Apple's Software Quality Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#831

Post by stackedinserter » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:51 PM UTC

Since I can't fight the windmills I just lowered my expectations and tried to alleviate the pain as much as possible.

My iphone starts playing spotify after connecting to car's bluetooth? Screw it, I just removed spotify. Macos opens itunes every time when I connect to bluetooth headphones? – Can't remove itunes but here's a script that monitors and kills it. Macbook constantly overheating? – cooling pad is a solution (kind of). Airdrop almost never works? Okay, there's no airdrop, we send everything via IM. Management of photos is complete dumpster fire – that's ok, Photosync and locally hosted photobank is a solution.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#832

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:51 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #753

robinsonrc wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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* chi…

I think it's OK as long as I can keep my development tools and productivity tools.

I'm intrigued by Apple products because my working laptop is a MacBook Pro. I'm thinking about buying one for studying MacOS internals and app development, so as long as I'm not forced to update XCode, homebrew, caffeine, sublime text and a few other tools, I think it's fine.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#833

Post by DanielHB » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:52 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #783

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.

I was having a similar problem due to company managed profile. IT forced lock-computer and turn off screens on 2 minutes of inactivity. MacOS atrocious window management completely fumbles to restore window positions when external monitors are connected.

Meaning _every_ _single_ _time_ I step out of my workstation all my windows would reset back to my laptop screen instead of my external monitor.

My solution? Install 3rd party tool to prevent my computer from locking automatically. Congrats IT you played yourself.

Like I get the lock-computer settings, but why also turn off the screen? It annoyed me enough I opened an IT support, but like always IT people don't care about the workers worflow.

They also didn't let me change my wallpaper forcing me to use company-brand wallpaper. That is just petty.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#834

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:52 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #783

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.

I'm wondering if sufficient knowledge of MacOS internals is good enough to disable some features by hack.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#835

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:54 PM UTC

DanielHB wrote: post #833

mirekrusin wrote: post #783

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.

I was having a similar problem due to company managed profile. IT forced lock-computer and turn off screens on 2 minutes of inactivity. MacOS atrocious window management completely fumbles to restore window positions when external monitors are connected. Meaning _every_ _single_ _time_ I step out of my workstation all my windows would reset back to my laptop screen instead of my external monitor. My solution? Install…

I have a similar issue, but it is about key stroke lagging when entering the password if there are external monitors connected. Eventually I installed caffeine and problem solved :)

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#836

Post by thoroughburro » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #662

progmetaldev wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Windows really had the same type of issues going from the old Control Panel to Settings. I still get large delays for some of the screens in Windows Settings.

But that's considered normal in the Windows world. Unfortunately, to stay on top Apple doesn't have to do well for the customer. They only have to do better than wintel/android machines.

Presumably Windows machines with AMD processors, too.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#837

Post by alt227 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #14

The sad thing about this is that in the Android ecosystem, you are likely to get just as shitty software on a much, much shittier hardware. You cannot have nice things. Oh, and just buy a new one while we're at it, lmao.

I dont agree with shittier hardware. The flagship phones of companies like Oppo and OnePlus are incredible, easily on par with the construction quality of the best iPhones, with often many more features.

On the software side at least on Android you have the power to do something about it. You can flash custom firmware or launchers, hell you can even code your own to completely replace the android interface if you want.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#838

Post by txr » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:57 PM UTC

It's just said that Apple seems to not care. Just to add to this long list:

Open a link from an email on an iPhone or iPad, then go back to Mail by tapping on the top left corner. If you now delete an email, this email gets deleted but the view does not update to move to the next email. If you now hit delete again, you are deleting the next email without noticing it.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#839

Post by possibleworlds » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:57 PM UTC

retrac98 wrote: post #595

Nevermark wrote: post #587

I got Homepods for all my rooms. Woops. The unpredictable bad behavior is maddening. All intermittent but frequent problems: • I ask Homepods to play some music, and music starts playing in another room. • I ask a room to play something, it says that is not in my library. I ask again. Same response. The problem comes in two flavors: One, I have to power cycle the Homepod to get things to reconnect. Or two, there is a…

This is disappointing to hear. I was thinking of getting some HomePods to replace my Sonos system which has got progressively less reliable over the years to the point of being virtually useless now. Are there any modern home audio setups that connect to streaming services and actually work reliably? At this point I’m thinking of just going back to an iPod and dock like it’s 2006.

I have Sonos and they work perfectly, I love them. If you think Sonos is bad (recent app update included) go look at the HomePod subreddit, it is basically non stop issues. Having said that, I use Airplay a bunch and it is fine for me. I have had problems with Airplay in the past that were 100% solved by checking and improving wifi signal strength.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#840

Post by DanielHB » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 12:57 PM UTC

jFriedensreich wrote: post #774

I used to think these reports were exaggeration until i had to use the apple tv app to watch severance. I am beyond shocked how bad this app is and how every interaction feels like a downer. Buttons miss hover effects, icons are off center by a few pixels. Whole interaction workflows were obviously never tested and just don't work. I hope the explanation is just that the app was outsourced but if this is the level of…

Man I just got a mini-itx case and use a full-blown windows desktop next to my TV. Bought a "fly-mouse" (wireless mouse that works with gyroscope), set screen DPI to 200%.

One thing I didn't expect is that my family ends up using the TV quite a lot for planning stuff, like doing google sheets, planning trips on google maps, booking planes/restaurants/concerts/etc. We have a small normal wireless mouse and keyboard for such occasions.

No regrets, open platform > closed junk. Can also play steam games on TV. Can't wait until Steam OS works well on desktop so I can ditch windows too. If you only care about media and not gaming you can get a case small enough that can fit hidden away in a cabinet.