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Apple's Software Quality Crisis

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Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#991

Post by seec »

legitster wrote: post #199
PaulHoule wrote: post #23

I recently got an M4 Mac Mini which is an amazing piece of hardware. (When it came in the mail I couldn't believe it could fit in the small box it was in!) My wife was angry about the large volume of advertising, both on web sites and on the desktop, on the machine out of the box. Part of it was needing an adblocker, which meant switching to Firefox, because installing an adblocker on Safari requires an Apple account…

> I know a lot of people don't like it, but since Microsoft introduced it I've had no trouble authenticating into SMB shares in home and SMB environments. Same. I get that people don't like having to "buy" into an ecosystem. But credit where it's due - Microsoft eliminated dozens of different logins over the last decade. If you jump between multiple machines all the time, it's legitimately a decent experience. You ca…

Microsoft takes its time and has a lot of inconsistencies but eventually gets to some sort of desirable convergence state.

They are a lot less idealistic and have an approach of working on it slowly but surely in the open. Apple on the other hand tries to maintain an unrealistic image of perfection and thus is always playing some sort of binary game, which is why things get stuck and never evolve beyond a certain point.

I use to like Apple approach to things; with age I understand that Microsoft approach actually makes a lot more sense, especially if you need to maintain things over time.

We should be glad that Microsoft "won" the desktop PC war because if Apple software had been used for critical software we would be in a lot of trouble as a society; I'm joking but barely...

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#992

Post by seec »

cageface wrote: post #485
bondolo wrote: post #390

While I worked at Apple in 2021-22 their issues seemed about the same as nearly every other company producing consumer apps and devices; bloated slow garbage with very mediocre quality. Their engineering culture is terrible, especially as it relates to transfer of the “Apple ethos” to the next generation of devs. Apple is going to be indistinguishable from the rest of the pack within the next decade. But most of all…

You can really see this when trying to build apps with Swift & SwiftUI. The language and the framework seem to be optimized for nice terse WWDC demos but both fall apart pretty quickly when you start to do any heavy UI lifting with them. And I think that's starting to bleed into their own native UI now too. The lousy macOS settings app is a good example. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any good alternatives to A…

Windows is only worse if you don't consider the freedom of choosing the hardware it runs on and its ability to be modified to run as you see fit.

Apple is really losing the plot because they really need their software to be good to sell their hardware. Microsoft doesn't even have to care that much because there is not a relevant alternative coming out any time soon (as the various Linux failures have shown), but at least you don't have to give them a lot of money (in fact as close to zero as possible if you really want to).

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#993

Post by seec »

michelb wrote: post #198

MacOS has gone downhill like crazy indeed. On an M4, searching my safari history is super slow, searching for a password in the Passwords app is also really slow. I mean these are just lists . Apps steal focus all the time, Finder window column widths reset whenever they feel like, search in Mail sometimes just refuses to work. iCloud tab syncing? haha, not today, maybe next week again. You could probably write a dis…

I have a bug with Safari poor sync since about 4 years (passwords wouldn't correctly update both ways) but the tabs issue was also extremely annoying.

I just went with chrome. I used to really like Safari, I really wanted to use it, but Apple is just not competent enough anymore, no matter how good looking it is, no matter how many interesting features it has, if it doesn't work all is irrelevant.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#994

Post by apple4ever »

threeseed wrote: post #266
fnordlord wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Feedback Assistant issue you mentioned is probably one of the worst aspects of their software ecosystem. I haven't had a response on a single ticket that I've filed in there. It feels like an abandoned program, which is terrible UX considering its purpose.

Feedback Assistant is a UI for Radar. You will never get a response to tickets unless it is affecting a lot of people and they need more information e.g. crash reports. They are all read/triaged though.

That's still absolutely terrible

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#995

Post by hyperdimension »

capl wrote: post #34
diggan wrote: post #4

I drank the "creating products that prioritize user experience over feature checklists" kool-aid back in ~2013 sometime, and got myself a first Macbook when I worked at a software startup the first time. While it certainly gave a more "premium" impression in terms of hardware/UI/UX for the first few years, around 2016 I had to move back to Linux because the software experience and the user experience is just too poor…

Nothing wrong with the "creating products that prioritize user experience over features" - or more accurately what Jobs said: create products that start with the user experience and the user’s needs first and then work your way to the tech (as far as I remember) The opposite approach is starting with some tech and then trying to find a use for it, e.g. folding phones, second 1/2 screen on laptop, etc, instead of tryi…

"top notch" indeed. Oh wait, it's a 'dynamic island' now.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#996

Post by Nextgrid »

guappa wrote: post #917
chachacharge wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought only MS was doing that. I have over 25 admin on/off switches for copilot in the M365 ecosystem that were forced ON in the last year. On the power platform- The authorized consent to move data between regions for ai was AUTOMATICALLY set to YES also and it was sending prod data around to read it and give advice. I guess they sneak it in with some EULA update.. When I open tickets I always get sent to the wro…

That seems completely illegal.

Legality only matters when the law is enforced. That's basically never been the case when it comes to privacy or corporation-against-consumer fraud.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#997

Post by jug »

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.

Hmm. Can’t reproduce Notes on neither iOS 18.3.1 nor iPadOS 18.3.1

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#998

Post by bored13 »

DanielHB wrote: post #960
bored13 wrote: post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bazitte is solid. Added PWA/electron wrappers for any web apps I frequently use (netflix/youtube/etc.) and added them as non-steam-games to my library. Have a steam controller and it is about as easy to use as any streaming stick.

WOW that is sick! I can just customize my OS with a dockerfile!? It seems support for nvidia is rudimentary (my living room PC has a GTX 1070), but will keep an eye out. Might try the beta during my vacation. Do try a fly mouse, those are great for normal web browsing.

Yup! And if you are a little more technically inclined, combine it with nix home-manager/flakes/etc. and you have an entirely declarative, immutable, reproducable setup that largely works ootb and is easy to deploy.

Nvidia has been doing some work with open source drivers lately so hopefully support does improve.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#999

Post by gabeio »

seec wrote: post #985
Nevermark wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have HomePods gen 1 & 2 (and a few mini’s) I have mostly HomePod Mini pairs, and a couple individual Homepods. I do have quite a few rooms, but my network is solid. Perhaps having a series of wired WiFi repeaters gives Homekit trouble, but nothing else has issues. > almost always use a phone to start the music This works better for me too. I still have (much less frequent) trouble casting to some random room's sp…

It's janky because it's poorly thought out and they tried to give too much with too little capacity. It's stupid that you have to stream for a phone in the first place when you could have something connected to power act as a local server and not deplete the battery from your phone (and enjoy the unreliability of wifi on top). Apple has just made a poor decision for the "wow" factor that never makes for a great worki…

> It's stupid that you have to stream for a phone in the first place when you could have something connected to power act as a local server and not deplete the battery from your phone (and enjoy the unreliability of wifi on top).

You aren’t streaming from your phone? I was under the impression that HomePods only stream phone calls. Media is accessed by the HomePod itself, and your phone either gets updates from it on what is playing or your phone is telling it what to play. Evidenced by if you disconnect wifi on your phone the HomePod will continue the current song without your device.

Re: Apple's Software Quality Crisis

#1000

Post by liamwestray »

progmetaldev wrote: post #245
madeofpalk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire settings app rewrite is the canary of how Apple's software development process is broken, especially for the mac.

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.

To be actually fair, Mac Preferences has worked fine for decades.

Control panel has sucked since windows 2.0

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