Buggy Apple Software

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I am a 20+ year user of Mac computers, and have noticed a distressing trend over the last 5 years of increasing bugs in Apple's software.

This is an interesting read:

https://tidbits.com/2019/10/21/six-reasons-why-ios-13-and-catalina-are-so-buggy/

Some excerpts:

Quote
...iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 Catalina have been unusually buggy releases for Apple. The betas started out buggy at WWDC in June, which is not unexpected, but even after Apple removed some features from the final releases in September, more problems have forced the company to publish quick updates. Why? Based on my 18 years of experience working as an Apple software engineer, I have a few ideas...

...Apple is aggressive about including significant features in upcoming products. Tight schedules and ambitious feature sets mean software engineers and quality assurance (QA) engineers routinely work nights and weekends as deadlines approach......products on an annual release schedule, like iPhones and operating systems, must ship in September, whatever state they're in.

...During development, Apple triages bugs based on the phase of the development cycle and the bug severity. Before alpha, engineers can fix pretty much any bug they want to. But as development moves into alpha, and then beta, only serious bugs that block major features are fixed, and as the ship date nears, only bugs that cause data loss or crashes get fixed.

This approach is sensible. As an engineer, every time you change the code, there's a chance you'll introduce a new bug. Changes also trigger a whole new round of testing. When you're close to shipping, a known bug with understood impact is better than adding a fix that might break something new that you'd be unaware of.

Bugs that generate a lot of Apple Store visits or support calls usually get fixed. After all, it costs serious money to pay enough support reps to help lots of users. It's much cheaper to fix the bug. When I worked on Apple products, we'd get a list of the top bugs driving Apple Store visits and support calls, and we were expected to fix them.

Unfortunately, bugs that are rare or not terribly serious—those that cause mere confusion instead of data loss—are continually pushed to the back burner by the triage system....

...Apple is lousy at fixing old bugs....

...In an unprecedented move, Apple announced iOS 13.1 before iOS 13.0 shipped, a rare admission of how serious the software quality problem is. Apple has immense resources, and the company's engineers will tame this year's problem.

In the short term, you can expect more bug fix updates on a more frequent schedule than in past years. Longer-term, I'm sure that the higher-ups at Apple are fully aware of the problem and are pondering how best to address it. Besides the fact that bugs are expensive, both in support costs and engineer time, they're starting to become a public relations concern. Apple charges premium prices for premium products, and lapses in software quality stand to hurt the company's reputation...
 
I'll say, I'm a fan of Apple stuff, have been since the mid 1980s...

But I've noticed that iOS13 on my iPhone XS has been buggier with just stupid little things, than any other Ive used. The odd thing, haven't noticed it on my personal iPad or iPad Pro, using the same apps. So is it the app maker or iOS?

I haven't gone to Catalina on any of our computers yet. But never have really had issues with the OSs, at least compared to windows...
 
The 2nd paragraph in the quote is, in my opinion, the primary reason. I saw it years ago in the CAD world when PTC's ProEngineer as well as Autodesk Inventor moved to yearly releases. No matter what, the new version was going to be released on that pre-determined date no matter what. I mean, the marketing folks have already got those new brochures ready with dates already on 'em plus the can't reschedule their "launch events", now can they ?!?
 
I work deeply in the tech world and the trend changed up similarly over last 20 years with my experiences(Application development) to what Apple does.
 
I've been beating the drum since ~2012 about how ridiculous Apple's OS X/macOS release cycle has become.

From 2001 to 2012, Apple released 8 versions of OS X. When you discount that the terrible 10.0 release lasted 6 months before being replaced by the improved 10.1, and 10.1 was replaced by the MUCH better 10.2 after a year, the release cycle for most of that time was roughly 2 years. That also includes 10.4, which was something of a high water mark in terms of stability and feature set, and was current for nearly 3 years.

Since 10.9 in 2013, Apple has been dead set on releasing a new version of OS X/macOS every fall. From 10.9 in 2013 to 10.15 in 2019, they've kept that up and left plenty of "lemon" releases in their wake. The last several releases have never really felt to me like the even started approaching maturity until shortly before the next release was ready to drop. I'd like to see a return to the days of a new OS release every ~2 years-give your own people time to actually get the OS right before pushing it, plus have more time to actually fix problems that crop up in the field rather than focusing on the next release. Further, this gives 3rd party software developers time to actually get their software running well on the current release before it gets replaced with something else.

10.15 so far is a firm pass for me on my main computer, despite the fact I have it installed(and have since the early beta days over the summer) on a 13" MBA that I use when I'm traveling. Among other things, I'm REALLY sad about the loss of 32 bit app support, especially since I still use a lot of programs that won't get updated. I'm also sad about the loss of Dashboard, which I still use multiple times a day.
 
Complexity is the biggest problem facing the software industry. The insidious thing about software complexity is that it's so cheap and so invisible. It literally costs next to nothing to create and store millions, even billions of lines of code. And I don't even want to think about how many reams (boxes???) of paper it would take to print the complete source code of [insert software here].

By contrast, the complexity of mechanical devices is both obvious and self-limiting; the laws of physics provide a rather nice set of constraints for designs.

I work as a design verification engineer (read: software lackey) for a prominent semiconductor company. Let's just say, I am amazed my computer can even turn on.
 
Originally Posted by benjayman227
Complexity is the biggest problem facing the software industry. The insidious thing about software complexity is that it's so cheap and so invisible. It literally costs next to nothing to create and store millions, even billions of lines of code. And I don't even want to think about how many reams (boxes???) of paper it would take to print the complete source code of [insert software here].

By contrast, the complexity of mechanical devices is both obvious and self-limiting; the laws of physics provide a rather nice set of constraints for designs.

I work as a design verification engineer (read: software lackey) for a prominent semiconductor company. Let's just say, I am amazed my computer can even turn on.



I seriously do not agree with you. Software development is very expensive. Servers and storage are cheap, but the knowledge and labor that goes into software development is quite expensive. It is very much unlike most manufacturing, where there is a heavier bias on raw materials and distribution. The best software has huge development costs, but also has a huge install base and revenue.
 
Originally Posted by SubLGT


...Apple is lousy at fixing old bugs....

...In an unprecedented move, Apple announced iOS 13.1 before iOS 13.0 shipped, a rare admission of how serious the software quality problem is. ............. in software quality stand to hurt the company's reputation...
[/quote]

yes, I have grown increasing annoyed by their laziness in getting it right.
 
Salaried employees who agree to work nights and weekends are chumps. Those are literally unpaid overtime hours. Not only are you not getting paid time-and-a-half, you are not paid anything extra for working more than 40 hours a week. Apple is not some small startup company either, where the principals hope to get rich if the company goes public or gets bought.
 
Originally Posted by JHZR2
I'll say, I'm a fan of Apple stuff, have been since the mid 1980s...

But I've noticed that iOS13 on my iPhone XS has been buggier with just stupid little things, than any other Ive used. The odd thing, haven't noticed it on my personal iPad or iPad Pro, using the same apps. So is it the app maker or iOS?

I haven't gone to Catalina on any of our computers yet. But never have really had issues with the OSs, at least compared to windows...


Made the mistake of updating my XS before a almost 4k drive. I was about the throw it out the window. Using the headphone jack the audio would just stop.. had to reboot the phone twenty times at least. Couple times the GPS stopped and had to shut privacy back on/off. Once these bugs are worked out I'll never update again. Had some strange screen issues but I think that was the app.
 
I disagree. Software, produced by the schiitheads and brownnoses from that so called sub-continent, is cheap. Working unpaid overtime and weekends is nothing to them. Watch your neck when they get to be your bosses though.
 
Seems like everything in this world is rushed to "production" now a days. Hope APPLE at least learns and stays ahead of the curve, ironically this is my first MAC bought last month after Windows for 25 years.
It updated to 15.5 about 2 weeks ago or so?

Anyway, its been awesome, except as stated in my other thread in here. My new Canon printer will not print from Safari and only Safari, no other program is affected. I dont know if that is Apples issue or Canons.
Right now, I am not addressing it since everything else works flawless and I can print using any other browser. \Printer is a new Imageclass MF445dw

Assume if I am affected other are too and sooner or later something will come out that fixes it. Even with Windows, I never printed from Edge, always Opera or Firefox
 
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I still don't really know what all the fuss has been about with the changes to iOS since about version 9. About all it seems to have done is change the icons and either improve or worsen power consumption depending on the specific version I'm running. Phone operating systems became good enough years ago and companies just seem to keep changing them for the sake of changing them.

And, as mentioned above, what makes it worse is that so many companies go to the cheapest programmers they can find, which means they get cheap, crappy code that barely works when it's written and breaks in unpredictable ways as soon as the next cheap programmer tries to modify it.
 
IM just about giving up on this cr+p. New to Apple, after 25 years of Windows I thought I was taking a step forward going to Apple, What a joke, one issue after another.
Stupid, me, paid a premium price and could have saved hundreds with a Windows.

First issue was brand new Canon Printer with 15.5 Catalina, could not print from Safari. Apple tech support clueless and wrong on all three calls.
Then, 1 or 2 weeks later, presto, and update to 15.5.1 gets installed and printer works perfect now BUT GUESS WHAT?

For gods sake, all I wanted to do this morning was post some photos for the family on Facebook from Halloween and cant upload the photos to Facebook because they do not show up on the drop down from Safari!!!
I have the photos in the Folder and can open them, but the drop down does not see the photos.

This is stupid, I dont act rashly on anything but if it keeps up Im selling this brand new Apple and going back to the crappy Win platform, at least Windows works.
 
Originally Posted by alarmguy
IM just about giving up on this cr+p. New to Apple, after 25 years of Windows I thought I was taking a step forward going to Apple, What a joke, one issue after another.
Stupid, me, paid a premium price and could have saved hundreds with a Windows.

First issue was brand new Canon Printer with 15.5 Catalina, could not print from Safari. Apple tech support clueless and wrong on all three calls.
Then, 1 or 2 weeks later, presto, and update to 15.5.1 gets installed and printer works perfect now BUT GUESS WHAT?

For gods sake, all I wanted to do this morning was post some photos for the family on Facebook from Halloween and cant upload the photos to Facebook because they do not show up on the drop down from Safari!!!
I have the photos in the Folder and can open them, but the drop down does not see the photos.

This is stupid, I dont act rashly on anything but if it keeps up Im selling this brand new Apple and going back to the crappy Win platform, at least Windows works.


Just use Chrome or Firefox. I NEVER use Safari, just like I never use AirPrint.

I think your expectations are a bit too high here, nobody produces "flawless" software, there are going to be bugs, but OS X tends to be less buggy than Windows, overall.
 
I tried another browser and same deal as Safari.
I found a work around, yes, guess my expectations were too high. I will say, I would have had much less problems on the Windows platform. Ok, I will cut Apple a break here because its the new rollout of the Catalina, just as buggy I guess as any Windows rollout and following updates to the updates will fix it.

Your right, I expected more being a was paying a premium price for a Mac so far its no better or even worse then Windows. But maybe that will improve.
One thing that is far superior is speed and yes, the more lightweight feel of the operating system so if I get through any other bugs that might show up in the near future, I will still be glad I switched, because I do like the system and speed. If the bugs keep up, out the window it goes, well, actually it will go to EBAY.
 
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Apple has removed customer reviews from its online store.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/21/20976335/apple-customer-reviews-removed-online-store-rating

Quote
...Apple has removed customer reviews from its online store, as first reported by AppleInsider, and we've confirmed this to be the case. AppleInsider got a tip from a reader that the reviews had been removed from the US, UK, and Australian Apple Stores (which we have also confirmed).

...Apple's choice means that customers can't provide useful feedback on the products available on Apple's store — especially if a product might be bad. There were at least 735 one-star reviews for the Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter, for example, but now you can't tell if it's good or not just by looking at that page.

We've asked Apple for comment and will update this story with anything we hear back.



https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-quietly-kills-online-product-reviews-2019-11

Quote
...Apple quietly removed the "Ratings and Reviews" section from its online store, meaning shoppers can no longer see online reviews of Apple products before they buy.
The removal comes just as Apple heads into the all-important holiday season. The iPhone maker tends to see a major sales bump through the last three months of the year thanks to people buying holiday gifts.
 
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-i-may-dump-apple-in-2020-and-why-you-should-consider-it-too/

... Apple is increasingly drowning in bugs. I've written at length about how buggy the iOS 13 release has been. In fact, it's been so buggy that Apple is planning to change its internal development process. Problem is, Apple had a plan in place to make iOS 12 better, a plan that resulted in iOS releases that were plagued by some really nasty bugs.

...But it's not just iOS. The latest macOS Catalina release has had some nasty bugs too. These don't get as much airtime, but the uptake of macOS updates isn't as aggressive as that of iOS, and it isn't landing on hundreds of millions of devices within weeks of release.

....But it's also not just the software. Hardware quality is also not what it used to be. New hardware is released with bugs that take time to fix, battery life is pretty mediocre across all hardware (with the exception of the iPhone 11 Pro Max), and prices are still eye-wateringly high......The bottom line is that I feel like I'm paying premium prices for Apple hardware, but that I no longer get a premium experience.

...Switching over from the Apple ecosystem -- or ecosystems if you use iOS and macOS -- is not an easy task. And Apple no doubt knows this

...2020 will be the year that I give serious consideration as to whether I carry on down the Apple path...........there's a lot of good Android and Windows devices out there that are much cheaper than Apple's offering, and offer a good user experience. Sure, there will be rough edges, but there are rough edges with Apple hardware, and I'm paying top dollar to experience that pain.
 
Originally Posted by uc50ic4more
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
nobody produces "flawless" software,


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi


Well played!
cheers3.gif
 
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