
Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software - molecule
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-apple-users-really-hate-apple-software-20160208-column.html
======
nostrademons
It's kinda weird to read commentators talking as if this was the end of a
golden age of Apple.

From my perspective, their application software has _always_ sucked. It was
there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users
to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics
company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been
identified and attracted companies that really want to make it their bread-
and-butter.

XCode and occasionally FaceTime & iMovie are the only bundled applications
that I ever use on my Mac. When I get a new computer, the first things I do
are usually download Chrome, MacVim, Google Photos, and VLC. I use Hangouts
over iMessage, Google Calendar over the built-in calendar, and Google Docs
over the office suite. On my iPhone, getting Google Maps and Yelp is a top
priority, lest I end up navigating off a mountain. This is not a new habit;
I've operated like this since getting a Mac in 2009 after a 10-year hiatus
from Apple products.

Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans, and the end of the
brainwashing may itself be news with big consequences for product adoption.
But IMHO anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never
looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this
whole time.

~~~
Skunkleton
> It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract
> enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer
> electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the
> niche has been identified and attracted companies that really want to make
> it their bread-and-butter.

I have a hard time with this. Apple products tend to lock you into apple
software. If you want to develop software, then you are pretty much stuck with
XCode. If you want to send email on iOS, then you are stuck with the built in
mail app (at least if you click an address from Safari, or Contacts). If I ask
Siri to play some music, it launches the built in Music player. So if what you
say is true, then why can't I set a default app made by a third party company?

~~~
largote
Clicking on an address defaults to fucking Apple Maps... Let me say that
again: _Apple_ _Maps_...

~~~
lobster_johnson
Apple Maps' reputation is much worse than it deserves. These days it is better
than Google Maps, in my opinion: Better map pins, better graphical
performance, better rendering style, better search.

~~~
stordoff
> Apple Maps' reputation is much worse than it deserves

I haven't used it since launch, so can't comment on its current performance,
but AFAICT its reputation is due to how poor it was at launch. I tried it with
three locations that Google Maps handled fine (small sample I know, but enough
to put me off trying it further), and had problems with all three results (my
house: low-res satellite imagery; my College: wrong website address; Cambridge
Union Society: correct details, but location was about 50mi out).

Hopefully its now better, but that initial impression is hard to shake.

Edit: initially -> initial

~~~
Bud
It's not that hard to shake your initial impression, actually. It's called
actually using the product at any time in the last 3 years, for 10 minutes or
so. Try it. You might be surprised.

------
mmastrac
It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close
to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these
things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC
thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years.

My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery
glued to the case. The SSD is technically replaceable, but the specs that this
laptop shipped with are going to be the specs that it dies with.

When the battery goes, I'll have to either risk destroying the machine or pay
way too much to Apple to do the job for me. At that point I'll probably just
switch to a brand with a more reasonable user-servicing model, assuming those
still exist.

~~~
rayiner
Comparable laptops aren't really any better. The rMBP is a lot more repairable
than say the Surface Book (which won't let you even open the case without
possibly cracking the display). At least Apple has a battery replacement
service at an advertised price--what'll Dell charge you to replace the non-
servicable battery in the XPS13 or XPS15? And no other PC laptop hits that
right sweet spot of power/battery/display quality. ThinkPads have great power
and good battery, but shitty screens.[1] Dells and HPs with gorgeous 4k
screens can barely get 4-5 hours out of them.

I almost jumped ship recently because the Surface Book hits a great mix of
screen quality/power/battery life, but judging by the forums, it's buggy as
hell. So what to do? I'd love a swap-able battery in my rMBP like I have in my
T450s, but at the end of the day, I never reach for my ThinkPad when I've got
my Mac handy. I'll just go ahead and pay the $200 bucks Apple charges to
replace the sealed battery.

[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work
laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped
out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM,
and FHD IPS display.

~~~
Domenic_S
> Surface Book

Man, I love the idea of this thing.

But I recently tried moving to Surface Book. Spent nearly $3k on a real nicely
specc'd one. It BSOD'd daily, sleep modes are really confusing, battery
drained terribly overnight, it was overall a bit of a nightmare. Granted
probably half of my complaints are about Win10 rather than the SB itself, but
still. I returned it.

It's SO CLOSE and if it was $1,000 cheaper I may have just dealt with it. Just
not quite there.

~~~
joenathan
I have a Surface Book and am sticking through the problems, I've experienced
everything you've mentioned. Bought it on launch, things have gotten
significantly better with firmware and driver updates, but it still has a
little ways to go. Seemingly the majority of the problems have to do with
Skylake. At the rate things have been going, I estimate a couple more months
before they have the big bugs all ironed out.

------
Cartwright2
I dread helping anyone with iTunes related issues. The syncing process is
dangerous, it's far too easy to wipe someone's collection of music / family
photos / pictures. I'm not sure if this is an isolated issue but I start
sweating bullets as soon as I have to connect an iDevice to iTunes. What
really shocks me is that instead of showing a big red warning message before a
destructive sync, it silently goes ahead and wipes data without even asking.
And there's no easy way to tell what a sync is going to do. After any iTunes
sync I generally think "Ok, now let's assess the damage".

To add insult to injury it's almost impossible to make a file-for-file backup
before decimating a device with iTunes sync. In fact, the iTunes sync process
is the main reason I stick to Android despite it having a whole other
ecosystem of flaws. I'll take a USB Mass storage device and robocopy / rsync,
thanks. They actually work.

~~~
aantix
The second I see iTunes is syncing I think to myself "oh fuck, oh fuck" and
look to force quit the app as soon as possible.

Then I spend the next half hour looking at the connected device to ensure my
collection is still there.

It's part of the reason why I switched over to the (defunct) Rdio. Managing
the individual iTunes music files was just too stressful.

~~~
LeoPanthera
I never understood this. You keep all your music in iTunes. What harm could
possibly come even if it did accidentally wipe your device? The worst possible
scenario is that you'll have to wait a few minutes to sync it back again.

~~~
hussong
Not an iTunes user, but I guess some people just want to do a selective sync
to certain devices to keep storage use in check and maintain library
navigability on the device. That can be quite a bit of work which you wouldn't
want to lose to technical failure.

~~~
LeoPanthera
The "correct" way to do this is to make a playlist of the things you want on
your device, and then to tell iTunes to sync to that playlist (or collection
of playlists) only.

------
sithadmin
>Mossberg pointed to "a gradual degradation in the quality and reliability of
Apple’s core apps." He fingered iTunes for the desktop ("I dread opening the
thing"), and the Mail, Photos, and iCloud programs.

As somebody that's used a Mac for 90%+ of all computing-related tasks since OS
X was released, all of the above-mentioned apps/services have been dead to me
for years. I honestly can't remember the last time I purposely used any of the
above.

What's driving me away is a combination of flaky behavior on the desktop
(bizarre wifi glitches; bizarre NFS/SMB/AFP mount behaviors; increasing system
instability), and a lack of differentiation across both the desktop and mobile
platform. There was a time when I needed a Mac or i-Device to do things I
cared about/needed, but those days are long over. Almost all of my compute
activity happens on a server in my homelab or 'the cloud', and Linux and
Android meets or exceeds my needs for completing other tasks. I just swapped
my iPhone 6+ for a Nexus 6P, and my current MacBook (12" model) will probably
be my last when I retire it in 3-4 years.

~~~
drhayes9
Do you have any recommendations for a music player that isn't iTunes?

~~~
stephendedalus
When I started using Android I subscribed to Google Play Music. It allowed me
to upload my music collection, including songs that we're on Google Play. It's
not matching, like Apple. It's literally just taking my music and allowing me
to store it in the cloud and download it onto mobile devices. It's really
handy so far and makes much more sense compared to iTunes. Plus there's no
"sync" concept once you're there. You just download music out of your
collection or you don't.

~~~
Slippery_John
I don't know how the iTunes matching works, but Play Music does swap out your
version of a song with theirs if they see they're the same thing. I think this
has only been within the last year or so that they started doing this though.
I don't have any personal files anymore, so I can't comment on how accurate it
is.

~~~
tommyd
Play Music _does_ match and _does_ get it wrong, as I've found out with a few
continuous albums where tracks have got swapped out for unmixed versions. You
can manually tell it not to but only on a per-track basis (e.g. see
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1zruza/getting_kin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1zruza/getting_kinda_tired_of_google_music_replacing_my/))

I feel like there's definitely a gap in the market for a cloud music service
that is simple and effective, I would love to just upload all my music and
know it was going to play back anywhere (desktop and mobile) with the original
tracks and proper gapless playback, and I would be able to download my music
back out of there, with a nice clean UI.

Apple Music fails because it swaps out tracks and is generally flaky (little
control over the upload process, tracks don't play, etc.), Google Play fails
because it swaps out tracks and has, IMO, a pretty horrible UI on both desktop
and mobile.

I've played a little with Subsonic but found the clients lacking. Any other
suggestions? Maybe I should just build my own!

------
paxtonab
...[Mossberg] fingered iTunes for the desktop "I dread opening the thing"

This is so spot on. It feels like they rearrange iTunes every month,
especially the mobile version.

Recently I noticed that I'd be searching for a song (that I have on my phone)
and it would default to their streaming service.... Why would I want to use my
data to stream a song that I already have on my phone?

~~~
midnitewarrior
If Steve were alive, people would be getting fired after comments from Walt
such as these.

~~~
Reedx
I'm not sure about that... iTunes has always been awful.

~~~
ridgeguy
I agree. Apple bought Soundjam MP [1] and turned it into iTunes, ruining it in
the process.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP)

------
1024core
I used to be fairly content with Apple: the iOS ecosystem (or walled garden)
was pretty decent, and OSX is basically Unix. I was happy.

Then, after a few years of iOS use, I switched to Android. Suddenly, I was an
outcast among friends: any group SMS conversations I had been a part of, I
would no longer get. I get it: Apple uses iMessage, and it is not present in
Android. But at least Apple could warn the sender that it is unable to deliver
the message to me, instead of silently dropping it! Friends started calling
me: are you OK? And I had to patiently explain to them the iMessage fiasco. I
tried everything to disavow iMessage on my phone number; but nothing works. I
still don't get messages in group conversations, months later.

This totally soured me on Apple. Instead of being a greedy little fuck, why
can't they just play nice? They are the biggest company in the world; they
don't _have_ to be giant pricks too!

~~~
LeoPanthera
> But at least Apple could warn the sender that it is unable to deliver the
> message to me, instead of silently dropping it!

It's harsh, but this only happens if you don't follow the instructions.

Deregister and turn off iMessage: [https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-
imessage](https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage)

If you follow this, you'll never miss a message.

~~~
1024core
I _did_ follow the instructions. I deregistered several times, and Apple knows
that my number is not registered with iMessages anymore.

~~~
digi_owl
Basically it seems that the imessage app on iOS basically can't be bothered to
check every number every time a group message is sent. So once it has found
you were a imessage number you are forever an imessage number within that
group.

The only way to break it, as best i know as an outsider, is for everyone else
in that group that are imessage users to delete the group and start over.

Likely it is another one of Apple's "usability optimizations", like how they
would broadcast every last SSID you had been in contact with to try to speed
up reconnects.

~~~
1024core
But Apple Central knows that the number is no longer on iMessage. It also know
that I was the recipient of an iMessage in the group. How difficult would it
be for Apple to send an update to the client, saying "Um, you tried to
iMessage $NUMBER, but it is no longer on iMessage" ?

~~~
digi_owl
As best i can tell, what you suggest happens on one to one messages. But there
seems to be something in the way iMessage stores group messages, and use whats
stored when responding, thats the problem.

If i am to guess, the client-server protocol only sends a single message id,
and thus when one part of a group fails, the server has to invalidate the
whole group.

And Apple would be loath to do that as it would perhaps be seen as an
inconvenience to the user.

------
untog
I don't much care about the software - I haven't used iTunes in years, don't
use Mail, etc. etc. - it's the operating system I care about.

Wi-fi has been buggy on OS X for literally years now. And each new major
release seems to bring some new pain point where it refuses to turn on,
refuses to connect, doesn't transmit data... and on and on. There's no way
Apple can't know about this - it must drive _their own employees_ crazy. Yet,
nothing gets done.

If I were in the market for a new laptop right now I'd be taking a serious
look at a Surface Book - it's the first thing I've seen that looks like it
could rival a Macbook in the hardware department. Sadly, I'd have to do a lot
more research into getting a decent POSIX environment set up on it before I
could take the plunge.

~~~
stestagg
I've found that wifi is buggy generally with lower end APs. It may be Apple
employees generally have a better class of router/wifi

~~~
api
Recent Macs have a wifi chip that _requires_ WME/WMM extensions (Wireless
Multimedia) in most cases. For most APs it will have issues if these are
switched off. Rumor is it's a chipset thing not a software thing.

~~~
wtallis
Got any more information on that? I usually leave WMM off on account of it
being extra complexity that doesn't seem to make anything work better, and I
haven't noticed any particular issues with my six month old rMBP. Which
chipsets are supposedly afflicted?

(side note: I wish they'd never stopped using Atheros WiFi.)

~~~
api
It was a while back and The Goog is not delivering, but I do distinctly
remember this being an issue and that enabling this extension fixed it. But
maybe only certain MBPs are affected.

------
chrisblackwell
OSX fan here: Everyone is completely misunderstanding our recent criticisms of
Apple software.

We don't hate Apple software!

We have seen a steady decline over the last few years, and so we are
expressing our concerns. This does not translate to us hating the software. We
know what Apple can do when it really focuses on the quality of it's software
(see OSX Snow Leopard).

I still think OSX is more stable and useable then any other OS out there. Yes
there are annoyances, but they are trying to move the ball forward. The only
piece I would agree has gone completely off the rails is iTunes.

OSX is still strong, and I believe Apple will right the ship. After all, Apple
employees use Mac's themselves to build iOS.

~~~
ld00d
Even with the problems, I still prefer OS X to anything else. Apple claims a
higher standard, and everyone wants to hold them to it. They're falling short
of their standard, but they're falling to a higher point than the alternatives
IMO.

~~~
Caprinicus
Right, but I think it's still important to note because the user experience
has gotten worse even if it is still the best.

------
dangoor
I think the latest episode of ATP has a good take on this in their segment
"Why are we so critical of Apple?":

[http://atp.fm/episodes/155](http://atp.fm/episodes/155)

They have a bunch of gripes, but at the same time there's still a lot that
makes them happy and they're not about to start using Windows or Linux
instead. This is exactly how I feel: yeah, there's stuff they need to do
better and some of their stuff has either gotten totally crufty (iTunes) or
was a bit too early (Apple Music, Apple Watch), but overall I still prefer
Apple's products to their competitors _at this point in time_.

------
ewillbefull
I haven't used Apple software in a long time, but Google is not immune to this
either apparently. If you use the YouTube app, and especially if you use
Chromecast, you'll experience countless bugs as it fails to reconcile state
changes between the devices or properly buffer videos. I'm considering setting
up a raspi or something and installing an ad blocker on it to replace my
Chromecast. I don't think this is what Google wants but its product is
difficult to use any other way.

Hangouts / Google Calendar are also really clunky and seem poorly tested.
Things often go out of sync or you're randomly asked to re-login several times
a month, and only during video chats.

------
Ensorceled
What I really hate is that Googling for problems brings you to Apple Forum
discussions from 2014, 2013 and sometimes even earlier. If they are not fixing
serious bugs that have been around for a couple of versions now, just how much
cruft are they accruing. Worse, issues that were fixed, like my iPhone playing
a random song at a random loudness instead of returning to Audible, have
returned.

My Fall 2015 Mac Book Pro has already crashed more often than my Fall 2013 did
in two years. Apple support claims the logs show it is software, not hardware,
so I'll take their word for it.

Our UX guy summed up the other serious issue with Apple software, they are
focusing more on design now rather than UX. There is a great article on
FastCompany about it [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-
desi...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-
name). Stuff may look fine but it no longer functions in a natural, intuitive
fashion; it no longer "just works". The font selection in iOS is a great
example, it's almost like it's picked specifically to be hard to read. Killing
misbehaving iOS apps has become a pain, the current app is never in focus,
swiping is clumsy and swipe up to kill will often swipe left or right instead.
iTunes as a whole is another example of this. It was never great but it's
become increasingly difficult to find what I'm looking for and make it do what
I want.

I find myself cursing my computer and my phone on a regular basis now instead
of the once in a blue moon I used to.

~~~
makecheck
The thing is, design is _supposed_ to mean "how it works" (and not just fonts,
etc.); they're just not designing anymore. When Jony Ive once said in a video
that things should look like they haven't been designed, I thought "yeah they
sure look that way, they're crappy now".

I shouldn't have to turn on half of the Accessibility settings to return to
what I'd consider a normal interface, either. (And the real problem with any
non-default setting is that many apps clearly don't test with that; e.g. with
the "bold" or "larger" font settings, a lot of things start to truncate or
just not lay out as nicely.)

------
Spooky23
The Apple Music thing is my pet peeve. I bought a $2500 iMac. I carry a nearly
$1000 phone. I don't want Apple Music.

Leave me alone. I get periodic full screen ads when I try to listen to music.
Is that too much to ask?

~~~
kough
Oh, fully agreed. Have you gotten one of those ads when you don't have good
network connectivity? Fails to load, fails to respond even if you go into
airplane mode -- you have to wait until it can talk to Apple servers again
before being able to use the app. Just happened to me yesterday.

I just bought my first iPhone (switching from an Android, the droid maxx -
great battery life) largely because I missed being able to easily sync music
with my phone. What do I get? Broken music player. Two of the four tabs at the
bottom of the Music app are Apple Music-related (radio, "connect"). The UI for
switching between displays of my library - artist, album, song - has degraded
terribly. And I had to painstakingly delete all of the "cloud" versions of
things I'd bought long ago from iTunes. Figured out how to only show music
local to my device and now there's an annoying bar across the top of the app
at all times.

I mean, fuck, how do you screw up _the best_ mobile music player interface
that hard? Just to encourage adoption of a shitty streaming service, with no
way to opt out?

Do people not care about syncing music to their phone and listening to it
offline anymore?

~~~
alva
"Have you gotten one of those ads when you don't have good network
connectivity? Fails to load, fails to respond even if you go into airplane
mode"

Had this happen twice today on my long commute. After 15 minutes, gave up
trying to make my very expensive phone play music. This on top of the usual
iTunes complaints is pushing me to abandon Apple until things improve.

------
martinald
I use both Windows 10 and OS X on a rMBP all day at work. I definitely think
Windows 10 is way more stable and polished.

I constantly have problems with OS X WiFi connecting/dropping out, this has
only been a recent thing since 10.11 (before OS X wifi support was
incredible).

I also have problems with Spotlight screwing up. I use spotlight for launching
apps, and it often just loses all the apps which I use all day every day.
Instead of finding 'Skype' for example, it'll return a list of all the times
I've mentioned Skype in emails instead. Again, this broke in 10.11.

I never really use the new features in OS X, which is fine, but 10.11
especially has so many regressions in it for me it is pretty annoying. It also
absolutely blasted my unix config in a really hard to fix way, which hasn't
ever happened on a previous OS X update.

~~~
captaindiego
Spotlight has been straight broken for me since 2008, especially when using
large external drives (stuck "scanning" for >5 hours every time the drive is
power cycles, using a whole core). I just gave up and now forceably disable
spotlight.

~~~
martinald
You raise a good point, but like many of these things it's not totally broken,
just temporarily. Just when you're about to try and look for a
fix/alternative, it starts working again.

So you get that impression of everything being a bit creaky but never really
getting motivated to spend some time fixing it.

------
beloch
I stopped using OSX shortly after Lion came out, surprisingly because of
hardware problems and comically poor support from Apple (I'm not going to go
into that again here). Since then I've been using Linux for work and Windows,
as always, for gaming and blurays (because there's no other viable choice).

Something weird has happened though. When I left OSX, it was already a bit
buggy. A lot of stuff didn't work properly and wasn't well thought out.
Windows, aside from the unfortunate Metro experiment, has just gotten better.

Over the life of Windows 7, the only time I had BSOD's was when the SSD with
the OS got too close to full. If I kept some free space on my OS partition,
BSOD's simply did not happen. Windows 8 was even more stable. It just works.
Yes, I added Classic Shell so I could just completely avoid Metro, and the
result is an OS that just works and doesn't get in the way. I have privacy
concerns about W10 which have prevented me from upgrading, and that really is
the one major fly in MS's ointment. Free upgrades are nice, but I'd prefer to
pay for an OS where my data isn't treated as a product.

Will I continue to use Windows? Well, there's no other choice for gaming and
blurays, so yes. Privacy concerns aside, this is more palatable than ever.
Linux continues to be a workhorse for me, and I don't miss OSX one bit.

Edit: I should mention that I tend to customize certain aspects of my OS
rather extensively. I like things to be a certain way. Linux is fantastic for
this. Windows is good too. OSX is really hit or miss. Some things aren't too
bad, but other things are an absolute chore. It's amazing that an OS can
restrict hardware and customization choices to the extent OSX does and _still_
be buggy.

~~~
kmfrk
The OS has been pretty good after El Capitain. It was some serious garbage in
some of the prior versions, though that also made me question why bother.

The software is another matter.

~~~
KirinDave
El Capitan has been way worse for my software engineering life than any 3
previous versions put together. The first week was pure misery.

And I've still gone back to routine crashes if I have a VM open. It hasn't
been this bad for me in years.

~~~
kmfrk
The worst is that there's no way of knowing. I can't remember which version it
was, but man it sucked that I happed to close and open my lid until my wifi
would work.

Makes me think that upgrading from Windows 8.1 to 10 can't be that bad.

~~~
KirinDave
It's not bad now. It was not great the first 2 weeks. But it's not like I
expect better from anyone else now.

------
kozukumi
iTunes has been awful for _years_. The only reason it hasn't got _worse_ is
because devices are more powerful. I do think they are producing more and more
buggy-on-release software with a video game mindset of "patch it post launch".
Sadly it is the way software appears to be today. I have no problem with
fixing problems post-launch (obviously!) but shipping a product just to meat a
deadline (looking at Microsoft with Windows 10 here as well!!) is a pain in
the ass for users.

There is a big difference between shipping an MVP (a HN favourite!) and a
buggy piece of shit product.

Will it harm Apple (or Microsoft, or ...) in the long run? Probably not. Sadly
users seem to be used to this kind of thing now from all the main players so
what alternative do they have?

On a positive I have found Android L to be a solid release which is probably
the only solid major point release I have used from _any_ major software
company in many years.

~~~
aczerepinski
When did iTunes remove drag and drop adding songs to your phone? That's
probably the specific date that I'd pin the decline to. When they said "let's
take something simple and make it more complicated."

------
jszymborski
And so the pendulum swings, as it always does.

Apple will begin sitting on it's laurels while core services and products
degrade, while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new
leadership.

If you switch Apple and Microsoft in the above paragraph, it sounds a lot like
the past...

~~~
AlexandrB
> while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new leadership

I'm not holding my breath. A lot of decisions around Windows 10 have been, in
my opinion, user hostile. If Apple drops the ball, the most likely outcome is
that we return to the bad old days where there's Windows - it's ugly and it
sucks but everyone know how to use it - and nothing a whole lot better.

------
dasil003
My take on this is not that Apple has gotten worse, but that they have
actually gotten _better_ at cloud services. Whereas no one actually used
MobileMe or iDisk, their new generation of cloud services is actually being
used. It's true that they're losing ground because Google has defined a bar
for cloud services that they can't reach, but they are trying and not entirely
failing at it.

The secondary aspect is the surface area of what they are dealing with. This
is a far cry from the old Mac OS days where they were really a PC company. Now
they have to make OS X, iOS (for both phones/tablets), and tvOS all work
together seamlessly. If quality was exactly the same, they would have far more
bugs just based on the cartesian complexity of possible interactions.

I hope they can sort it out because I'm feeling the pain just like everyone
else, but I don't see any better alternatives at the moment.

~~~
Analemma_
> My take on this is not that Apple has gotten worse, but that they have
> actually gotten better at cloud services.

Which isn't saying much, since they're still terrible. Their cloud-synced
Notes.app is almost unusable; every time I add a note on the phone there's
maybe a one-in-three chance it'll sync to the desktop immediately, a one-in-
three chance it'll sync the next day, and a one-in-three chance it'll appear
three days later or more. If Apple has in fact gotten better at cloud
services, it's only because they were so abysmal before that there was nowhere
to go but up.

~~~
tluyben2
For me it always 'syncs' but in a very original way; I get 3-4 copies after a
sync on all devices. Not even sure how you make a bug like that. Not
complaining though it is better than no sync.

------
kentonv
(Rant warning.)

Apple products have always been buggy. If you do anything slightly unusual,
you quickly find that everything breaks. It's as if they don't actually
systematically test anything and instead only fix the bugs that the developers
themselves happen to notice in day-to-day use.

Here's me ranting about it in 2011:
[https://jx4slc83qru3hgkkkt1v.oasis.sandstorm.io/](https://jx4slc83qru3hgkkkt1v.oasis.sandstorm.io/)

Here's me ranting about it in 2014:
[https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/FEUGQ7mxkUL](https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/FEUGQ7mxkUL)

And here's me ranting about it in 2016: My wife's Macbook has a fun feature.
It scans the network looking for audio receivers. When it finds one, it
hijacks the receiver, switching it away from its current input and over to the
Macbook's audio. This happens for example while watching movies, while the
Macbook is in the other room with no one touching it, even though it has never
been intentionally asked to use the TV room receiver for any purpose (though
there is _another_ receiver in another room that she uses regularly). As Denon
receivers have no apparent access control, there is no way to stop this except
to set up some sort of firewall between the Macbook and the receiver. (I do in
fact use the receiver's network protocol, so disconnecting it is not a good
option.)

------
aditya
Wow, that's a lot of media hoopla.

Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made
excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because
they want their amazing hardware. No one has ever said anything about any
Apple software compared to what people say about their hardware.

Software's not in their DNA and I think all this media attention will just
fade after a while and people will keep using and loving Apple hardware and
putting up with their miserable software.

For the record, I use Notes/Mail/Photos on my iPhone, and Preview has never
crashed for me.

~~~
TranquilMarmot
It would be nice if there was better Linux support from Apple. I haven't tried
it, but from reading guides it seems like installing Linux on a Macbook comes
with a whole set of gotchas and workarounds.

~~~
dzamo_norton
For a long time I ran Debian in VMware Fusion in fullscreen mode on my iMac.
There's a penalty but it's faster than you might think. My interest at the
time was an effort to recover some sense of control over data privacy.
Gradually I moved bits and pieces into the guest and these days I simply run
Debian bare metal on a Lenovo. When my colleague wants to collaborate on a
Keynote or Pages document she shares it on iCloud and I do pretty well editing
in Firefox.

------
X-Istence
I'm an Apple fan, and I am unhappy with the state of software, but I wouldn't
go so far as to say that I hate Apple software.

I am also not nearly disgruntled enough to even consider switching platforms
to something else (like Linux for example).

No matter the platform people will always have gripes and issues with the
software. It's amazing how much choice we all have these days, and it's simply
not possible to cater to everyone's whims.

I feel like over the last couple of years the landscape has changed
tremendously, and what once may have been a simple blog post that mostly got
ignored the news can spread further and wider than ever before. Things that
are simple complaints of "I wish this worked better" now get twisted and
restated as "X hates Y".

------
wwweston
I'm having similar thoughts about OS X itself.

I have two MacBook Pros right now. One is a 2008 champ that's still going
despite having been dropped several times. It's got an SSD and maxed out RAM,
running Snow Leopard. It actually does really well.

One is the last 2012 pre-retina that just dropped out of Apple Care last
August. It's running Mavericks. It has sleep/wake issues. Firefox can actually
trigger a restart of the entire machine. It actually seems notably less stable
than Snow Leopard.

I'm afraid to upgrade. I actually don't know anyone who didn't have problems
with Yosemite. I've been trying to figure out if El Capitan is actually
better.

Or, if not, how I can escape the platform after pretty much 15 straight years
of making it my personal choice.

~~~
KirinDave
Come join us on the Surface side. The SB is a slick laptop, and you can use
whatever you need just fine on Win10.

I won't lie, there's bullshit over here. I can name a dozen things I hate. But
at least on the Win10 SB I feel productive. On the OSX I feel like I'm
constantly dealing with an abandoned system that only sort of runs now.

------
tasdev
I had a debate about this the other day with a friend. I am firmly of the
belief the quality is bordering on poor and that if this was a decade ago, the
Apple fanboys would be all over Microsoft for the same performance - remember
the taunts about Windows performance and crashing from the Switch campaign?

I'm sick of constant random iOS reboots, out of date OpenGL, poor/reduced
quality apps (Photos I'm looking at you), the growing monolithic nature of
iTunes and the fact I feel like I'm running Windows ME all over again.

I wish they'd stop spending so much time on marketing new features -- who
cares, really -- and spend a few years making stuff great.

~~~
tluyben2
> iOS reboots

Is that common? I have and use a 5s for years now and I have a spontanious
reboot every 6 months maybe. And I am a very active user. Same for my wife
(same phone). I have a new Samsung as well; it gets stuck every 2 days enough
to have to reboot it.

~~~
tasdev
It hasn't been that common since the latest updates but particularly early
iOS9 was very frustrating.

I see it most commonly when using Safari or AirPlaying anything, but have also
had it happen randomly when using Settings, presumably because Springboard.app
has died.

------
tristor
My experience has been that every new release of OS X is more unstable than
the previous. _I 'd very much like to go back to Mavericks._ It was the last
release I used that seemed to be decently stable. Yosemite and El Capitan have
so many problems.

* I've had to switch to a wired ethernet -> TB adapter and turned Wi-Fi off altogether because of Wi-Fi instability, despite having enterprise-grade WiFi APs in my house (Ruckus and Ubiquiti).

* Peaking out the CPU usage and GPU usage at the same time almost guarantees a kernel panic despite Apple's hardware diagnostics reporting no problem and my Fluke temperature probe not showing temperatures going above 90C (although to be fair, that's very hot... that's standard Macbook Pro temps).

* Crazy audio issues for SPDIF, despite it being a basic standardized protocol that's had kernel support since OSX was released, every time they come out with a new version they manage to make SPDIF output break in strange ways.

* Sleep/Resume/Hibernate no longer works reliably, many times instead of waking up the system will simply reboot.

* Bluetooth devices (specifically Magic Trackpad 2) will disconnect and then reconnect randomly for no apparent reason.

I don't even use any of the Apple provided software other than OS X itself,
but I still have seen the product go rapidly downhill. I went from being an
Apple hater to being a hardcore Mac user, to now back to being an Apple hater
that's just waiting until I can find a decently reliable Linux ultrabook
(Lenovo X1 Carbon maybe?). The repairability of a laptop isn't even a concern
to me at this point, I consider buying a laptop a sunk cost of being in a
technical job. I just need it to work reliably because I depend on it for my
livelihood and it's currently unacceptable.

The other day I was working remotely and in a conference call with the CTO and
had a kernel panic twice in a row because I was doing `vagrant up` in the
background which kicked me out of the call. How does that look for my
professional reputation when I have technical difficulties during a call and
I'm supposed to be a senior level technical staffer? Totally unacceptable.

------
VeejayRampay
Their software was never great to begin with. But there was a form of
uniqueness, some innovation. That much is gone now. Despite the fact that
they're developing for their own hardware, despite the hundreds of billions,
their software is neither especially fast nor particularly reliable.

~~~
DigitalJack
I can't compare to windows 10, but I had to send my mbpr in for a screen
replacement and while I waited for it to come back, I installed ubuntu on my
old mbp.

The desktop was a singularly terrible experience of bugginess.

The bugs I experience in OSX are nothing compared to that experience. The only
bug I notice right now is sometimes my wife's computer isn't accessible
through Finder, and vice versa. Annoying but we have a work around.

At work I use windows 7, and it makes me want to punch the wall several times
an hour. Some of that is (I think) the corporate crap that my company
installs. Every day is a super horrible experience, and I have not been able
to pin down where the problem is stemming from.

Working on my mac at the end of the day is an absolute pleasure by comparison.

I'll concede though that I really don't like the design of itunes and haven't
ever thought it was good. It's definitely worse now than in the past though.

RE iphone/android... I switched to android for a year. It's not been horrible,
but also not great. Really the main problem I have is the awfulness of the
google app store. 25,000 five star reviews for the AT&T app, yeah right. In
fact it's rare to find anything less than 4 stars. It's all rigged reviews out
the wazoo, probably fed by the mechanical turk.

~~~
VeejayRampay
I hear your point, but I feel like the comparison is not fair to Ubuntu. Like
I said, Apple develops their own software for their own hardware. They control
the whole thing. One can HOPE that everything will work out of the box. Ubuntu
on the other hand has a MUCH harder task at hand depending on the computer and
it's a known fact that common hardware has better support (Intel chipsets in
general for example). The libre community is also spreading itself thinner by
having to support every other architectures and hardware under the sun with
little funding.

So my point was that given the extremely favorable conditions Apple is
benefiting from (their own hardware, extremely forgiving users, bajillions of
cash, advertising), they're not delivering the goods anymore.

~~~
DigitalJack
I don't know that I buy the varied hardware thing much anymore. I mean, it's
either AMD or Intel, a few chipsets, very few integrated video and it's well
defined.

Support for dedicated video can be spotty I suppose, but most macs don't even
have that so I'd just ignore it.

As far as controlling the hardware, it sounds like a good point, but I'd be
surprised if Apple had less than 100 different variations on their
laptop/desktop models over the last 5 years.

------
yggydrasily
The problem is that Steve Jobs isn't around any more to give the company the
proper focus and hold everyone to a high quality standard.

The recent slippage in quality and focus mirrors what happened in the late 80s
and early 90s after Steve was forced out. There was considerable leftover
momentum in the short term which allowed the company to coast for while and
keep up some semblance of health, but eventually the lack of focus caught up
with them. They became "beleaguered" in the mid-90s and only recovered when
Steve came back (and axed products that weren't working, focused resources on
new problems, simplified the product line, etc). It took many years, but he
eventually turned them into a powerhouse.

Now that he's been gone for a while, we are seeing a similar phenomenon. In
the short term after he left, the company had considerable momentum (due
mostly to the iPhone) which carried them along for a number of years, but
without someone at the top who had his ability to maintain focus, the company
is starting to slip again.

This time, there may be no coming back.

~~~
agumonkey
You got me imagining Steve Jobs doing a proper 2nd coming of the Christ now
that he is somewhere higher. Classic Steve.

------
27182818284
I've been using OS X since just Leopard, but I've noticed a decline as well.
I'm not excited for new releases anymore. For example, I haven't moved to El
Capitan. By contrast, I couldn't wait for Snow Leopard--I was really excited
to use it.

~~~
marssaxman
Snow Leopard was the peak, in my experience; like you, I felt like each new
version of OS X through 10.6.8 came as an improvement. Since then, I greet
each new release with a sigh - "okay, let's find out what previously
straightforward process they've decided to complicate with a bunch of fancy
animations this time".

~~~
AlexandrB
I think people mythologize Snow Leopard. Personally I had multiple very
annoying issues[1] in SL that were never resolved until I upgraded to Lion.
While I wont say that OS X release after SL have been bug free or had _fewer_
bugs than SL it has always been a trade off - some things got better and
others got worse.

The only constant is iTunes, it seems to get progressively worse with every
release :(

[1]
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2256080?start=0&tstart=...](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2256080?start=0&tstart=0)

~~~
marssaxman
It's not that Snow Leopard had fewer bugs than its successors, but that it was
the last update which clearly had fewer bugs than its predecessors. Since
then, each new version has changed things around without seeming to make life
better overall.

What's more, as the iOS tail has come to wag the Mac OS dog, Apple's concept
of an "improvement" has increasingly diverged from mine. Most of the things
they've added since Snow Leopard have ranged from useless to annoying as far
as I'm concerned. I don't want an app store, I don't understand workspaces,
the new fullscreen mode makes my second monitor worthless. Every new version
seems to have new hotkeys and swipe gestures that do strange and
incomprehensible things when I trigger them by accident, which I would disable
if I had any idea what they were called or where to look for their settings.

I don't think this is just an age thing, either, or a romanticism about the
past; my family got our first Macintosh in 1985, and I have used every single
version of Mac OS since System 0.9. There have definitely been better and
worse eras. I have nostalgic feelings about System 5, and to a lesser extent
about Mac OS 8. I don't so much feel nostalgic about 10.6.8 as I have simply
felt annoyed by each update since.

------
skorecky
I think there is a decline in the quality of Apple's software. However I think
there is a correlation between the amount of users and complaints / bugs
found. Now that Apple has a large and growing user base the seeming quality is
also degrading. However I could be wrong, just my opinion.

Personally I haven't had as many issues as described in the article e.g.
Preview has always worked fine for me.

However the biggest issue I do have is anything network related. Getting new
messages in Mail is terribly slow, iTunes constantly gives me an error then
loads the album or whatever just fine afterwards.

~~~
treve
Try running an up-to-date OS X on a machine that came with a magnetic disk.
It's become practically unusable.

~~~
X-Istence
I'm running on a 2012 Mac Mini Core i7 with 16GB of ram with a spinning rust
hard drive.

El Capitan has sped up the OS for me compared to the previous OS X release.
Yosemite was so bad that I found myself avoiding using my Mac Mini instead
using my rMBP with an SSD because the Mac Mini just felt so incredibly slow.
With El Capitan they feel similar to me. Certain disk operations of course are
slower, but overall the usability has increased under El Capitan versus
Yosemite.

Based upon informal replies on Twitter when I posted about my upgrade
experience, I wasn't the only one that noticed a distinct speedup compared to
Yosemite on older hardware.

------
cowholio4
Sure, we have dumb apps on our iPhone that we don't use and some of the
preinstalled applications on OSX aren't that great.

But bashing Preview and touting the alternative Adobe Acrobat Reader!? Are you
serious? Firstly, they are different products. Preview handles multiple file
formats and Adobe Reader is meant for PDFs. Secondly, Preview allows you to
edit, combine and covert pdfs all of which you would have to pay Adobe to
unlock these features.

Preview is such an amazing tool and I would go as far and say it's one of OS
X's killer applications.

------
tenpoundhammer
I wonder if this is related to a problem hiring engineers, Apple seems to be
in a full on war to employee software developers in silicon valley. They are
competing with hot startups, self employment, and variety of other concerns.

Many of the issues that I'm hearing about Apples software quality appear to be
caused by a company who is trying to do too much with too few engineering
resources. They are getting stretched thin and having to make more quality
sacrifices than their customers are willing to tolerate.

I bet that if they opened an additional engineering office in a less
contentious area of the united states they would be able to staff teams more
easily, with longer average tenures, and tap into the talent pool and skills
that they are currently unable to hire at the volumes they require.

I would suggest Portland, Oregon as I'm a native Oregonian, and because we
have some of the best software engineers in the world!

------
SatoshiRoberts
Apple should step up it's software game, but it's hard to compete will so many
startups singularly focused on executing one thing.

Music, messaging, news. All these things are entire billion dollar industries,
we can't expect them to hit a home run on everything.

------
jhh
What scares me is their inability to fix things. Apple Music has been slow and
unreliable as hell and with awful usability from the start. And it has not
really improved at all.

They likely see the problem but can't execute.

------
diebir
Well, Apple software does kind of suck in some areas (tragically broken
package manager is one area!!), but it is not too unstable. I have got here a
2 year old MacBook Pro.

The uptime on this thing is usually around 60 days, at least. I have at all
times around 40 tabs open in Chrome and do heavy Java development in IntelliJ
IDEA.

I don't think this laptop has ever crashed in these 2 years. Just never
happened. I reboot once in a while when something like audio goes crazy or
just in case after running out of memory with IntelliJ and a handful of other
JVMs a few times in a row.

I have no illusions on usability of Apple software. I think they are teeming
with idiots (iTunes, already mentioned package management, photo import app,
text editor), but the OS is kind of rock solid. Why wouldn't be, it's a POSIX
OS and consequently is relatively simple and logical, at least from API
standpoint.

There are two things that drastically help with stability:

1\. My account does not have admin privileges and I never give admin password
to any prompts, unless I know for certain why.

2\. I never install any software as administrator. If something does not want
to install into ~/Applications (you know, drag and drop), I take it apart and
"convince" to install.

3\. I guess there's #3, no updates. Only clean OS installs once in a few
years. It's a little scarier than the same tactic on Linux, where I am sure
that this is not a real problem, but in most cases it's not an issue on Mac OS
X either.

------
ksec
Apple software was only good, or comparatively good in the era when Windows
Software was absolutely crap. But that is no longer the case anymore. Windows
Software still may not be as good, but the gap has definitely shrunken a lot.
That is why it no longer feel good. And once you add the truly dreadful ones
like iTunes which, again is the biggest pile of crap in Human computer
history, and the services that is called iCloud lagging behind Google, Yahoo
and even Microsoft.

------
welly
The only Apple software I use is the operating system. Everything else
(including the core utilities) are third party. Google Docs for word
processing/spreadsheets, BusyCal for calendaring, Chrome for web browsing.

I may occasionally fire up the core Calculator app but with Numi in my menu
bar and Alfred a quick Option-Space away, I rarely even use that.

Having been burnt by Apple disregarding other software I've been a big user of
in the past, I'm not going to let them do it again.

------
Gys
Since I updated to 10.11.3 (a few days ago) my Air crashes about once a day.
It used to be once in a while and in the past months about once in a week.

iTunes give we some weird null error if I switch accounts. Since a few weeks I
think (do not use it often, only for updates).

My iphone 6 often refuses to show the 'copy'-popup the first time I select
something. So I regularly have to selected something again, just to get the
popup. This used to work the first time.

Just some examples that come to mind.

------
InclinedPlane
Apple has always had problems with software quality. In the past, Jobs was
around to not only provide a reality distortion field to distract people from
that fact but also to drag the company forward on specific projects and
products (such as OS X) which kept the balance of quality to crap high enough.
He also kept the company away from making big design or UX mistakes. Since
Jobs has been gone Apples has been making missteps at an increasing rate,
consider, for example, this set of gems:
[https://twitter.com/jonyiveparody/status/674749292494491648](https://twitter.com/jonyiveparody/status/674749292494491648)

Apple's edge has always been that it was well plugged into the aesthetic
sensibilities of its market, which is an unusual combination of skills to be
tied to reasonably high quality engineering (the same dynamic that existed
between Jobs and Woz since the first, really). It's somewhat inevitable that
it would go away eventually, it's more sad that nobody cracked the formula so
that more companies could have the same level of success. Clunky design is
still the norm almost everywhere, and that's only slowly changing.

------
gnicholas
Yep—Airdrop from iOS to Mac is still a mess, even with new hardware and latest
software. And don't get me started on how iOS 7 broke BT from my iPhone to my
car, and then Apple told me to get my car's firmware updated. Really Apple?
You release a software update, it breaks connectivity with my car, and you
tell me to get my car fixed?

~~~
captaindiego
I've never seen airdrop actually function. I remember when it first came out I
watched some excited people try to use it and then it failed completely.
Nobody I know with an iphone even bothers trying to use it anymore.

~~~
gnicholas
Yeah, it works only between iOS-iOS or Mac-Mac for me. Rarely works cross-
platform.

I even called AppleCare to troubleshoot, and the level 2 tech I spoke with
said that it "might not work reliably" on pre-2014 devices. I pointed out that
Apple's website claims compatibility for post-2012 devices (my MBA is 2013),
and he said I was being argumentative. He also couldn't cite any documentation
for his 2014 claim.

I now use Dropbox instead of AirDrop, which is inefficient—especially given my
slow upstream connection—but at least works reliably.

------
javajosh
The problem is that there is no reasonable alternative. If you want a retina
display, solid construction, and anything even close to a reasonable command
line, then MBPr and OSX are my only real options.

Apparently, engineering and producing a high-quality laptop is a really hard
problem. Only Apple and Lenovo seem to be able to do it. And if you go Lenovo,
then you are stuck installing Linux who's device drivers are only as good as
the time volunteers have given them. And even then the hardware isn't as good,
so it's not even worth considering Windows instead of Linux.

I believe that the solution is to introduce some sort of modular laptop
standard such that people can build them to taste, and manufacturers can focus
on building user installable components at various cost/performance points -
like the desktop gaming PC market. Modularity would have additional security
and openness benefits.

~~~
darkstar999
Have you looked at Dell's XPS 13 Developer edition? It seems like you are
totally ruling out linux even if it comes supported by the hardware
manufacturer. I can't imagine Dell released this thing with poor driver
support.

~~~
bronson
Basically the same price as the Air, maxes out at 8GB. I keep hoping someone
will just destroy Apple's offering, especially for a product as stale as the
Air. One day.

One worry: Linux still has some issues with retina screens, doesn't it?
(though distros have gotten a lot better than two years ago when retina was
broken everywhere)

> I can't imagine Dell released this thing with poor driver support.

I guess you didn't live through Dell (and everyone's) Netbook offerings.

~~~
jeromenerf
And then, there are system76 laptops.

------
imron
I'm glad to see Apple getting more and more flak for this. Hopefully they'll
do something about it.

------
FreedomToCreate
Walt Mossberg outlined the issues really well. A lot of programs are becoming
bloated, and as the company expands the number of people working on its
products fragmentation across the platform is inevitable.

Essentially Apple is the first company in history with such as large
distributed platform of devices utilized by an unprecedented number of people,
and unlike every other company, it wants to keep a tight grip on every aspect
of that. By the time is addresses an issue, it loses sight of another. This is
how I imagine Apple is functioning right now
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5C8rnpAbIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5C8rnpAbIs)

------
lumpybacon
After a few years of fiddling with Windows and Linux on a custom-built PC, I'm
looking to get a computer that "just works", as this is a time in my life when
I really can't afford to deal with any hassles (not that there was anything
particularly bad with my setup; it's just the little things that add up). I
had my eye on a Mac (mainly for OS X), but it's increasingly looking like a
bad time to get one. Is it really, or are these complaints overblown? I'm
having some trouble sifting through these conflicting experiences on my own.

~~~
andreyvit
Depends on your definition of a hassle. I am a happy user of Apple software, I
love iTunes. I do experience occasional issues — AirDrop not finding peers,
iOS asking for a password when it's not supposed to, iMessage failing to sync
SMS read states between the Mac and the phone. If you're okay with occasional
problems like that, go ahead and try it.

~~~
lumpybacon
I suppose every operating system is going to have little problems like that,
and if that's all there is, I can manage. It's just that I really liked OS X
back in the Leopard and Snow Leopard days. I could almost describe it as a
"magical" experience using them, but I'm worried that that magic's gone in
these latest versions, as all this recent complaining seems to indicate.

Can you perhaps tell me how newer versions of OS X fare as a UNIX-based
operating system for development, compared to Linux? I've heard that it's
become more locked down. How about its app "ecosystem"? I remember that a lot
of apps, by developers small and large, were of really high quality.

~~~
keithpeter
What development tools do require access to?

A short list of the 'little things that add up' (your post up the tree) with
your current set up may be of interest as well as people could then comment on
the likelihood of those or similar.

~~~
lumpybacon
Oh, nothing in particular, I guess. I dabble a lot--in C++, Haskell, Ruby,
Java, etc. I really liked using package managers on Linux. I remember using
Homebrew on OS X. Is that still around?

As for the little things that add up, let's see:

\- Much of it's hardware-related, and it might just be due to my poor PC-
building skills. For example, my case has a fan that buzzes intermittently,
and the ports in back aren't perfectly aligned.

\- Windows isn't UNIX-based. I'm aware of things like Cygwin that emulate a
UNIX environment, but it feels tacked on. Also, Windows 10 is nice, but it's
kind of ugly, among other things.

\- On Linux, X has given me a lot of trouble, and though Wayland looks nice,
it seems like it'll be a while before it's widely adopted and fully supported.
I had a problem with GNOME 3 where it took about a minute before it showed the
desktop after logging in, for example. Audio was a pain to deal with, it had
Wi-fi connection issues, etc. Also, Linux lacks support for a lot of big
applications that I use or intend to use (Photoshop, DAWs, etc.).

\- Non-English language input is poor in both operating systems (could just be
the language I used though). If I recall correctly, OS X had pretty nice
language input support, and the option-characters (e.g. Option + E for an
acute accent) were really nice and intuitive.

------
tn13
I think this is regression to mean. No one was expecting the Apple world to
grow at the same speed did they ?

I think part of the reason why app's core apps such as Apple news or Mail
client appears to be so horrible is not because they are worse but because
everyone else (app makers) is getting better. Whether it is Flipboard's News
app or Microsoft's Outlook they are specialist at building that and Apple is
not.

I think it is time for Apple to focus on the platform and development tools
rather than continuing to build other kind of software.

------
EvanPlaice
I love Apple's OS and hardware. It's one less thing I have to worry about
condtantly fixing.

With that said. Their consumer apps have always been overly simplistic candy
glossed shit, Made worse by the fact that they can't be removed without lower
level hacks.

I may not fall with their target demographic but I'd never buy into the
platforms/services of a company who won't let me have a choice over something
as simple as what Apps I have loaded on my machine.

------
SCAQTony
My hand is raised! My El Capitan upgrade was slower, did not run Open GPL,
(till an recent upgrade) and iTunes keeps getting more confusing.

------
27182818284
Safari is a great example of this. Do a search for "safari is the new IE6" and
there are lots of complaints about it falling behind other browsers. Off the
top of my head, for example, it doesn't support the blocking of form
submission with the required attribute, which makes the required attribute
pretty useless and frustrates developers.

------
KillerRAK
Loyal user for 10+ years. Apple is getting old and their apps, particularly
iTunes, have transformed into an atrocity.

------
lips
This decade, TL;DR: As Apple becomes the first computer maker to transition
into a luxury goods company, they realize that the smoke and mirrors
sufficient for keeping the pseudo-proles happy in other sectors aren't
sufficient. Corinthian leather doesn't break your wi-fi.

------
pmarreck
I smell a heck of a lot of Technical Debt in the new bugs I'm seeing. Simple
example- I copy a URL in Safari, quickly switch to another app to paste, and
it pastes the PREVIOUS clipboard, NOT what I just copied. That has to be a
state-management bug.

------
andrewstuart
Every third time I try to unlock my iPhone screen it will accept only the
first letter pressed. To proceed I have to hold the button down to turn off
the phone, and then cancel the poweroff, which seems to reset the screen lock
keyboard input.

------
erlend_sh
Did the article title not bother anyone else? The title has 3 mentions of
"Apple" and none of "Windows" in it, but the article is _really_ a feature
showcase piece for Windows 10.

------
KirinDave
It's practically downvote bait in here to talk about how happy, overall, I've
been with my move to the Surface product line or how much more I like the
current incarnation of Win10 and the devkit than any of the other options.

But yeah, I never thought I'd say I was happier using the Microsoft variant
but here I am.

And that's with 2 OS revs full of crashes, poor power management, and a
replaced device because rev0 literally tore its hinge apart. I still enjoy the
thing more than opening up my "work" laptop and struggling with OSX's
halfhearted core apps and awkward expression of UNIX and just... the least
amount of system stability surrounding virtualization I've had with any of the
OSs I've tried.

~~~
mwcampbell
What do you mean by awkward expression of UNIX?

------
andrewstuart
My iPhone 5 cannot run the newest version of Safari - too slow. I was forced
to switch to Google Chrome.

Safari used to be fast two versions ago but something changed in a recent
upgrade and now it is useless.

------
clamprecht
I never see anyone from Apple commenting in these threads - why not?

~~~
tachyonbeam
Because they have a huge culture of secrecy internally. They're afraid of
getting fired if anyone found out they commented.

------
daveheq
I've never run into so many bugs as since Steve Jobs died, Tim Cook and
friends are just throwing things at the wall now and their own apps are just
breaking like plates.

------
mk3
It's every year the same story... It's the end of apple this and this is the
end of apple that. I think it's the new iPhone is doomed type of stuff.

------
antidamage
Nothing new here. We've all hated iTunes for years.

------
archildress
All of these complaints seem to really be picking up steam.

Would be really interested to hear from an Apple employee what the inside talk
is like.

------
sathio
I can't believe nobody mentioned HFS

------
slantaclaus
I'm glad this is a thing now in the media. The company surely has enough
resources to get this handled

------
shmerl
Apple should wake up and stop their lock-in retardation. But they are too busy
continuing it.

------
midnitewarrior
Yes, but they love the Microsoft apps on Mac and iPhone.

Strange times are these in which we live.

------
lurkinggrue
"I dread opening the thing."

Hmm, that was my reaction to iTunes in 2003.

------
evanx
i guess it's hard to write large stable apps in ObjectiveC? I wouldn't like
to. Maybe Swift will change things, but it'll take a while, given their
legacy.

------
bwb
Weird, I love apple software? it always works for me...

------
headgasket
The real cook has left the kitchen, for good. Honestly could we have really
expected anything else, over time? Do you remember Apple in the Scully to
Amelio days? Barbarians at the gates, again.

------
rglover
I'm quite happy with OSX.

------
gaia
Error. 53.

------
ghrifter
Two apps I use the most on my iPhone are Podcasts and Music. On my PC
(windows) I use iTunes often.

Both the iPhone apps and the modern version of iTunes are an utter, over-
designed mess. It felt like the core programming functionality was there,
until some UX designer got a hold of the front end of those apps and decided
to fubar it beyond recognition.

There is _Literally_ no way to just look at all music on your iPhone. You have
to have it in playlists or add the songs you want to a playlist, or just
shuffle all songs.

*Edit: No way to look at all iPhone songs while not using iTunes with your iPhone plugged into your PC.

~~~
dceddia
This kills me. In an older version of iTunes (not that long ago), I could open
it up and see every song in my library in one big long list. Typing a few
characters would find the song I wanted. When that song finished playing, it
would just play the next one in the list.

Now, it's just as you say - hard to find specific albums or artists or songs,
and once I do, I can't quite tell what it'll do when a song finishes playing.
Since I found it through the search box, and not in a list... will it play the
next song in the album? In a playlist? Will it just stop?

What I _don 't_ know is whether my feelings about the new interface is
logical, or if it could be summed up as "you damn kids." Is it a paradigm that
I'm just not used to yet, or is the UX objectively bad?

~~~
ghrifter
I just think that for some programs or interfaces, like YouTube, it is fine
for a while. Works great.

But then they hire a new UX person, or the incumbent UX person gets bored - so
they keep refactoring the interface to put out an image of "getting work done"
or "adding features and enhancements".

Basically making work for themselves and refactoring an already fine interface
that user's are familiar with and just introducing new headaches to users
along the way.

------
venomsnake
If iPhone was just able to be mounted as a flash drive, roughly 90% of the
itunes complaints would have been nonexistent. Getting content to the iphone
is absurdly, needlessly complicated.

------
LargeCompanies
Personally, Apple better release something cool and jaw droppingly innovative
either the iPhone 7 with needed features (waterproof & wireless charging),
Apple TV cable TV service or something amazing as Im slowly losing interest.

Android isn't exciting either nowadays.

------
sirmiller
Not sure about the "fans", but us mere mortals are quite ok with the quality.

------
sxcurry
Apple in headline - check. Apple bad - check. Mention Steve Jobs - check. Talk
about your personal piece of software that "always crashes" \- check. You are
golden!

------
skrowl
Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs would never have let this happen.

------
OWaz
Well just today I called my wife, neither my mic nor the speaker in my phone
were working. I couldn't hear the phone ringing and when she picked up we
couldn't communicate. She instead called me and everything started to work. I
have no clue where the fault lies and it's concerning because what if I was
calling 911?

------
rubyfan
OSX 10.5 and maybe 10.6 were the last good OSX offering.

Similarly I'd peg iOS 5 or 6 as the last good iOS versions.

Both of these systems has been in steady decline. The iOS-ization of OSX
killed it. Desktop user don't need stupid shit like an App Store, terrible
default security options that mimic an iPhone, full screen mode default when
you maximize, notifications (aka. productivity interruptions), etc. my list
could go on...

There was once a time Next and maybe Apple had programmers and educational
users (educated users) in mind in building some of their software. That seems
to be gone.

What are we left with now Ubuntu - that's another ghetto just a different
kind?

