Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#781

Post by cellularmitosis » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:10 AM UTC

henry_viii wrote: post #721

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…

On Notes: 1. If you copy some text 2. Select other text 3. Paste the text you copied to replace the selected text Notes will crash. This has been known for years. Also if you turn off all suggestions in Spotlight on iOS and just use it as an app launcher, it will still take seconds for Spotlight to show you the results. For something that's supposed to be an indexed look up.

I keep annual journals in Notes and I’ve noticed (on iOS) that the keyboard becomes increasingly laggy as the year drags on / as the note length increases. I can only assume they are synchronously flushing the file to disk on the main thread during the keyboard callback handler.

I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s how an iOS intern would implement it.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#782

Post by neuronic » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:10 AM UTC

jeffhuys wrote: post #751

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…

Just tested on M1 Pro, 15.0 (Settings version) on Sonoma.

After initial custom color selection by clicking on the "+" (which works fine) and then reopening the Window to click "Custom Color" and then selecting the color again... it doesn't just jump for 20ms - it goes into full on psychotic flash jump behavior and basically continues to do so hands-off for 5 entire seconds before it stops at a random color.

There is 2 options now:

1) nobody has ever tested this workflow at Apple, automated or not.

2) it was tested and discovered but then pushed into the backlog as non-priority. Here the question arises - for how long?

The bug probably generates zero lost dollars so nobody at Apple cares anymore. THIS is what used to be different.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#783

Post by mirekrusin » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:11 AM UTC

I have work provided macbook pro.

Siri/intelligence is disabled through company managed profile.

When there is some noise in the room a popup appears saying "You do not have permissions to use siri".

There is nothing you can do, siri is disabled (can't enable or disable it myself, it's managed) but this stupid popup appears all the time so many times per day.

There is nothing in settings to make it go away.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#784

Post by meindnoch » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:16 AM UTC

WithinReason wrote: post #729

karmakaze wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My indicator for if Apple is for the customer vs for Apple is how macOS 'negotiates' YPbPr instead of RGB for non-Apple branded monitors (some LG monitors also get a pass) which results in worse color quality. I believe this to be carefully engineered to be a plausible bug rather than a real one. BTW I have found a workaround using BetterDisplay and an EDID override (to more closely match what the monitor is actually…

There is no reason why YCbCr should be visually worse than RGB if the conversion is accurate

It depends on the exact meaning of "YCbCr" and the meaning of "RGB". Is it BT.601? BT.709? BT.2020? Adobe RGB? Display P3?

Also extra fun is guaranteed if one end of the video cable is encoding with e.g. BT.601 primaries, while the other end is decoding as e.g. BT.709, or vice versa.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#785

Post by sureIy » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:16 AM UTC

Cupprum wrote: post #681

I have a feeling that user testing just gets completely avoided. One thing which bugs me since the last redesign of the horrible apple photos app, is that they changed its order of showing picture?! After going on a trip, i like creating a album and sharing it with my family, I also put there some comments, and try to turn it into a story. I believe this is what an album is supposed to do, tell a story. Therefore ren…

Man every time I read someone complaining about the new photos app it feels like they never even tried looking for a solution. "It changed, so it's broken."

1. Open shared album

2. Tap "Sort" button in the bottom left corner

3. Select "Sort by oldest first"

I don't know if they could have done it any simpler than this.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#786

Post by HPsquared » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:19 AM UTC

The quality crisis is systemic throughout the whole economy. So many fields are getting more disorganised, messy and chaotic.

On the one hand things are moving faster, doing more with less, being more responsive etc. But this comes at the expense of quality and long-term reliability / support. Applies to hardware too.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#787

Post by bamboozled » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:20 AM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #786

The quality crisis is systemic throughout the whole economy. So many fields are getting more disorganised, messy and chaotic. On the one hand things are moving faster, doing more with less, being more responsive etc. But this comes at the expense of quality and long-term reliability / support. Applies to hardware too.

Sounds a bit hyperbolic, do you have some actual evidence of this?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#788

Post by fl4tul4 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:21 AM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #786

The quality crisis is systemic throughout the whole economy. So many fields are getting more disorganised, messy and chaotic. On the one hand things are moving faster, doing more with less, being more responsive etc. But this comes at the expense of quality and long-term reliability / support. Applies to hardware too.

Automated AI code writing to the rescue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#789

Post by latexr » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:21 AM UTC

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #727

latexr wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then turns on Apple intelligence reporting (15 min intervals) by default. That feature is so misunderstood, it feels like no one read the help text or tried it and is just going off the misplaced outrage of everyone else. That setting is not about sending information to Apple, it is a personal private report for yourself. There are enough legitimate reasons to criticise Apple, we don’t need to make up a problem…

I don't want any goddamn reports!

Which is a valid but entirely different complaint from claiming those reports are being sent every 15 minutes. What sense would that even make? They could just log your data anyway without you knowing or providing a setting for it. Why would they make it a toggle for something you need to provide authentication to access?

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#790

Post by ljm » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 11:21 AM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #738

henry_viii wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Notes: 1. If you copy some text 2. Select other text 3. Paste the text you copied to replace the selected text Notes will crash. This has been known for years. Also if you turn off all suggestions in Spotlight on iOS and just use it as an app launcher, it will still take seconds for Spotlight to show you the results. For something that's supposed to be an indexed look up.

Select/Copy/Paste has been bad from the start on iOS, another I can’t get over is how the backspace behavior has the absolute worst timings for jumping to words and paragraphs.

And the auto complete on proper nouns. I'm typing someone's name and it'll often get corrected and will take more than one attempt for what you actually intended to stick.

No, Ellie isn't a typo and I didn't actually mean Emma.