
Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality? - MilkoFTW
http://www.tuaw.com/2014/10/15/is-apple-experiencing-a-problematic-decline-in-software-quality/
======
tolmasky
I'd just like to point out that this is likely not to get better with this
(arbitrary) decision to release a new OS every year. It used to be that we'd
have a new release roughly every 2 years (from 2003 - 2011). This meant: 1. it
was in development for 2 years and thus probably stabler to begin with, and 2)
there were then 2 years to iron out the bugs. You'd get the new OS, there were
some understandable kinks, but then by 6-12 months later it was _pretty solid_
and you had another year of a solid OS ahead of you. It was perfectly
reasonable to wait on the OS and let the early birds kick the tires first.

This is no longer possible. It feels that as soon as version N is out, they
are scrambling to make version N+1. There is no downtime. There is no
stabilization phase. You are eternally in brand-new isn't fully working mode.
_Of course_ the software is going to be worse.

Couple this with the stark reality that Apple has simply _run out of ideas_ in
terms of software. Every new version of OS X boils down to: 1. arbitrary UI
tweak (forcing developers to refresh), 2. Gimmick features in Mail.app/Safari
(RSS in Mail/Safari, Postcards in Mail, yet another 3d effect to re-arrange
your tabs in Safari, annotations in Mail, etc etc etc), and 3. regressions of
features that worked for _years_. Occasionally .Mac/MobileMe/iCloud will be
renamed in hopes everyone forgets about the last round of data loss
bugs/hopefully people get excited about this vague thing they don't really
know the scope of.

~~~
macspoofing
>This meant: 1. it was in development for 2 years and thus probably stabler to
begin with

No. Shorter release cycles don't imply loss of quality. I claim the opposite
in fact. Rolling releases are much better for quality. You're releasing
smaller more focused features and battle-testing them in the field.

>There is no stabilization phase.

There are always stabilization phases. Not every major release will be an
overhaul. Most will be incremental updates.

~~~
tolmasky
_> No. Shorter release cycles don't imply loss of quality. I claim the
opposite in fact. Rolling releases are much better for quality. You're
releasing smaller more focused features and battle-testing them in the field._

The jury is out on this. We have seen that longer release cycles with teams
that take things seriously can be very successful (mission critical software).
We've also seen that short release cycles can be very effective. The context
of your software matters a great deal here, as well as the basic mechanics of
how your software is delivered. You can't just take the philosophies of web
sites and apply them across the board and declare it objective fact:

1\. Take for example the fact that with a web service you can deploy quickly
to a small subset of users, and grow it as it proves itself. This is quite
ideal, but regardless of whether its even practically _possible_ with OS
software, its certainly not what Apple does. The combination of a short
release cycle with a worldwide release means that "catching your bug" may mean
catastrophic data loss for a large amount of customers.

2\. With a web service you have the option of rolling back a bad version, or,
simply deploying yet another release. Again, whether its possible with OS's or
not, Apple certainly doesn't (or can't?) employ this strategy. The best they
can do oftentimes is simply remove the update, but everyone that has it
installed keeps having the bug until a) your fix is out and b) they actually
install said fix.

 _> There are always stabilization phases. Not every major release will be an
overhaul. Most will be incremental updates._

There certainly _could_ be stabilization phases, but the proof is in the
pudding and thats not how it feels. All the last releases have seen major
additions, and most the regressions I run into either take years to fix (dual
monitor support) or still remain increasingly broken (Messages to name just
one example). There is a simple reality to having a year to stabilize without
the pressure of a PR push of new features vs. balancing your stabilization
with coming up with compelling things to slap on a website and show in a
keynote.

------
dmix
Apple's OSX design work seems stagnant as well. I find Gnome since version
3.12 (yes Gnome) looks better than Yosemite. I use Yosemite at work every day
and find it's a step down from Mavericks. Most of the improvements seem to be
to apps I never use (Maps, Safari). The new dark top bar is embarrassingly
ugly compared to Gnome dark theme. The icons look childish and half-baked.

Gnome's design in minimal, clean, and feels out of the way instead of being
flashy. Most importantly Gnome is improving rapidly. The new 3.14 looks
amazing, where they revamped all the small details (icons, resolutions). A
great demo of it here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhK_2M0B8Qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhK_2M0B8Qo)

I used to love getting new OSX releases. I'm really surprised to see it get
sidelined in recent years. Maybe all of the good designers are working on iOS?

~~~
Osmium
I second your enthusiasm for Gnome. It really is in a great place right now
and is my shell of choice on Linux. But I disagree with the Yosemite
criticism. Unlike Linux, OS X actually has a large degree of uniformity
between third-party apps thanks to Cocoa and (historically) the human
interface guidelines. Apple just can't make sweeping changes to the OS X
design without severely damaging the coherence of the OS X ecosystem; design
changes have to be incremental. And they're doing a pretty good job. Yosemite
brings design changes specifically optimised for high-DPI (font, line weights)
and a general toning down of brashness (e.g. the new dock). I imagine the new
'dark mode' (which, let's face it, will be unseen by most consumers) is just a
signal of things to come; I wouldn't be surprised to see a dark set of Cocoa
controls in a future release too. But it'll take time.

Honestly, I'm glad that Apple isn't being brash on the Mac. They can get away
with it on iOS (the 6->7 transition) because it's such an active platform,
with so much demand, that developers have put in the time and money to re-
design, but a similar design transition on OS X would take much much longer
and I imagine would be a lot more painful for the end user.

~~~
dmix
Fair enough, OSX is still a fine operating system. My taste for change is that
of early adopters so I'm at least happy Gnome is filling that void for me.

------
fidotron
Apple has had a decline in software quality since around the Intel transition.
Prior to that OS X had become really very respectable, but during it lots of
typical things started happening, like suspend not quite working sometimes,
and external display support going to hell. It doesn't seem like they ever
recovered.

It's hard to admit now, but at one point I even liked XCode, but again, that
was before they iTunesd it.

Maybe it's age, but in my mind they definitely did get worse, and as a result
I've moved to Windows (7) as my main machine after over a decade in Mac land.

~~~
afro88
I literally went the opposite. I switched to OSX soon after the Intel
transition and loved it, after a decade in Windows land. I honestly just much
prefer the look and feel of Apple products and software. I find them more
enjoyable to use, consistent, more intelligently thought out and much less
hassle.

I also used to hate Xcode 3 but as of Xcode 5 I've really grown to like it.

You're my bizarro opposite. I bet you hate the colour blue ;)

~~~
Gigablah
I've been a MacBook user for 5 years, but Windows File Explorer is still
light-years ahead of the atrocity that is Finder.

~~~
bane
I've tried to "go mac" about 3 times now, at quite a bit of expense, and the
horrible and endless well of failure that is Finder continues to rebuff me.
Even as Explorer continues to change and ends up with some weird corners, it's
such a much better and more efficient file manager.

I'll find myself going weeks, enjoying my rMBP, then I'll need to do some
heavy duty file management and end up in Finder-hell and immediately wish I
was using _something_ better. DirectoryOpus, Midnight Commander, _anything_.

It says something when the CLI is not only faster to use, but more user-
friendly and discoverable than the GUI.

In fact, I'm _about_ to start work on a bunch of file management and I've been
putting it off for a week _just_ because I don't want to interact with Finder.

Gahhh, it's a terrible terrible piece of software.

(maybe I should just break down and install this
[http://www.ragesw.com/products/explorer.html](http://www.ragesw.com/products/explorer.html))

~~~
copperx
I always read about people hating Finder, and I never understand why.

There are some things that I can't live without: being able to drag a file or
folder into a file open/save dialog (try doing this in Windows! HOHO), and the
column view. It really makes file management a breeze, and I rarely drop into
the Terminal, unless I'm doing some heavy-duty renaming, or stuff like that.

Could you elaborate on the Finder problems you're encountering?

~~~
bane
I could probably provide you with pages of issues but they all bundle into a
couple of major categories

1 - unbelievably poor context presentation, e.g. if I paste? where in the file
system will something end up? Who knows? Where am I in the filesystem? I can
guess! Is it correct? not usually. How about let's play the game of which kind
of file is this? Because filenames usually end up with a '...' somewhere in
them and I have to fiddle with Finder _every single time_ to get it wide
enough to stop truncating filenames so I can figure out which file is
"P1250416.JPG" vs "P1250417.JPG". Folders mix in with filenames when sorted so
navigating up and down the tree takes forever (and is harder to do
keyboarding). And on and on and on.

2 - completely nonstandard keyboarding and navigation, e.g. ENTER to rename,
cmd+o or cmd+down to open a file? really? In which way are either of those
possible intuitive? It appears Finder is trying to follow some impossibly
ancient keyboard shortcut system that was probably put in place 30 years ago
and doesn't make any sense at all.

Here's a typical use-case for me. I just shot about 3,000 photos and I want to
do a quick pass on the photos and delete bad photos and move photos of a
certain kind (photos with a certain subject) into another folder. In explorer
it's a matter of hitting "enter" then "right" until I see one I don't like
then hitting "delete" to remove it then continuing with "right" until I find
more to delete or finish the bunch. Moving ones with a specific subject
involves me ctrl+mouswheel until the thumbnails are as big as possible so I
can see the subjects, then ctrl+lmb on all the ones I want to move then
ctrl+x, move into the folder, ctrl+v (and now they're all sorted and not
scattered all over the place like in Finder and I moved them using the
completely system consistent cut-paste keyboard hotkeys) and alt+left to go
back (just like a browser). Other niceties like being able to maximize and
then restore back to the default window size with a couple mouseclicks are
also smoother.

In Finder all of this becomes work instead of a few minutes of repetitive
keypushing. I can almost do the entire workflow without a mouse in Explorer,
and where I have to mouse it kind of makes sense (picking specific items from
a group) over a keyboard. But in Finder, just to get started, I have to buy
and install a couple pieces of software.

Sure most of these things can be "fixed". If I install this or that extension,
and customize finder in this or that way and remap such and such keyboard
hotkey I can kind of end up with a sane workflow and filenames I can actually
see. But I shouldn't have to fix shipping software. Everytime I open Finder
I'm asking myself if anybody at Apple actually uses it.

Take a look on the internet for people complaining about Finder and most of
the complaints are more or less along the same lines. The complaints are
consistent and have been going on for years. Solutions have been hacks since
forever as well and usually involve installing $100 of replacements, addons or
fixes.

What's amazing to me is that these problems don't exist in any other GUI file
manager I've ever used, from the Amiga to my TI calculators. Finder is just
rubbish.

------
rayiner
My iPhone 6+ has shown more bugs in 2 weeks than the three iPhones I had prior
to that (the original, 3G, and 4). Has hard locked at least half a dozen
times, particularly when receiving calls.

~~~
jdp23
Similarly, Safari frequently locks up or crashes on my iPad -- behavior that
started with 8.0.0 and has continued through 8.0.2. I rarely remember this
happening in the past.

~~~
rbritton
I can crash my entire iPad every time I try to start a slideshow while
connected via AirPlay in one of my apps (Portfolio). From the technical side
of things all it does is load a full resolution image into a CALayer instance
and fade it in, which has worked on every previous iOS version but for some
reason crashes the entire device on iOS 8.

------
coldtea
> _Is Apple experiencing a problematic decline in software quality?_

No, blogs and articles are experiencing a problematic decline in long and
medium term memory.

Apple has always (under Jobs or not) had ups and downs, in both software and
hardware quality control.

Remember how OS X 10.1 was unusable, the problems with Lion, when it first
came out? The file-loss bug in the FS? And tons of other things besides.

As for hardware, well, Jobs first love child was the cube, with the
overheating problem (and the not-selling-well problem). Then we had the iBook
G3 logic board issues (for tons of models). Battery issues. The G5 Pro cooling
goo leak issue. Etc etc. And of course, as any long time Mac buyer knows, a
classic advice is "never buy the first revision of a product".

Part of it, for hardware, is that a bug in a production run e.g. for Dell
doesn't affect that many people (because Dell puts out 50+ different models,
whereas Apple puts out a few, so each of Apple's has tens of millions of
buyers). And of course the press doesn't care much for a fault in Dell or HP
or whatever production run, whereas the slightest BS in an Apple production
run is a "*gate". And of course Apple does more daring stuff with machining,
weight, thinness, internal design etc than most companies, so there's always a
chance to screw some things that's bigger than in just assembling some brick-
sized plasticy laptop.

------
owenwil
No, I don't think so. People are perceiving it that way because a few
unrelated issues have cropped up lately. Coincidence, not correlation.

~~~
pc2g4d
But coincidence is a type of correlation, is it not?

~~~
acornax
Strong correlation requires a large number of 'coincidences'

------
jordhy
You took the word out of my mouth! It is by far and it is also losing some of
its legendary attention to detail.

I've noticed the amount of patches going up as well as the stability of
software go a little bit down. But that's not all, most major unix tools in
Mac OS X are 2 to 3 years outdated and Safari is a bug nest.

To bring some balance to my criticism I fell that innovation at Apple has not
decreased but the quality of products has.

~~~
ffreire
As referenced in this article[0] a major blocker for shipping newer versions
of the command line toolchain is the fact that newer versions of these tools
moved to an incompatible GPLv3 license.

[0]: [http://robservatory.com/behind-os-xs-modern-face-lies-an-
agi...](http://robservatory.com/behind-os-xs-modern-face-lies-an-aging-
collection-of-unix-tools/)

~~~
feld
Oh come on, that's far from serious. There are 6 pieces of software there that
are old because newer versions are GPLv3. Grep could be replaced with bsdgrep,
and nano could be replaced with pico and nobody would notice. The other 4
aren't that important for day to day use except bash and OSX should have
switched users to zsh a long time ago, or simplified the shell by using tcsh
as default.

The older version of openssh is rather perplexing, though, but they haven't
updated any of the other bsd utilities really and the pf firewall is ancient
too.

------
bsbechtel
I've noticed this over the past few years. What I've also noticed is a move by
Apple towards marketing not what their products can do, but by counting how
many new features they they've added to their software. They're still far
ahead of their competitors in terms of quality and usability of their
products, but not what they once were.

------
smackfu
Apple said: "iOS 8 includes over 4,000 new APIs that let you add amazing new
features and capabilities to your apps"

Maybe not a good thing.

~~~
virtue3
it's like an author advertising word count... weeee...

More APIs == more bugs, more nastiness under the hood and a rats nest of
keeping track of the OS.

------
say_what_say
Wait - this supposes they had quality to start with. Not in my experience, and
I have been using their offerings since almost the beginning.

I think the difference is that people are finally feeling the confidence to
state the obvious - why is the software so sucky?

~~~
pessimizer
>I think the difference is that people are finally feeling the confidence to
state the obvious - why is the software so sucky?

I agree; the Jobs distortion field is wearing off. There's a lot of cognitive
dissonance to get past (this must have been better before because I liked it
before), and this dawning recognition is getting projected onto Apple.

~~~
mamcx
But the distortion field that before exist a magical distortion field is still
strong...

Similar to: Jobs make everything at apple, apple say it invented first (about
everything), people that buy apple is a lunatic fanboy, bla, bla...

You have a more stable software or not. You can show numbers, or at worst,
anecdotal evidence. But blaming in a distortion field?

------
billions
It is difficult to maintain focus on software as a hardware company (and vice
versa). While Steve Jobs was around he was able to emphasize importance of
both hw & sw. Over time the part of the company which brings the money
receives increasing investment at the expense of the other. For Apple,
maintaining a balance will be a challenge going forward. QA seems to be the
first compromise.

------
chrismealy
It's all the little things. iOS 7 introduced a ton of glitches in the Music
app that still aren't fixed in iOS 8.

------
0x0
The latest reports on personal data leaking onto removable devices like usb
drives are quite worrying too:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2jbfgp/osx_appears_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/2jbfgp/osx_appears_to_leak_data_metadata_when_indexing/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8450848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8450848)

(PS: Had to paste these links into Notes.app after copying the urls from
mobile safari's share sheet, and then copy from there to paste here because
mobile safari won't allow paste in text fields from its own share sheet in
ios8... How's that for QA)

------
itg
Yosemite has been great but I still run into a few bugs here and there with
iOS 8.0.2. I think they should consider decoupling hardware and software
releases.

------
glhaynes
This comments section has lots of people saying " _x_ was when things got
really bad" followed by people saying "actually _x_ was the pinnacle." (And
some then following up with "it was actually _y_ when it got bad.")

This has been the pattern in The Comments since I started using Apple stuff 15
years ago. Likewise, "Apple used to innovate and now they're out of ideas."

Which isn't to say that things haven't perhaps taken a downturn lately: there
have unquestionably been an unusually large number of publicized missteps in
the last couple of months. Some technical, some social, some real, and some
media-hyped. But an apparent clustering at one moment doesn't assure or even
imply a long-term trend. Five and ten years from now I feel confident the same
comments will be being made.

People get annoyed at the un-Steve-like-ness of Cook's apparent focus on
quantifiable things like "CustSat". But, when you're serving literally
hundreds of millions of customers in a blog-driven media world, it's hard to
know what would be a better way to measure these things. If customers are
becoming less satisfied, you can be certain the executive team knows it.

Still, it seems apparent that there's an immediate PR issue. (And
simultaneously, it should be noted, iPhones are flying off the shelves in
unprecedented numbers and at likely higher ASPs than ever.) If I were Cook,
I'd do what I could to make really sure we got our act together in the short
term, look for some opportunities to buy back some goodwill, and then I'd
probably keep doing roughly what we'd been doing for the last decade or so
while weighing the feasibility of some of the commmon suggestions, such as
decoupling OS releases from hardware releases.

------
pedalpete
I suspect this is more reflective of a scale issue than a direct decline
attributed to the capabilities of the company.

I suspect that when a company reaches a certain amount of market penetration
where the number of active users reaches into the 100s of millions, that
number of eyeballs over that many devices begins to show the cracks which
maybe got glanced over previously.

My comparison for this is, of course, Microsoft. As they were coming up, we
were forgiving of their set-backs, but into maturity, people started looking
for alternatives, their had to be something better because their stuff was SO
buggy. I point to the Vista 'fiasco' as an example. Was it really a 'fiasco'?
Or was it just that, even when what was considered a small number of people
upgraded, and recognized issues, that small number of users was so large that
it brought major attention to the issues.

When 10% of your users have issues and you have 10 million users, that's 1
million voices. When 10% of your users have issues and that's 100 million
users, it's considerably larger.

Diversity of hardware platforms further exacerbates this issue. When it was
just the iPhone1-3, the hardware wasn't considerably different. Bring on the
iPhone 3, and increased pixel count, and you start to notice a few more minor
issues, then iPhone 5 with different screen layout, handled well by apple, but
not seamless. Now start adding some devices having fingerprint scanners and
some without, some with health data gathering and fingerprint scanners some
with one of these things, some with none. Sure, you 'should' be able to test
for these small differences, but it gets considerably more complicated with
each iteration. Apple has done a good job of getting people to retire old
hardware, or not cause a fuss about not being able to upgrade, but they're
still getting into a realm of device numbers they hadn't experienced before.

------
Stubb
I completely agree with the article an will recommend reading Apple Core Rot:
[http://macperformanceguide.com/AppleCoreRot-
intro.html](http://macperformanceguide.com/AppleCoreRot-intro.html)

------
allsystemsgo
Yosemite is pretty fantastic.

------
georgemcbay
Yes, but in my experience this is an industry-wide problem not specific to
Apple.

I know I'm getting a bit old so there's surely some amount of 'get off my
lawn, kids' going on here, but I kind of expect new software to mostly suck
these days for many reasons but with the 'webification of everything' (in
terms of pervasive use of JavaScript, throwing out all the old UI frameworks
and replacing them with web DOMs or web DOM like systems, replacing graphics
systems with WebGL/Canvas, etc) being a primary cause.

(awaiting the downvotes...)

------
dba7dba
I own 2 separate apple PCs. And seriously considering replacing one of them
(Mac Mini) with Mac Pro ($3000 starting price !!) for video work. And probably
getting another mac laptop for wife.

I got on the apple fan train kinda late, like right around when they
transitioned to Intel.

With that said, I sometimes feel Apple hitting it big with iPhones was similar
to someone winning a lottery. Often when someone wins jackpot, he grows
distant from friends/family because of his money. He loses his direction in
life due to the sudden infusion of wealth.

I feel that way with Apple.

------
feralchimp
If this is real, I don't think it's about release timing at all, but the
technical complexity of implementing and integrating the specific new features
they've chosen.

I don't have a list of specific examples to back up that claim, but I
encourage other apple devs here to think about recent releases from that
perspective.

------
serve_yay
I don't see how you can deny it. They're doing a lot of things and some of
them have very hard deadlines.

~~~
mightykan
They can fix this problem. Decouple the hardware and software releases. There
is nothing wrong with a new device that runs the older OS for a couple of
months. Look at it this way:

\- New device with a new OS that requires a few rapid updates in the weeks
following release because the OS was rushed and is very buggy. > If one of
these updates go wrong, which has happened, the user is stuck with a broken
device or they could downgrade to an already buggy and less stable OS as
before.

\- New device with the "old" but stable OS that continues to function well
until the new, stable OS comes out. > Even if the new OS's initial release is
troublesome, a downgrade will take the user to the older but stable OS, so the
device is still functional.

Which provides the better user experience? I vote for the second option, but
Apple have opted for the first option without any clear long-term benefits.

------
MrGando
I'm wondering why no iOS/OS X devs aren't mentioning the "Quality" of Swift
"1.0". The amount of issues is really stunning and IMHO, nowhere ready yet.

Xcode doesn't seem to play along with Swift either, the whole integration is
quite buggy yet.

------
djyaz1200
It's the secrecy. Apple can't test things extensively because the whole world
is trying to get a pic of their latest devices. That coupled with huge scale
is bound to create hiccups, the real test is how fast and how well they
address the issues.

~~~
dba7dba
But we are talking about software here, not hardware...

------
autism_hurts
I personally believe iOS 8 has been the exception, not the rule.

Yosemite, including the Public Betas, has been rock solid.

~~~
adamnemecek
I definitely would not say that Yosemite Betas have been rock solid.

~~~
sigzero
For betas they have been good. I don't set the bar high for those. The last
public beta is working really well. Yosemite reminds me of KDE in some of the
stuff Apple has done.

~~~
adamnemecek
The later versions have been decent but I installed the first public beta and
really regretted it for like a month or two until it got a bit more stable.

~~~
DrJokepu
Surely you did not disregard all the warnings on the download website and the
installer itself and installed it on the main partition of your primary work
computer?

~~~
adamnemecek
Whether I did or not is irrelevant. Grandgrandparent was saying that the betas
have been solid, I disagreed.

------
mineshaftgap
How bad would OSX have to get to actually have the year of Linux?

------
pseudometa
Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

Edit: Why the downvotes? It's true. The answer is No.

~~~
pessimizer
I prefer 'Blot's Headline.'

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954867)

------
Animats
The first rule of Apple software quality is that you don't talk about Apple
software quality. It's like complaining about Rolex watches not being
accurate.

Typical error on a Rolex is a minute or two a month, sometimes worse. Rolex
doesn't even provide chronometer certification for their watches. As their CEO
says, "We are not in the watch business. We are in the luxury business".

That's the market Apple is aiming at.

~~~
lukifer
If a Rolex stops keeping time, it's conceivable it would still be worn. But if
a BMW no longer starts up, the driver's not going to sit behind the wheel.

Whether it's the (mostly) info-appliance market of iOS, or the productivity
market of the Mac, Apple's products are much more like BMWs than Rolexes. The
luxury is intertwined with the functionality.

