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

901–910 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#901

Post by hbosch »

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…

>phone app

I'm triggered. How many times have you reached for the 'end call' button, but the other person ended the call a moment earlier than you, and as you press down the screen immediately flips to your "recent calls" screen and you call a random person straight away?

This is such a common and terrifying experience for me, and yet it's been the default UX on the Phone app since probably day 1.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#903

Post by guappa »

RubberbandSoul wrote: post #743
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…

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 s…

I am entirely sure that a notes app can be updated in january.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#904

Post by xmddmx »

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…

Here's my favorite UI/UX bug which has been there for years:

In Calendar (macOS) create a new event.

In the start or end time, type in the Minutes field, but type slowly.

For example, type "2" pause a bit, then type "1"

If there's more than ~300msec pause between the two keypresses, the 2 changes into "02" and then the 1 overrides it, so you end up with "01" instead of 21.

Works with any two kepresses. Same problem in the date fields.

Completely wrong, and super bad for accessibility.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#906

Post by kobalsky »

hbosch wrote: post #901
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…

>phone app I'm triggered. How many times have you reached for the 'end call' button, but the other person ended the call a moment earlier than you, and as you press down the screen immediately flips to your "recent calls" screen and you call a random person straight away? This is such a common and terrifying experience for me, and yet it's been the default UX on the Phone app since probably day 1.

the ipad skype apps puts the call button where the hangup button is, so if someone hangs up right when you are going to click it, you call them again.

and this is such an easy fix, just don't make components touchable for X milliseconds after they are visible, some value below average human reaction time.

this could of course get in the way of people quickly navigating via muscle memory, but there's a probably a threshold where it can prevent one without affecting the other.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#907

Post by paldepind2 »

hu3 wrote: post #869
alberth wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple felt compelled to publish a video Context is important. This was a WWDC session and Apple records & publishes all WWDC sessions.

If the API didn't suck, there wouldn't be such video there. Also WWDC videos are infamously used as reference because often documentation suck. And it shows.

Absolutely. I did a little bit of iOS development at some point and was genuinely shocked by how bad the documentation was and by how often WWDC videos was the best documentation available.

To give a concrete example: At WWDC20 Apple showed off a new Core Data feature called "derived attributes" [1]. Only many months later did they add the bare minimum of written documentation covering a fraction of what was shown off at WWDC [2].

1: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/230/ 2: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/120159

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#908

Post by 12ian34 »

agys wrote: post #776

Yeah, it’s been a while: - Music (the app, not the service): almost unusable UI/UX, sync problems, two search fields, etc. - Calendar is confusing, glitchy UI. - Mail is a disaster… even the simple search filter doesn’t deliver as expected. - Safari “Inspector”: will swallow async errors, unusable for development. - Control panel: messy, ugly and slow. - Spotlight: was good, doesn’t work so well anymore (web results,…

switch to spotify, proton cal, proton mail, firefox, raycast

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#909

Post by jiehong »

So many comments are about devs pushing for features only, but I’d argue we don’t even get that on time.

Apple Intelligence is chronically late, and systematically underwhelming and mostly useless.

Everyone is part of the problem: I see many developers stopping when it’s good enough, managers firing QA because it works well enough, users having not much choice, and finally, users being used to software of dubious quality everywhere accepting it as normal (so they will pay anyways).

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#910

Post by fendy3002 »

dmd wrote: post #288
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…

Try as I might for the last 30 minutes, having read all the other comments in this thread so far, I can't reproduce this on 15.3.1.

initially also cannot, but now can. open wallpaper setting > choose + in color section, choose any color, close popup, (IMPORTANT) close setting panel.

now reopen the wallpaper setting again, click on top right custom color and do this, somehow the behavior is different. Now it change the wallpaper color as you drag over the colors rather than mouseup. My guess is clicking on + button at the bottom is triggering the popup config to update on mouseup, while opening it fresh will configure it to trigger on update, until the + button is clicked.

Post reply on HN