
Ask HN: Why is iOS 11 such a mess? - remarkEon
&gt; Calculator input lag bug<p>&gt; Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices<p>&gt; Swiping right to open a text or app from the lock-screen will cause touchID to fail<p>&gt; Battery life has absolutely collapsed (pretty much have to have low power mode enabled to make it through the day with moderate usage)<p>&gt; iMessage bug corrects &quot;I&quot; to some unrecognizable symbol [1]<p>&gt; Siri App Suggestions now appears to suggest most recently used apps, not frequently - defeating the purpose of the home-button double-click (I assume this was done to support functionality on iPhone X since that doesn&#x27;t have a home-button).<p>This is just what I&#x27;ve experienced before noon today. Why the decline in software quality?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apple.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;304153&#x2F;ios-11-autocorrect-bug-typing-the-letter-capital-i<p>Edit: More since lunch<p>&gt; Using bluetooth headphones to control Spotify music app...sometimes, but not always, pressing the button to restart paused audio will start iTunes music, even though I never use it anymore.<p>&gt; I don&#x27;t know what happened in the Podcast app, but my saved podcasts are not there anymore and the library is difficult to navigate.
======
pwinnski
They need to hit a panic button inside Apple, and use the time they've bought
themselves by introducing 2018's hardware in 2017 (as they claim the X does),
and focus 100% on software.

I think giving iOS design to Ive was an error, but even if they don't agree
with that, they need to focus on software very clearly and very publicly,
making iOS 12 a release like the old Snow Leopard MacOS release. Focus on
quality and performance, not new features.

~~~
liberte82
Bringing out the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 at the same time is already a
confusing marketing mess and something that never would have happened under
Jobs.

~~~
scarface74
Yes it was such a huge marketing mess that Apple's guidance is that they will
have a record breaking quarter during the 4th calendar quarter....

------
BadassFractal
I'm earnestly appalled at how terrible this release has been.

I've had an iPhone since 3GS and this is the first time I can remember I've
really regretted an update. I've NEVER experienced my iPhone completely
locking up for 5-10 minutes right in the middle of me trying to get work done,
not allowing me to even force-reboot it.

I have to power cycle it at least a dozen times a day now because it gets into
a state where apps will no longer launch until I do it.

I'm not really a whiny user, but this is a whole new level of suck I've never
seen before. It's a Windows ME grade of garbage release. Very disappointing as
I felt iOS 10 was bulletproof and I relied on my phone to have my back as I
was traveling and working, and now I'm constantly hoping the next app I switch
to doesn't disable it for 10 minutes right in the middle of me doing something
important.

~~~
ams6110
Time to treat Apple releases like we used to treat Microsoft releases? (Always
wait for the first service pack).

~~~
bunderbunder
If iOS 11.1 can be considered "the first service pack", then even that sounds
iffy. Or at least, what I'm reading suggests that even with that update, my
battery life would still be crap should I decide to upgrade.

Though this gets to another problem with Apple's maintenance of iOS: If you
don't upgrade to iOS 11, you don't get their fix for krack attacks. Microsoft,
on the other hand, did have the common decency to continue issuing security
patches for older major releases.

~~~
excalibur
This. When Apple devices reach two generations old, they need to be forcibly
removed from your environment, or they will quickly become gaping security
holes. For a company that prides itself on its image of protecting users'
privacy, it sure is behind the curve on software maintenance.

~~~
tatersolid
My family has 4 year old iPhone 5S in service that still receive all security
updates.

Our Android devices on the other hand... not so much. Six months of updates
seems to be about the max!

~~~
thr0w__4w4y
I think excalibur meant "when the software version is two versions back", not
the hardware.

I suspect the family is still getting security updates because you are running
iOS 11 on the 5S. I bought a 5S too back in 2013, it came with iOS 7. If you
were still running iOS 7 (or 8, or 9, or probably even 10 now) on the device,
you would not be getting updates any more.

------
egypturnash
> Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices

wait, isn't that expected behavior anyway? You're getting on an airplane and
turning off all the radios; bluetooth operates via a radio.

~~~
ghostbust555
Right??? I was very confused how this was considered a bug considering every
other device in the world works this way.

~~~
jpetso
But how are you going to listen to music on your wireless Airpods during the
long flight, given that you showed courage in abandoning your audio cables?
Delightful.

~~~
bunderbunder
You hit the airplane mode button, and then hit the Bluetooth button to re-
enable Bluetooth but not other radios.

~~~
majewsky
And then the airplane crashes. (Or so I'm told.)

~~~
masonic
Only if you also use the calculator.

------
surds
For the iPhone 8, the screen does not dim or turn off at all when any app is
open. This has been reported on Apple's support forums and one of the
solutions that worked for several devices, including my spouse's device, is -
restart the phone.

My first thought was that "iOS is the new Windows where the primary
recommended solution to a problem is to restart the device."

------
kiernanmcgowan
I keep losing audio controls on my lock screen - not just navigation, even
volume. Alarms have also started making no sound in the morning.

I've just picked up the habit of restarting my phone before I go to bed at
night. I am just shocked that so many existing features got broken in odd
ways.

~~~
teatime42
I get this too. I thought it was because my phone is older (iphone 6). Since
the upgrade my phone has been AWFUL and is beginning to cause more frustration
than it's worth.

I also subscribe to Apple Music and it is driving me crazy. Since the upgrade
it randomly starts over with my songs in alphabetical order and not on shuffle
so even if I'm ok with it I have to touch my phone to shuffle them.

All that worked just fine in before the upgrade. Now if I don't restart the
phone frequently it breaks a couple times a week.

My phone is bought and paid for, but when the time comes for a new one if this
is still happening I am likely going Android and using google play for music.

I am beyond annoyed with it. I've always used iphones since smart phones came
out, but I have nothing against android and if this keeps up I'm gone. At that
point I'll keep using Androids until it does something incredibly annoying and
causes me to look elsewhere.

Apple is very close to losing a customer for generations of phones to come if
they don't figure things out.

Edited to add: also now my song list has random songs grayed out. I haven't
taken time to look into it but this was not an issue before I upgraded to 11.
The same song will play fine if it naturally gets queued or I search for it,
but touch it to play... nope!

~~~
tatersolid
I’ve had the opposite problem for years in Apple Music: it’s impossible to
turn shuffle _off_. It keeps getting re-enabled randomly, and the UI for
finding the setting required a Google search.

Maybe caused by some weird interaction with my car head unit (Nissan/Infiniti)
or something because it always reports shuffle as off even when it is on!

------
menacingly
I usually read about the bugs but never experience them. I assume it's because
I'm a super light phone user.

This time, using the camera on my SE from the lock screen randomly causes my
phone to become un-unlockable and forces me to reset. It's really annoying not
knowing which goofy thing my kids do I won't be able to photograph.

------
arprocter
Another for the list - the new Podcasts app is terrible

Edit: it's as if they tried to make the interface less efficient than before -
it makes it much more difficult to find subscribed to podcasts you haven't
listened to in a while

~~~
archildress
You've gotta go Pocket Casts. I took the leap and never looked back. It's
miles better.

~~~
gilrain
The web client which keeps in sync with the phone clients is so nice. I get
home, put the phone in my pocket, and start the podcast I was listening to at
exactly the same place it was when I got out of the car. And vice versa, of
course.

For a one-time fee service, it's pretty amazing!

~~~
archildress
Totally agree and that one-time fee thing is a lost art!

------
markpapadakis
I use the iPhone 6s. It was responsive, and battery would last at least half
the day just fine. Right after the upgrade, batter would last for maybe 1
hour, tops, 30 minutes on average. No minor upgrade fixed the problem, and
apparently its a widespread one too. I am getting either the 8+ or the X, but
I still think this is ridiculous at best.

~~~
jakobegger
Your battery is probably degraded, and no software update will fix it. Lion
batteries just don‘t last forever.

You can get a replacement battery for your phone for €25. If you don’t want to
do the replacement yourself, any 3rd party repair shop will replace it in 15
minutes. You can also go to an authorized service provider, but that will cost
€100 and take much more time.

~~~
markpapadakis
Half a day, while far from ideal, was long enough for my needs. However, as
soon as I upgraded, and not a minute earlier, the battery problem manifested.
Now, it could be a coincidence and it is indeed just a problem specific to the
battery, but its at best suspicious - the timing is. I will replace the batter
anyway, and I am getting a new iPhone next week, I just don’t appreciate being
“forced” to upgrade -- conveniently when the iPhone X came out, no less.

~~~
jakobegger
If your battery only lasted half a day before, it was already a severely
degraded battery. The update will put a lot of strain on the battery (iPhone
does a lot of re-indexing and other stuff after the upgrade), which might
might have caused the battery to deteriorate even more.

And, as I said, you are not forced to upgrade. A battery replacement is cheap
and quick and will solve all your problems and your phone will feel like new.

I also have the iPhone 6S, and I've also been having trouble with the battery.
I've had to replace it twice. (First time Apple replaced the whole phone
because of a manufacturing defect, second time I went to a 3rd party repair
shop)

Sure, it would be nice if Apple products lasted forever without service.
Unfortunately they don't. But servicing iPhones has become extremely cheap and
extremely quick -- as long as you stay away from authorised service providers.

~~~
markpapadakis
I am not concerned with the replacement costs -- it's just where I live,
getting the battery replacement will likely mean that I have to ship it to
another city(Athens), or, maybe, find some place in a different city in the
island (Crete) who may be able to do it. Its a hassle and an inconvenience for
me.

What is odd is that is seems to be related to rendering; sometimes when I
scroll on either direction on Tweetbot or on Safari, the iPhone will stall for
maybe 500ms and the battery will drop by 20% or so instantly. Other times, I
will app-switch to Slack and it will do the same. Reading content in black
background/white text on the other hand, doesn't seem to be draining the
battery. So I think its safe to assume this is an upgrade related problem.
Also, I have disabled spotlight indexing and pretty much everything else I
could, and it's also been quite some time since the upgrade for any upgrade
tasks to be running to completion still.

~~~
jakobegger
I had the stalls as well, and they went away after replacing the battery.

I’m pretty sure that there is no way to fix your phone with software. It’s a
hardware problem. Just replace the battery, and it’ll work fine again.

I don’t know where you live in Crete, but typing “iphone repair cityname” in
google should quickly get you to a place that can replace your battery in
15min.

------
planetjones
I would have expected someone working at Apple who should be getting paid a
high salary and writing software that is used by millions of people to have
huge pride in their work. This means testing what they deliver in isolation
and on integrated builds. So either apple staff are under too much pressure
that quality control has gone out the window or they have the wrong kind of
people. For instance are they missing the type of people who are obsessive
about detail.

~~~
qwefadf
You must have never worked on a project with more than 10 people on it.

~~~
planetjones
I have worked on a project with hundreds of people on it. But if I take the
calculator example where you can’t add numbers together properly because of
the animation lag, I doubt that more than one or two developers built that.
Someone should have had the pride and passion to test that themselves, raise
it and fix it. So either the organisation and culture is very bad at apple or
the individuals don’t take enough responsibility. Maybe it’s both.

~~~
dingaling
> I doubt that more than one or two developers built that

Indeed, and it no doubt passed all the unit tests and was marked as good to
ship.

But I suspect what they were lacking was an aggressive, adversarial QA
specialist with the mindset of "how would a user break this in daily use".

~~~
altern8tif
That's really surprising considering that we've seen beta releases of iOS for
quite a number of years now.

Isn't the point of a beta release to make sure that the OS is battle-tested
with users who would use it like they do in real life?

Would have thought it might have covered most of the typical real-world use
cases. Especially since it probably has one of the highest number of
users/testers of any beta software programs.

------
sambe
Also: Safari crashes with force touch click-through fairly often. Lots of
notifications seem to flick around faster than I can see them or react. Weird
bias towards closing app over switching apps in the app switcher.

It does seem a particularly messy release, perhaps akin to iOS 7. But many
things also seem snappier and more useful. Like another commentator, I put it
down to teething problems.

------
bherms
Since installing iOS 11 some things that keep happening:

1) I turn off wifi only to notice internet stuff not working later, only to
realize wifi has turned itself back on and connected to a random open network.

2) Almost any time I try to update any app(s), all apps freeze and won't
function until I force restart my phone.

3) Random freezes and crashes all the time.

4) Much worse battery life on iPhone 7

~~~
abrowne
(1) is a "feature": [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208086](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086)

~~~
alekratz
Wow, so tapping the wi-fi icon only temporarily disables it, rather than doing
what (I'd argue) most people expect, which is disabling it until enabled by
the user. Oof.

------
paulbeattie
All valid points.

Personally I find that iOS recently has really fallen behind, the hardware
coming from Apple is still best in class, software is terrible. Notifications
are abysmal, the UI in places feels pieced together, some of the UI just
doesn't make sense, functionality is lacking in a number of areas. That
doesn't even start on the bugs.

To be honest the software and the software alone is pushing me more and more
to Android as I'm really disliking the lack of traction from Apple on
improving iOS.

~~~
lowlevel
I feel about the same... they're usually on top of chip design, power
efficiency/etc, but quality of the software lately seems really questionable.
They have been getting too aggressive with pointless stuff and losing sight of
the basics.

------
chomp
I switched from Android to iOS for the first time with the iPhone 8 plus and
while the camera is the best camera I've ever owned on a smartphone, I'm
pretty disappointed with iOS. I'm probably going to switch back to Android in
a couple years. I can't recall a new Android release ever being this buggy for
this long.

~~~
stock_toaster
> I can't recall a new Android release ever being this buggy _for this long_.

It has been what, 2 months?

------
IdontRememberIt
I think that the root cause of all the issues (hardware + software) are that
since Steve's death the "less is more" has been replaced by "more, more,
more". The first requires a lot of efforts and leadership. The second is easy
and typical in the corporate world lead by managers (away from the final
customer and the product but obsessed by internal procedures).

------
amitbakhru
My guess would be iOS11 overall 64bit application switch and deprecation of
32bit processors on older devices is making it slow overall.

~~~
w458cmau
I would expect the opposite, being able to remove support for 32-bit.

------
leoh
Mail regularly crashed for me whenever I opened it. Deleted all my mail
accounts and switched to the GMail app. Madness.

------
Aqua_Geek
I _still_ don't understand how multiple apps and the associated gestures work
on iPad. Is there a support doc or something to which somebody could point me?

------
matt_oriordan
Upgrading to iOS 11 has effectively bricked my phone, it’s painfully slow. The
thing I find (sadly) amusing is I cannot use the torch feature now. Works
roughly 20% of the time. It’s binary, on or off, and it doesn’t work. What the
fuck is going on?

------
jgowdy
Probably for the same reason external monitors on touchbar MacBook Pros are
totally screwed up in High Sierra. Quality control has gone to shit again.

------
tolmasky
Every iOS has been a mess since iOS 7 at least, and the reason seems pretty
straight-forward: every year there is an expansion in scope while maintaining
a strict 1-year development cycle. This necessarily means that the bugs start
to pile up (since the main focus is constantly some set of new features, never
fully allowing a true stabilization period), and I suppose its reached a point
now where they are evident to even the untrained eye, but the writing was on
the wall for quite a bit if you ask me. Just take a look:

1\. iOS 7: Major overhaul of the UI means the entire system is going to be in
flux (to this day UI doesn't feel as polished as iOS 6, whether you prefer
that style or not). Either way, the focus was monopolized by remaking every UI
widget. Also, Swift announced.

2\. iOS 8: Apple Watch year. Major amount of work getting iOS to run on a
third platform (iPhone, iPad, Watch). Surely lots of attention drawn away to
get the Watch shipped, plus associated iPhone support for the Watch. This was
also the year a new screen size was introduced with iPhone 6 Plus (arguably
the downscaling shouldn't have affected mainline iOS stability too much, but
just to highlight ever increasing support for different _stuff_ ). Also, third
party keyboards.

3\. iOS 9: Support for the latest gimmick "3D Touch" which required every app
to add a bunch of (IMO) useless new undiscoverable affordances as well as long
overdue major overhaul of iPad features: multitasking, etc.

4\. iOS 10: Entire new class of apps for Messages and associated entire new
App Store. Basically a mini-OS in Messages. Also, surely while all this is
going on iPhone X is being worked on in the background.

5\. iOS 11: Another major UI overhaul with tons of old affordances replaced,
replacing Touch ID with Face ID, ANOTHER new screen size added with iPhone X.

iOS 1-3 were great because they did LESS. Its easy to forget that for example
Apple used to outsource its mapping to Google. Now Apple needs an entire huge
team JUST to have all the data it used to simply get access to. iOS used to
also be more elegant because it did LESS -- remember, we couldn't even copy-
paste before. These things add up, you can't go from supporting 1 device to 3
classes of devices with at least 4 variations on each and doubling the amount
of apps you spit out and maintain without something having to give. And it's
not just from a QA side either, the very nature of the phone has gotten more
confusing: with every year, we've shoved more and more of the desktop's
features into the phone, and as it turns out, there was no magic - if you want
to be able to do 100 things, you may very well need 100 new code paths and a
100 overloaded hard-to-learn gestures. Maybe there existed an alternative path
to the "dream" of a device as simple to use as iPhone 1 that let you do
everything a desktop can, but we certainly won't know anytime soon.

Just think about it, you basically get 6 months of iOS N.0-N.6, then a WWDC
where iOS N+1.0 Beta is announced, which of course has to entice people with M
"new!" features, and the cycle begins again.

~~~
cageface
_iOS 9: Support for the latest gimmick "3D Touch" which required every app to
add a bunch of (IMO) useless new undiscoverable affordances as well as long
overdue major overhaul of iPad features: multitasking, etc._

3D touch also adds weight, complexity and cost to the screen, for a feature
most users completely ignore. I consider it one of Apple's biggest feature
misfires.

------
LaSombra
I wish Apple followed Google's lead here and detached some of the basic
applications from iOS releases, like the calculator, Safari and others. In
Google's case, that improved the quality of the Android experience ten-fold,
IMHO.

------
Dobbs
Hitting airplane mode drops connected bluetooth devices, until you reenable it
while in airplane mode. It then remembers that you want bluetooth to remain on
in airplane mode.

~~~
pier25
Hasn't been this always the case?

AFAIK airplane mode should kill all radio signals.

------
sogen
My best guess: Some part of the QA team moved to work on High Sierra or other
project.

Specially since Sierra/High Sierra got Siri and many iOS features.

------
hutattedonmyarm
> Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices

Huh, doesn't happen to me

~~~
dionidium
Wait, hasn't this always been the case?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4pwv0l/i_finally_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4pwv0l/i_finally_figured_out_how_to_stop_airplane_mode/)

~~~
pohl
That's what I thought, too. Many times under iOS 10 I would accidentally
activate Airplane Mode, causing my AirPods to disconnect. This is not a new
problem.

------
threeseed
This nonsense again. This has been happening for years.

What happened was that Apple switched from Waterfall development to Agile. And
what came from this was more regular and frequent releases at the cost of less
polished releases. The way it works is Apple releases 11.0 with only P1 issues
fixed, then from 11.1 -> 11.6 the focus is on P2 followed by P3 etc. Then a
seperate team continues to work on 12.0.

11.1 was just released and 11.2 just went public beta and is another few weeks
away. And none of the bugs you have listed are even all that serious.

And Apple had to release 11.0 as it was ready to coincide for iPhone X launch.

~~~
remarkEon
I would _much_ prefer to have an iOS update that's ready to go, not one with
"only" P1 issues resolved. That sounds like a terrible way to treat your
customers. If that's true that they switched to Agile, what advantages did
they honestly gain from it aside from swifter releases (if that's even an
advantage at all)?

> And none of the bugs you have listed are even all that serious.

If the standard we're now using to critique _Apple_ is now "well these bugs
aren't that serious no big deal" the company is in trouble.

------
jbob2000
It's a new release, not a general decline in quality. This always happens,
it's just that iOS updates are infrequent enough that people forget about the
day 1 bugs.

You want to be on the cutting edge? This is what you get! I didn't even have
to tell my mother not to update, she knew to wait a few months.

~~~
1_2__4
No, this is does not always happen. This is why we're here discussing this.
Why are so many HN commenters so quick to just flatly ignore the fact that the
very reason you're seeing this conversation in the first place is because lots
of people agree with the OP, or believe it to be an important discussion? Your
comment could be summed up as "Bah, humbug."

