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Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

lapcatsoftware.com

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Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#81

Post by mikestew »

omnicognate wrote: post #18
redleggedfrog wrote: post #4

Actions speak louder than words - Apple is letting it's developers know what it thinks of them. You're going to have to raise quite the ruckus to get them to change their behavior. There's really no impetus for them to change when they're sitting on a mountain of cash.

I never thought I'd wistfully look back on Steve Ballmer yelling DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!! Apple seem to view external developers as a kind of infestation. The systems and processes they subject them to seem designed to actively discourage them.

I never understood why Ballmer took so much flack for that. Which platform would you rather write code for, the one one with a sweaty representative going on about how much the company loves the people who write code for their platform, or the one that doesn't even try to conceal its contempt for you, the developer?

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#82

Post by jbverschoor »

speedyapoc wrote: post #24

I estimate that around 10% of my Feedback Assistant reports ever receive a reply or acknowledgement. These are for reproducible bugs in iOS, for which I've provided an isolated sample project with a 100% reproduction rate. It takes time to create a thoughtful and detailed bug report and the lack of replies are beyond frustrating. I'm glad to see this post and couldn't agree more.

Same here. TBH I’m starting to get fed up by a lot of Apple things lately

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#83

Post by realusername »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #77

I previously blogged about how Apple treat web developers with negligence when it comes to Safari [1]. This makes it looks like Apple treat other developers with negligence as well, which is unsurprising, frankly. [1] https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-rel...

I solved this by basically treating the browser as legacy and "best effort", similarly as IE11 in its days.

They have a very large number of basic features broken regularly, it's not only about cutting edge stuff. I suspect their testing practices are less than stellar.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#84

Post by jbverschoor »

ladberg wrote: post #8

I sympathize: even filing radars internally at Apple gets much of the same treatment, albeit with the ability to see the state of the radar.

Which basically mean they’re understaffed with people who enjoy fixing bugs. Fixing bugs, fine tuning, just gardening the code base

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#85

Post by iudqnolq »

mikestew wrote: post #81
omnicognate wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought I'd wistfully look back on Steve Ballmer yelling DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!! Apple seem to view external developers as a kind of infestation. The systems and processes they subject them to seem designed to actively discourage them.

I never understood why Ballmer took so much flack for that. Which platform would you rather write code for, the one one with a sweaty representative going on about how much the company loves the people who write code for their platform, or the one that doesn't even try to conceal its contempt for you, the developer?

Dear Board,

I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.

Sincerely yours, Groucho Marx.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#86

Post by snazz »

s3p wrote: post #48
vasdae wrote: post #35

I suppose Feedback Assistant is like Windows' Feedback Hub. Users fill it to the top with shit making it impossible for Apple or Microsoft to do anything useful with the feedback.

Do users even use Feedback Assistant? I have yet to hear of anyone in my circle (friends, family, coworkers) submit a Feedback. None of them are developers or us the developer beta of iOS, so I have always surmised that to be why.

The app is installed but hidden by default unless you’re running a beta (and in my experience I’ve never gotten a reply to a report unless it’s on a beta). You can use the website or launch the native app with its URI scheme but approximately nobody does that unless they’re really frustrated with a bug and know Feedback Assistant exists.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#87

Post by jbverschoor »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #47
changoplatanero wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah he's lamenting how poorly the external developers are being treated but seems like they are largely being treated the same as Apple treats its own employees

I found it sometimes frustrating as well. But my experience was that it depended on the engineer/team/screener the Radar went to. Obviously if it was a bug I found, I much preferred to talk to the engineer in person who maintained the code in question. There were plenty of teams that were very good about jumping on bug reports and getting right back to me. In fact, a decade or so ago at Apple this was more or less th…

Don’t they autonomously analyze a crash report’s stack trace and group them together?

As for feedback.. if someone had a dev account or is linked to it, they should be flagged as more detailed/investigated

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#88

Post by jbverschoor »

ryandrake wrote: post #69
JKCalhoun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally, daily BRBs (kept to an hour) with engineers attending. If it turns out there are too many Radars to keep the BRBs to an hour then there are issues elsewhere. At the same time, I didn't mention it above, engineers need to be allowed time in the product schedule to fix these bugs. As probably everyone knows, when a bug is kicked down the road once (because of scheduling constraints: hey, we gotta ship the soft…

Incentivize screening Radars (and fixing them). There's no engineering glory in keeping your unscreened count at zero... nobody gets promoted for it.

Not everybody wants to get promoted

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#89

Post by jfim »

jshier wrote: post #78
crazygringo wrote: post #70

Boycotts/strikes* only work if most or nearly all people participate, because you'll only participate if you're pretty sure nearly everyone else is too. While if this blogpost merely gets 0.1% of developers to strike... Apple couldn't care less. I think this developer strike is a great idea, but launching it as a single person 's call to action (Jeff Johnson's) is not generally going to be effective in changing behav…

Fundamentally, such a strike assumes Apple cares about the free reports they get from their developers. I'm not sure that's true. And even if it is, it's not like they don't have enough other reports or features to work on, so the loss of all outside bug reporting probably wouldn't affect them at all.

There might even be a middle manager that gets to say "external bug reports are 30% down YoY, our quality efforts worked out."

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#90

Post by AshleysBrain »

realusername wrote: post #83
AshleysBrain wrote: post #77

I previously blogged about how Apple treat web developers with negligence when it comes to Safari [1]. This makes it looks like Apple treat other developers with negligence as well, which is unsurprising, frankly. [1] https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-rel...

I solved this by basically treating the browser as legacy and "best effort", similarly as IE11 in its days. They have a very large number of basic features broken regularly, it's not only about cutting edge stuff. I suspect their testing practices are less than stellar.

Yep, we've ended up on the same idea - we make a best effort to keep it working and if we can't we advise to switch to another browser. But tough luck on iOS, as other browser engines are banned...
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