you.

You can youtube search Garys Economics. It's a poor kid who slipped into the rich kids club and defected. It's quite eye opening.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#757

Post by ios-sux »

About a year ago I changed from android to ios, thinking id have better integration with my laptop.

A year on and my main take away is that ios is slow, buggy and has frustrating ux. The over use of modals and no consistent pattern for going back are frustrating. The UI lagging and glitching out and application crashes are so much worse and more frequent than I had on an old pixel.

I dont think ill stick with ios for my next phone but i dont plan on replacing it for 3 years so it's going to be a frustrating 4 years with a supposedly premium device that is objectively an inferior product.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#758

Post by jeffhuys »

flohofwoe wrote: post #124
vardump wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - stop dragging and notice how the color cursor continues jumping around erratically (it's impossible to actually select the exact color you want) Tried dragging color cursor for 30 seconds+, no issues at all. MacOS 15.3.1 (24D70) on 16" M2 Max.

Ah now it's getting interesting :) So far I could reproduce the issue across several machines, also on new demo machines at the Apple booth of electronic discounters - so I don't think it's something about my configuration, but maybe it has something todo with how I'm using the trackpad (but I'm just sliding around with the right-hand pointer finger). PS: the mystery might be solved => that buggy 'Custom Colour' UI i…

You need to have a color selected to begin with. This bug won't appear when switching from an image/dynamic to color. Only color selected -> close app -> reopen -> top right custom color. But even then, it's a MINOR thing, it doesn't stop me from selecting the right color at all...

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#759

Post by jeffhuys »

troupo wrote: post #726
Toutouxc wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> modern Apple basically wants macOS to go away and sees it as more of an annoyance, so they don't spend any time tuning it [citation needed]

Oh, the leadership keeps saying that MacOS is separate from iOS and they care about MacOS. And then they keep adding iOS UIs into MacOS, produce horrible laggy iOS-optimised software for it, and call it a day. Actions speak louder than words.

Doesn't mean they want macOS to go away though. Merging code-bases is a bad thing now?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#760

Post by jeffhuys »

webdever wrote: post #348
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, why did they decide to use Electron instead of native? After all those are Apple MacOS software.

It's not electron, but it is a WebKit view (HTML based) So is the App store on all platforms AFAICT.

Do you have a source for that? Because that's news to me...
Post reply on HN