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Apple's Software Quality Crisis

eliseomartelli.it

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Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#971

Post by fingerlocks »

lenkite wrote: post #970
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…

My deep-seated guess is that the switch from a simple language like Objective-C to the complex Swift language with its humongous compile times has caused developer productivity to be broken. No time to fix bugs, no time to refactor, no time to re-iterate on improving features because time is all taken up by compilation and grokking complexity.

Compile time issues are almost always type inference issues. Reducing chained functions and multiple levels of protocol witness indirection usually speeds this up dramatically.

The other big time sucks are C++ interop and dozens of micro-dependencies (react-native).

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#972

Post by henry_viii »

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.

On Mail:

Cannot get notifications for new mail on iOS.

On Languages:

Cannot swipe-to-type and dictate in less spoken languages even though this has been possible on Android for over a decade.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#973

Post by jbn »

thekashifmalik wrote: post #474
kazinator wrote: post #417

My work Macbook sometimes drops random characters from the lock screen password input. You hit a key and a black dot does not appear; the password is consequently rejected. It's not exactly this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/458099/macos-lock-... The system is not lagging at all. It's not this: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/08/29/mac-wont-accept-correct-l... It's a bit like this, but only for the system p…

I thought I was the only one dealing with this! Made me consider that my magic keyboard was getting old or having bluetooth issues, but it does not happen on ANY other inputs.

Same here. I have never unlocked the macbook successfully the 1st time around (for a good 10 years), I always get a "wrong password" and have to re-enter.

My initial guess is that the text edit control has "select all content" set initially, so when you enter the 1st character, it's selected, and when you enter the following characters they overwrite that, essentially chopping off the 1st letter of the password (which is then incorrect, obviously). Unbelievable that this was never fixed (especially with IT-managed laptops that lock themselves very quickly).

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#974

Post by zuhsetaqi »

shermantanktop wrote: post #923
zuhsetaqi wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a bug. The color picker always opens at the bottom left no matter which app opens it. Has always been like that.

Sounds a bit like “you’re holding it wrong” tbh. I understand your point, once you have absorbed the Apple logic it is reinforced continually and makes sense. But opening a dialog near the use interaction point is a very reasonable expectation. For me, I’ve never noticed any logic to it, I just know I need to hunt for it.

Colors is not just a dialog! It's a standalone application opening in a new window which you can open just like all other applications on macOS and also remembers the last opened place.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#975

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #436
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the recent reading of "Inside Macintosh" on archive.org. I really hope they produce similar paper documentations nowadays. I'd love to hold a dictionary of obscure Mac internal knowledge.

We had the whole set. It was amazing, and spoiled me. There was a similar set of books about BSD UNIX, as well. Don't remember the exact title, but it was pretty awesome. Right now, it looks like they are relying completely on, on headerdoc comments. It can work, but someone needs to spend a lot of time on these comments, and they need to do so, at a “holistic” level, coordinating all the various systems. They have d…

Yeah, what a pity. I love reading vintage computer manuals. They were well written, sometimes even with a bit of humour. I can imagine myself carrying a Powerbook and some manuals going into the mountains to write some software.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#976

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

olyjohn wrote: post #445
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think regarding the combination of usability and stability the Win XP/7 era was still unbeatable.

WinXP was just an ugly face on Windows 2000 Workstation without an EOL version of DirectX for gaming.

Oh, Win 2000...that was my fav OS. I stretched using it until XP is almost history. But XP was good for me too, especially comparing to 10/11.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#977

Post by Bagged2347 »

alt227 wrote: post #827
ThinkBeat wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is encouraged by Apple to help with their planned obsolescence of old OS versions. With new macOS versions there is often a requirement to rebuild your apps with the latest version of Xcode which ships alongside it. This is because Ap…

I'm not a macOS dev, so not talking from direct experience, but you can select a minimum deployment target in Xcode as low as macOS 10.13, I believe. There must be a reason some devs choose not to support that.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#978

Post by wtay »

simoncion wrote: post #826
hanikesn wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux seems like the opposite to me a slow marathon to achieve perfection. With pipewire, systemd and wayland there's less cruft than ever and you get the best out-of-the-box experience since it's inception.

Did pipewire actually build in their pulseaudio and JACK emulation, or is it still acting as a shim between already-running pulseaudio and JACK daemons? Also, (FWIW) I've a fine time with JACK2, openrc, and xorg. I had to do some manual work to tell JACK which sound card to use and to set up the pulseaudio backfill for software that doesn't know how to speak to JACK, [0] but everything else just works. [0] The "trick…

It's a reimplementation of a pulseaudio server and a reimplementation of the jack client library. See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ...

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#979

Post by eliseomartelli »

doug_durham wrote: post #441

"Feels too hot" is hardly an objective measurement. Why worry about something that "may" occur. Use your device. If it fails take it in a get it replaced under warranty.

Added an objective measure updating the post.

It reached ProcessInfo.ThermalState "serious" when writing notes with the pencil.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#980

Post by simoncion »

wtay wrote: post #978
simoncion wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did pipewire actually build in their pulseaudio and JACK emulation, or is it still acting as a shim between already-running pulseaudio and JACK daemons? Also, (FWIW) I've a fine time with JACK2, openrc, and xorg. I had to do some manual work to tell JACK which sound card to use and to set up the pulseaudio backfill for software that doesn't know how to speak to JACK, [0] but everything else just works. [0] The "trick…

It's a reimplementation of a pulseaudio server and a reimplementation of the jack client library. See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ...

Ah. Glad to hear that they finally got that done. Good for them! (I hope it's feature complete, and hope there aren't any subtle bugs in it! (And if there happen to be any bugs, I hope they're super committed to acknowledging them and fixing them.))

Thanks much for the link to the FAQ.

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