
Ask HN: Why has Apple's software quality steadily gone downhill? - whitepoplar
I&#x27;ve been using Apple products since 2003, starting with the iBook G4. Since then, it seems as if Apple&#x27;s software quality has steadily gone downhill. My iBook wasn&#x27;t the fastest, but it was certainly the most steadfast and predictable Apple computer I&#x27;ve owned.<p>Now, on my 2017 MacBook Pro running High Sierra, I get random freezes, slow&#x2F;failed wakes from sleep, kernel panics, strange APFS behavior, trackpad unresponsiveness, etc.<p>iOS 11 is even worse, freezing during calls and sometimes keeping calls active even when the display shows no trace of an active call.<p>What gives? What, internally (to Apple), causes this?
======
xtiansimon
Podcasts is definitely worse in iOS 11

UI is worse, for example it takes more clicks to get to my podcast’s timeline
of episodes. I constantly feel lost.

It’s buggy like hell, \- Podcasts don’t update as well. Before, I could load
the app, swipe the fist screen, and all my new podcasts would start loading
(with the efficiency and reliability of Apps updates). Now, I walk out the
front door and a plus icon jumps in and the podcast isn’t downloaded.

cloud/arrow and circle/square are more intuitive. plus just pops up to tell me
I’m SOL.

Yesterday I clicked through on a download in listen now to the episode screen,
started play, and I had a different icon/episode in the ‘playing now’ zone and
a completely different file playing.

These issues infuriate me every time I use Podcasts. Don’t get me started
about WiFi preference to pick the Cable Company’s WiFi hot spot over my home
even when the phone is less than 4’ away!

~~~
skinnymuch
Have you tried using alternative podcast apps? Like Overcast? I never used
Apple’s podcast app from the get go so I can’t comment on it. It being bad
and/or getting worse isn’t too surprising and definitely one reason I never
tried it.

------
Kequc
I don't think iOS has ever been a half decent operating system, but that's an
example of how a lot of the discussion in this thread might be subjective.

A glimpse into what's going on in my opinion can be seen in the long awaited
new Pro line of Macbooks. Many point out these were not Pro, they are
(exceedingly) under powered overpriced shiny Macbooks. Machines which are
still outperformed by their predecessors. Apple has stopped focusing on the
tech community because we are expensive hard to please customers.

So they focus their efforts making products for regular people, who might use
the product once in a while. And by focus their efforts I mean they make
products people want to buy but that aren't necessarily great. Software is one
aspect of that. If you are not a power user you'll likely never run into any
of the issues you mention.

e: Oh boo hoo

~~~
mcphage
> Software is one aspect of that. If you are not a power user you'll likely
> never run into any of the issues you mention.

Most software I've seen is the opposite: consumer grade software has to work
well, because a lot of times it's optional—if it doesn't do a thing well,
users will just not use it. Whereas professional grade software is much
rougher around the edges, because if doing a thing takes extra steps, users
will take those extra steps. Because they _need_ to accomplish their goal,
they're a lot more forgiving of problems along the way, so long as they get to
where they need to go.

------
jtl999
I'm staying with my 2015 15" MBP (i7-4870HQ, AMD R9 M370X GPU, 16GB RAM) Still
running El Capitan. I hear they have M.2 to Apple SSD adapters now too.

The High Sierra root bug was embarrassing, among other issues. But bugs
happen...

I also don't like the newer and thinner MBP's. I would prefer for the "Pro"
line that they had more USB and other ports, and I absolutely don't want a
Touch Bar.

Not sure what I'm going to do for my next laptop. Try and keep this one going
for as long as possible.

~~~
dandare
The new keyboard is surprisingly amazing but the lack of ports is just
embarrassing. At work we have this "who brought the dongle to the meeting?"
game. With my personal laptop I will wait for the next version.

~~~
marrone12
I think the new keyboard is pretty terrible honestly. So many keys get stuck
and no longer press down. I've had multiple friends who have had to get their
whole keyboards replaced because of stuck keys and the genius bar couldn't fix
it.

~~~
naikrovek
Agree. Not even considering durability issues, 0.1mm of full-scale travel on a
keyboard key is just not comfortable to type on at all.

~~~
gargravarr
And they are unbelievably clicky, too. Worse than some of the mech keyboards
in my office. I find them awful to type on and have an old Retina laptop
instead.

------
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Regarding High Sierra I’ve been telling myself that maybe Apple is is secretly
busy with The Great Rewrite to migrate from Objective-C to Swift. Or maybe
they are rewriting stuff to get it on the path to the one, unified OS. I
really hope this is the reason because otherwise it is really, really sad.

There is still a UI bug that I must file because seemingly no one but me
deactivated LCD font smoothing and discovered that text is printed in bold if
it contains non-ASCII characters. It’s infuriating that it is still not fixed
as apparently no one has noticed since the release of High Sierra. I stopped
reporting bugs because often it’s a duplicate and gets closed which is
demotivating. But I can't know beforehand because their bug tracker is closed.

~~~
techdragon
What’s worse than closed is that it doesn’t correlate your closed as duplicate
bug, with the bug it is a duplicate of. If they correlated them so you could
see the status of the “parent” bug, then it would be miles better. I might
even start logging bugs again myself.

~~~
niteshade
You can ask for the status of the parent bug, I've gotten answers before.

For example, I filed a bug report for Continuity not supporting
TouchID/FaceID, so that you could unlock macOS from your iDevice. It was
closed as a duplicate, and when I asked for the parents' status, I was told it
was it was closed as "Not to be Addressed".

------
teaneedz
Wow, just earlier today I tweeted:

> @tim_cook, What is Apple doing about the increasing bugs across Apple's
> software?

I still remember pulling hair out because of Microsoft's bugs and just being
able to get stuff done on Apple's software. I used to joke that PCs forced
people to become experts because of bugs, whereas it was just fun to get stuff
done on Apple products.

Today's Apple UX on iOS is just broken in so many places—friction everywhere.
On a daily basis I encounter bugs.

What happened?

------
newscracker
I never tire of pointing to Apple's organization structure and how it impedes
working on many things simultaneously with adequate focus and quality. It's
much better explained here. [1]

Without a bigger change in the organization, these problems just cannot be
solved. It's not about money, which Apple has a lot of (and even without tax
benefits of repatriation, can borrow very easily). It's also about the top
management's reluctance to change how the company works.

[1]: [https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-
crossroad...](https://stratechery.com/2016/apples-organizational-crossroads/)

------
j45
Apple seems to have taken the direction of optimizing their experience to
create beginners before supporting advanced users or pros.

There'e way more customers who are beginners, than advanced or expert users
present.. until they all become more skilled.

Apple's products, and software aim to just work in the most basic way for the
greatest number of people. Anything that is too far our of the range for basic
users is either killed (Server.App), or sufficiently neutered.

If we start looking through the lens of creating customers who start out as
beginners with Apple and grow with them...

Apple makes the iPhone so easy, it's like a feature phone. The tough App Store
rules - to ensure the most stable experience for the majority of beginner and
basic users.

Apple could design AppleTV off the charts - but we still have those largely
basic menus, so basic that anyone can use an AppleTV easier than a cable box.

iPad Pro's could support mice for advanced users to use that amazing
horsepower? No, let's go out of our way to remove it.

Mac Mini updates? Delay it until the average home is ready to have a new
iHomeAutomationHub server once.

iMac Pro Updates? Probably have to sell them for $18K ea to start making it
worthwhile.

Underpowered Macbooks, or Macbooks Airs? Perfect for selling lots beginners to
intermediates.

MacOS, too, has fallen behind in it's UI innovation and polish. Apple's
revenue largely comes from mobile, so rumors of MacOS going the way of a
consistent iOS interface might not be too crazy.

What to do while the world levels up their digital skills?

We can wait, try to manage it ourselves, or switch to currently more
innovative gear at the expense of other things.

MacOS has so many basic UI tweaks to install that one has to buy an app like
Bartender to hide the icons. There is lots of work completed under the hood,
no doublt, but not in a day to day way that we touch or use.

The main reason I'm still on Sierra is I can't handle the 4-6 month trauma of
having a current OS like High Sierra that beyond the forced APFS snags,
appears flaky. This is after experiencing every upgrade breaking with Panther,
Tiger, leopard, Lion, Mavericks, El Capitan. Only Sierra was smooth.

It's just easier to wait to buy a mid cycle Macbook pro with the OS
rattlesnakes having bit everyone else for a few years first.

~~~
iknowicouldturn
There’s also a difference between advanced users and power users. You can be
an advanced user like people I know but not have lots of apps and thus icons
installed. So no need for Bartender to hide them.

I do need Bartender like you seem to. But I’ve seen I’m the exception amongst
my beginner and advanced friends vs the norm.

~~~
j45
Definitely.

There's also a problem with every app thinking they're at the center of one's
existence and should start on bootup, desktop icon, and status bar icon. But
that's likely aimed at beginners, and not advanced or power users.

------
purplezooey
Isn't it most likely that the codebase is just like any other huge one. It
gets to be a house of cards and getting all the bugs out becomes an impossible
task, so you have to do the best you can. Would be nice if they would
repatriate some of that overseas cash and increase their QA efforts but that
doesn't help revenue in the short term. Also their competition is far worse in
this area so nobody's breathing down their neck.

~~~
stcredzero
_Would be nice if they would repatriate some of that overseas cash and
increase their QA efforts but that doesn 't help revenue in the short term.
Also their competition is far worse in this area so nobody's breathing down
their neck._

If Apple just made their QA efforts a minuscule fraction of the size of their
efforts to get an edge in mobile chips and supply-chain logistics -- they
could easily start to appear godlike again. Bad QA can be debilitating.
Mediocre QA can be an anchor around your neck. Awesome QA is some kind of
overpowered buff multiplier! It's exactly the sort of competitive advantage
that a company like Apple would want to cultivate! So many of their
competitors would fall sway to the cultural issues that go against QA getting
the power to work to its full potential, making it an advantage that's very
difficult to replicate.

I think if Apple could do something like this, this alone would redeem them in
the eyes of its customers -- Make it Just Work Again! (Please don't walk
around in that hat!)

------
billconan
I filed a bug to Apple regarding an issue I found with carplay. They didn't
attempt to reproduce it and asked me to generate debug logs. I found this
ridiculous, as a customer, I have no energy to gather debug logs.

~~~
devy
If it's CarPlay integration related, perhaps it's involving car integration
and not to ridiculous to ask for your debug logs (if you have them) as they
might have the exact car or ECU firmware SDK you are testing with?

~~~
billconan
the actual bug is this,

if you play podcast while driving and meanwhile, the alarm is triggered. After
you have dismissed the alarm, the audio won't come back. I suspect this is
unrelated to my car, to be honest. As I disconnected my phone from the car,
the issue was still there, no podcast audio.

------
cpr
I've got a 2016 15" MBP (touch bar) and have had zero problems with the
hardware and software for a year and a half of heavy daily use. Well, maybe
one weird hang.

YMMV, but it would seem like there's something wrong with your system that's
not just run-of-the-mill.

~~~
vlaak
Same here in terms of stability. I've been using a touch bar MBP 15 for
several months and its been rock solid (still on Sierra though).

That being said, I HATE the keyboard and the touchbar is just dumb. The
battery life is worse as well (although still way better than my Windows
laptops). I wish I just had my old machine back to be honest.

That keyboard though.... ass

------
middleout
a few years ago, switching to android would have been unthinkable for me.
preposterous.

now? I am so annoyed by my iphones persistent buggy problems performing normal
phone-like operations (texting, typing) that I will probably switch. ugh.

few other anecdotal observations: their genius bar reservation web page
literally redirects to an error page half the time! and not like a "planned"
error page with a cute whale or something, but one with weird server logs that
obviously are not meant for the end user

half the time i try to use the app store or sync apple ID I get an inscrutable
error

i'm not sure if I gave up on apple, or they gave up on me! end rant

------
foobarbazetc
Shipping iOS and macOS updates while simultaneously shipping new hardware
every year is like never ending Cylon attacks in BSG.

It’s relentless. It takes insane amounts of work. And you’re on a fixed
schedule.

------
cepth
Aside from MacOS/iOS native software, IMHO Apple software for Windows has
become unusable.

I tried using iCloud for Windows, but the sync behavior is unreliable, and I
found myself without critical files on more than one occasion. This is not to
mention the absurd background CPU usage.

iTunes on Windows is even worse. The built-in updater seems to fail on every
major release, i.e. for 12.4,12.5,12.6 etc. Even under normal use, there are
times when iTunes just refuses to launch. The background processes are
running, but there’s nothing on my screen.

I’ve resorted to delaying my iTunes software updates until absolutely
necessary, and then doing a clean install of iTunes. This is not to mention
the myriad issues with authorizing computers to download previously purchased
content, or the fact that iTunes will quite literally prompt you for the same
password multiple times, with no UI notification telling you that you’ve
entered it correctly or incorrectly.

------
bsvalley
Previous Thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16264329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16264329)

My answer:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16265512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16265512)

~~~
skinnymuch
Previous thread only once mentions iOS 11 in nested comments which I’d find
more interesting to hear about because I don’t see many people complaining
about it. Far more people are active on iOS 11 than High Sierra too. I
personally have no issues with it beyond any other iOS.

------
jfoster
I dealt with Apple Care recently for about 2 months of daily phone calls,
store visits, and chats.

My MacBook had initially started restarting when it encountered any
significant load. I got the logic board replaced and instead it started
sometimes not waking from sleep correctly, producing "MCA data" kernel panics.

In the end, it got narrowed to the fact that I had an external monitor
attached whilst closing the lid of the MacBook. This issue had been introduced
earlier than my initial repair, but had only started happening for me post-
repair because the repairer had taken the liberty of updating my software and
exposed me to the bug that Apple had introduced.

------
xivusr
My first Mac was he Titanium PowerBook, loved it really, but eventually the
hinges developed cracks and caused screen flickering.

Mostly now I’m happy with the hardware still using mbp for development, iPad
Air, & iPhone; but have noticed the degrade in software stability on all
devices.

OS updates make me nervous and don’t address the issues I run into : general
performance, responsiveness, Bluetooth device connectivity and hibernation.

I like tqkxzugoaupvwqr’s theory - maybe Apple is more focused on a swift
rewrite and unified OS. In general all software and os releases feel rushed
and incomplete.

------
throwawySEuser
I haven't experienced this with my macbook (Early 2015 also running high
sierra), it's been stable. (but why isn't it possible to sort video's based on
size in the photo app or icloud photo webapp?..)

With my iphone se it's a completely different story. Decided to contact Apple
customer support because my iphone was frequently freezing up in the past
weeks. Got told I need to replace the battery for 30euro (which to be fair is
a decent price), but the battery still seems pretty good to me and the phone
is less than 2 years old.

------
jotjotzzz
I miss the simplicity of the old Music app. The "redesigned" music app is an
eyesore and a clunky experience that managed to kill my love of listening to
music using Apple devices since the iPod days. Now, I'm using Spotify and heck
even Amazon's music player is way better. Sigh.

------
lasgsf
On my side with the new Macbook and iPhone X no issues whatsoever so maybe
this was just your system?

------
askafriend
Honestly my iPhone 7, iMac, and MacBook Pro have all held up great. I've had
no issues.

