

Everything just doesn't work and nobody cares - firedev
http://dear-apple.com/everything-just-doesnt-work-and-nobody-cares
I am seriously tired. Nothing "just works", I have to always reboot, restart, replug, update, force-quit and make sure it didn't hang up while I wasn't looking.
======
batterseapower
As soon as I stopped building computers from off-the-shelf parts, stopped
installing unpopular applications and plugins and stopped trying to use OSes
like Linux with relatively few users the amount of my life I spent fixing
weird computer problems fell from hours per week to almost zero.

When I do encounter a problem, the answer is almost always available after 5
minutes on Google.

Following the herd leads to an easy life. Go figure.

~~~
regularfry
That's funny, I could have sworn that the article described someone who
followed the herd and had everything go to crap.

------
officemonkey
We have a lot of the same problems in my home too. My wife's computer, iPhone,
and iPad refuse to behave with her email.

I'm using an old iMac as a media server, but every time I connect remotely
using Team Viewer, it complains that I don't have a mouse attached.

My new iPod touch still won't sync remotely.

We were Apple fans "back in the day" (1990s) because it all "just works." The
funny thing is my new Desktop/Gaming machine (running Windows 8) is more
trouble-free than anything else I own.

Apple should work harder on household integration. Otherwise they'll lose out
to Almond, Roku, Kindle, and all the other boxes that "just work together."

~~~
firedev
I think they need to stop adding new stuff and fix what's already released.
Snow Leopard was the best version of OS X because they did exactly that. Bug
fixing. No new stuff.

~~~
c3d
I agree completely. But also, they are not "adding new stuff" anymore. There's
practically no new functionality in 10.7 or 10.8.

Instead, they are _rewriting_ existing functionality, often in a way that
breaks because it fails to take into account all accumulated knowledge. Joel
Spolsky wrote about that here:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>. Restarting from
scratch is the worst idea you can have.

Here are things that were broken in OSX 10.7 or 10.8: Dual monitor support,
resolution change, keyboard input, auto-correction, Save As, Suspend/Resume,
Backups/Time Machine, Preview, Window manager (backing store), OpenGL
(stereoscopy = kernel panic, very annoying for <http://www.taodyne.com>),
Mail, Safari, RSS feeds, Windows networking. That's just off the top of my
head, sure there are many others.

But things are only marginally better in Linux or Windows land. On Linux, the
user interface in Ubuntu is a mixed bag. At least, I get a sense of purpose
and direction. And Windows 8 is like "What were they thinking" (although I met
a few users who think it's a good ideas, so YMMV).

And what about C++11, which added the kitchen sink but forgot
introspection/reflection? What about Facebook which still has not found a
business model, but keeps rewriting privacy rules? What about washing machines
that break after 5.0001 years?

BTW, stuff that is not the way it should be is the primary topic of my own
blog, Grenouille Bouillie, <https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com>. Sorry
for the shameless plug, but it's really a topic close to my heart.

------
tobiasbischoff
I can totally feel the OP's pain. Safari fails to render 1 out of 10 Pages
correctly. Thats an issue with the retina MacBook Pro, but it's there since
the thing is on sale.

Sometimes, out of nowhere, my TimeCapsule Backups take forever, although they
are always around the same size.

With some Access Points (non Apple), my MBP takes forever to log into their
Wifi after wake from sleep.

My MacMini Server fails to serve its Desktop via VNC when no display is
attached, because they use GPU accel. to render the video and the GPU Drivers
does not get loaded when no Display is attached. If got a freaking VGA-
Display-Fake Dongle on my Server to solve this.

iTunes, don't get me started. The last 10 movies i added to iTunes have the
Cover Art Tab greyed out so that i cannot add Cover Art to them. God knows
why.

iCloud.. ICLOUD!

And so on. And i'm a guy who takes its time to dig into things. I want to get
my stuff solved, but sometimes you just can't.

~~~
firedev
Oh right, so I am not imagining things. Or maybe you have "installed something
you shouldn't have"? I had to buy a couple of new routers back then for my
first-gen Macbook Air simply because it couldn't connect to a non-Apple Wi-Fi.
There are more examples in this post: <http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-
yourself-together-82158>

------
Karunamon
Invariably it seems the majority of people who have these problems have done
something to their computer. Either downloading an app they shouldn't have, or
playing with settings they shouldn't have, or there's a hardware issues
(power/memory problems will cause all manner of weird behavior)

Something along those lines.

The problems mentioned here are simply not shared by _most_ users.

Show of hands, how many Apple users here can't get Chrome to work reliably?

How many iTunes users have had the app crash on them? I've been a fan of their
products (software too) for at least a decade now, and the only crash issues
I've ever had on iTunes were on Windows. (Apple's ported software is
invariably crap) And I've got a library approaching 50k songs.

I've never had a problem with Preview corrupting files.

I've never had mail from the past appear on an iPhone.

Either I am incredibly, _incredibly_ lucky, or these problems are rare and
don't affect that many people.

And I am not that lucky.

~~~
minitrollster
I am experiencing the wifi sync issues quite heavily. My iPhone 5 might sync 1
out of 5 times, probably less.

I wouldn't say that iTunes is as bad as he says, since it's not crashing very
often for me when using it normally. But every single time I plug in and iOS
device it hangs, for up to 30 seconds, and at the end it either crashes
completely or recovers. Note that this only started happening on iTunes 11.

I've had issues synching with the cable, iTunes telling me it just can't sync
right now.

At one point, I plugged my phone in to sync it since it wouldn't over wifi.
Except this time iTunes decided to re-synch ALL my music (over 4000 songs).

The App Store constantly harasses me to update the Twitter app, that I have
deleted over a year ago.

I am on a late 2010 macbook air with 4GB of RAM, and I don't believe I have
_done something_ to my computer, like you say. It is working perfectly
otherwise.

~~~
firedev
So you are saying that crashing not very often and delays that don't exceed 30
seconds are the signs of quality? I have around 40000 songs, this is why we
have a different experience I guess. Each time I force-quit iTunes, I have to
wait around 7 minutes for it to check the library when starting again.

------
jonemo
I am surprised you are writing this about Apple (I rarely use Apple products
and hence don't know much about their quality) but I wholeheartedly agree on
that title of yours in general. I increasingly feel like all products I use
are in beta.

I used to blame manufacturers for this, but recently I have come to the
conclusion that consumers are to blame. Nobody cares about longevity and build
quality of products any more. Read some product reviews on Amazon and you'll
notice most of them are written within days of purchasing the product. Go to
Techcrunch and most of the product reviews there seem to be written before
they used the damn thing.

tl,dr: If we incentivize designers and manufacturers to neglect quality over
specs, we get the crap we get these days.

~~~
greenyoda
_"Read some product reviews on Amazon and you'll notice most of them are
written within days of purchasing the product."_

And it's really depressing to see just how many of these reviews say that the
product _stopped working_ within days of being purchased!

------
mikecane
Hey, this isn't just Apple. It's _everywhere_. Thinking of a doing a Kindle
book? You poor frikkin naif. You just have no idea.
[http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/02/why-
amazon-...](http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/02/why-amazon-just-
dont-play-fair-with-formatting/)

And you can multiply that by just about _every_ eBook app out there too.

~~~
firedev
I was thinking about getting a Kindle, but then every book review on Amazon
includes a complaint about book being unreadable on Kindle. And I was
interested mainly in books about programming that include listings which get
garbled. So I thought why bother... At least I can read PDF on iPad.

~~~
cypher543
You can read PDFs on a Kindle, too. That's how I read all of my programming
books.

~~~
firedev
But it has a smaller screen, so I am not bothering.

------
Expez
Apple's walled-garden is becoming quite large and it might be the case that
they don't have enough engineers to tend that garden at the moment. Apple is,
however, not a hardware company, they're selling an entire ecosystem to their
users. It is in their best interest to make sure the user's entire experience
is pleasant, so you can feel confident that someone does care.

I would suggest you leave for greener pastures, but Job's genius was such that
you're probably not even considering that: it would mean giving up all the
content and apps you've bought.

~~~
mberning
If the greeness of the pasture is defined by how well 'things just work' then
there are no other greener pastures. You would be trading one set of bugaboos
for another.

~~~
Expez
My Android devices 'just work'. I also advice novice users to buy Windows for
their laptops, even though I, personally, prefer Linux. Windows gets a lot of
crap from more advanced users, but it's amazing how everything 'just works' on
that platform considering the huge amount of software and hardware that is
supported. My mom bought herself an iPhone earlier this year and has been very
happy with its usability, but I would never, ever, let her install anything
but Windows on her laptop.

~~~
mberning
What kind of novice user buys a laptop and questions changing the OS, or even
knows what an OS is, or that there is even an alternative? I think you claims
are ... dubious. Novice users, like my grandmother, never ask me if they
should install Windows. They just ask me to fix it after it breaks. And it
breaks often. On the contrary, when I put something like an iPad in their
hands I go a lot longer between support calls. That's my experience having
dealt with more than a few 'novice users'.

~~~
Expez
You are right, novice users don't install operating systems, but most laptops
come with one pre-installed. Not knowing any better they could simply go by
aesthetics when they select computers. In this case they are likely to end up
with an Apple product: the computer itself, as well as the UI, looks very
good.

edit: I was a bit confused by your reply, but I now see why: I wrote 'install
Windows' when perhaps should have written 'use Windows, or 'buy a computer
with anything but Windows'. My mistake!

------
jwpe
"Oh well, so after I got the iPhone 4 finally I could use the phone for a
whole day, but the Home button... It's not working, and everybody who had an
iPhone 4 had or having this problem. So basically speaking 100% of the iPhone
4 yield was defective."

Too true. I bought a Nexus 4 because I had this problem, and the alternative
was paying £100+ for Apple to fix my button. Surely the sole button on a
device should work for the lifetime of the device?

~~~
snowwrestler
My employer issued dozens of iPhone 4's to employees and not a single one had
problems with the home button.

I don't have a problem with people complaining about products, but it's silly
to try to generalize it to "everyone has this problem" based on personal
experience. Apple sold tens of millions of units of the iPhone 4 in dozens of
countries.

~~~
firedev
Okay, maybe 90%, all my friends who had iPhone 4, and most of the people I see
around with iPhone 4 have the problem. How can I tell? They have accessibility
thing on the screen.

------
prezjordan
I've found that Chrome works especially poorly with a weak internet
connection. When I'm tethering from my phone, Chrome sometimes cannot load
webpages (I have to close tabs and reopen), whereas on Safari I don't
experience this issue. Could be all my extensions though?

~~~
firedev
Chrome was my weapon of choice but I am moved to a new house and this Error
324 issue started. Click reload and the very same page I was just looking at
doesn't work anymore. It affects sites with CloudFlare as far as I could
figure, but all other browsers are working fine.

~~~
TillE
> but I am moved to a new house and this Error 324 issue started

How do other browsers behave? Sounds like an ISP problem rather than anything
on your end.

~~~
firedev
Everything except Chrome works. I think it is also related to CloudFlare, but
I am not alone in this world of pain:
<http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324>

------
calinet6
I've actually heard the same sort of story with my dad, about his Apple
products. AppleTV updates and such breaking such-and-such feature that he
really likes, just random changes here and there changing the way he likes to
do things.

Their quality control has become a little lax (they could improve consistency
and testing surely), but I still think this kind of sob story is overblown.
They're still better than about 90% of manufacturers out there in terms of
usability and quality overall, and I think sometimes we get a little spoiled
and forget that.

For example, my D-Link Wi-Fi base station makes me cringe every time I have to
go into its configuration menus. It's quite literally their top-of-the-line
piece of hardware, but it looks like the configuration was designed by a
teenager who just took an HTML class in 1998.

On top of that, it drops the connection constantly and sometimes needs to be
restarted just because it stops working entirely. This was a replacement for
an Apple AirPort Extreme that my roommate took with him, and I thought "Oh
this will be good enough, it's half the price," and surely I've spent more in
time and frustration dealing with it than that money was worth to me. I
completely took it for granted that the AirPort just worked, for 3 years
straight, without me even having to think about it.

Lesson be learned: Apple has us generally spoiled, so that we expect
perfection. That's a tough spot to be in if anything goes wrong (and sometimes
it does), but let's not forget how good we have it most of the time.

~~~
firedev
Actually I use AirPort Express for a few years now, except running hot it is
tip-top otherwise. D-Link Wi-Fi router I bought for my mom was loosing Wi-Fi
point a couple times a day and needed a reboot to get back on track. Replaced
it since.

------
moakleaf
Honestly, this is ridiculous. I have experienced none of these issues. I use
Preview and Color Picker all the time. Both Chrome and Safari works always for
me. My iPhone 4 did not have a home-button issue, so it is definitely not 100%
bad. I don't need to restart iTunes all he time. I use Mail with 15 accounts
and 50000 messages across multiple servers. No problems! None... Zero... It
really just works for me. Xcode sucks, but is becoming a lot less sucky with
every new release.

~~~
firedev
I am a web-developer and I guess it is different with Xcode, but I would like
to have my colors in HEX, like I had them before Lion came out. Amazed with
your iPhone 4 experience, but where I live almost everybody I see has a
"accessibility controls" on the screen because home button doesn't work.
Regarding iTunes, my library might be too big, but each morning I see it used
5Gb of ram and after force-quitting it I have to wait for like 7 minutes while
it is checking the library.

~~~
moakleaf
BTW. Why didn't you exchange your iPhone 4 if you home-button was faulty???

I had mine for 2 years (before I switched to iPhone 5), I didn't have any
problems with it.

~~~
firedev
I apply a few drops of alcohol and it works again for a while. I was about to
go to change it a few times, when it is really pissing me off, but then I
would have to put sim card somewhere else, and this Android phone I have is
kinda horrid, plus I will loose my contacts. I have an old iPhone 3G, but you
can't sync iCloud contacts to it either. And then I have to pay for what I
believe is a manufacturer's defect. So I am just slowly working through a
bottle of alcohol.

~~~
moakleaf
I think that if the button is faulty it falls under warranty and you should be
able to exchange it for a _working_ iPhone 4 for no extra charge. If you have
put alcohol in it, you have probably blown whatever warranty you had left.

I had a nasty experience with a 2007 Macbook Pro 3 years ago. One morning the
screen didn't come on. Fortunately I was in the US at that time. I went to the
nearest Apple store and discussed with them. Turned out the issue with the
screen was a known issue. They fixed it the same day. No charge because it was
a known hardware-problem.

They are generally quite friendly when you talk with them.

~~~
firedev
I don't live in US, and here the service provider told me I would have pay.

------
QuantumGood
I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most
anyone I know.

When I share what I do with savvy folks who are having issues, I find that
NONE of them do all of the things I consider essential, that can be done with
little knowledge.

My easy-to-do essentials, In order of priority, from years of experience are:

• I restart Windows frequently, at least daily, and anytime things seem "off"
(rarely). I of course also restart any application(s) that seem(s) to be
working poorly. I rarely need to do either.

• I use an online backup service that archives changes (dropbox) so I can
restore old versions of files in case I screw something up (about once every
other month).

• If I have a problem that repeats, I restart Windows in safe mode, and then
turn off, unplug the POWER cord, and then hold the power button in with the
power cord UNPLUGGED (fixes some electrical static issues. Works on other
appliances as well)

• I hide all services under Msconfig > services tab to see what is starting up
that I might not need, and then uncheck some or even click "Disable all." You
can _generally_ turn anything off here without causing noticeable issues. Turn
stuff back on and restart if concerns.

• If one browser gives me a problem I switch to another (I have four
installed).

• I upgrade or reinstall Windows at least every 4-5 years or so.

• I auto-install software updates and use anti-virus software.

These basic practices give me many almost entirely headache-free years.

Of course, I'm also fairly savvy about not installing extras with software,
and avoiding clicking suspicious links or giving information to suspect
websites, but these practices rely much more on experience, and can't really
be considered "easy-to-do" in the same way the others can.

Also, I used to use Apple products. I had so many problems, and couldn't
figure out best practices to avoid them, that I stopped using Apple. Of
course, YMMV, all I'm saying is that I'm not qualified to speak to stabilizing
Apple setups, but I would expect that there are best practices that make a
difference.

~~~
greenyoda
_"I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most
anyone I know."_

Same experience here, on both my home and work machines that currently run
Windows 7. I've found Windows 7 to be remarkably stable, but I've also had
good experiences with all the other NT-based operating systems I've used: NT
3.51 and 4.0, Windows 2000 and XP (never used Vista). But I usually don't
restart Windows except to install Windows updates every couple of weeks. My
work machine runs continuously (with lots of third-party services like Tomcat,
Apache HTTP and VNC) and my home machine gets hibernated when I'm not using
it.

------
Surio
Related and on-topic: Scott Hanselman wrote something similar a while back....

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUps...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUpset.aspx)

Makes for hilarious and introspective reading at the same time (if that can be
done somehow!)

P.S: Here's the old HN thread on this one:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549>

~~~
firedev
Exactly, I have linked to that post a while back as well.

------
codex
This problems are no doubt real, but sometimes it helps to change one's
perspective from one of constant negativity (which causes you to see more
problems, and feel worse about them), to one of positivity and gratitude.

Every day I'm amazed that computers, some of the most complex non-biological
processes on this planet, work at all, or as well as they do. I'm thankful
that so many wonders are available to me, like the Internet and mobile phones.

------
pjmlp
This is why the computing industry should move away from this behaviour and
into what is common in other industries, where if something is broken the
seller is accountable for it.

~~~
firedev
Apple doesn't even have an open bug-tracker. That alone could improve a lot.
discussions.apple.com is full of issue-discussing threads with thousands of
replies, but nobody gives a damn.

~~~
moakleaf
<https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa> It requires an
Apple ID, but otherwise you are free to submit bugs... It isn't brilliant.

~~~
firedev
I know about the Radar, yes you can submit, but then what do you see?
<http://d.pr/i/8bto> 0 problems! Great. I am talking about an Open bug
tracker, not this.

~~~
moakleaf
You can still "track" the bugs you report, but "yes" they can stay open for
years. However, if you don't report these bugs Apple will not see them. The
forums are not really a convenient place to report software problems. I don't
think their developers go there ofter. If you report a bug in Radar, it will
be in Apple's bug-report system and some (poor) developer will have to deal
with it eventually.

------
jmduke
Something ignored in this article (maybe it's covered elsewhere on the blog):

iTunes Match is by far the biggest Apple crud that I've used. It simply does
not work.

~~~
firedev
I wish I could post anything about iTunes Match, but it's not for everybody:
<http://d.pr/i/6GYq>

------
firedev
Oh by the way I forgot I had a similar post a while back <http://dear-
apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158>

It lists some other issues, many of them are fixed by now and yet I simply
can't list every thing that doesn't work.

------
gryzzly
Gotta agree on this one. And true, this is not only Apple's problem. Others
have it worse probably. They and all of us [software engineers] should strive
for more quality rather than features.

------
wildchild
And also File:/// still rocks. No one cares. Hate this.

~~~
firedev
Interesting to mention that I don't have this problem. Chrome displays a
listing of the root folder on my hard drive and Safari opens Finder.

------
Jormundir
Completely Bulls*&t article. I was going to write a long explanation why, but
this made up whining doesn't deserve it.

~~~
firedev
Made up? Dude, I don't have any other computers at home except made by Apple,
and I am web-developer, not an office manager. I know my stuff.

~~~
_Simon
I must have missed the part where you tried another browser... (EDIT: I did
genuinely miss it! Still, there are at least 2 other browsers that, as a web
developer, you should have installed.)

I must ask, why are you still using the platform if it's so bad? Use something
else, problem solved! No, it _is_ that simple.

~~~
firedev
Everything else is even worse.

------
Frozenlock
At least my zoom button works...

~~~
firedev
I remember in Lion I had to always re-enable Trackpad zoom in preferences
because it wasn't working otherwise.

------
josteink
Why was this flagged?

