
A list of macOS, tvOS and iOS bugs while helping my family over the holidays - rcarmo
https://njr.sabi.net/2018/01/03/a-list-of-macos-tvos-and-ios-bugs-i-encountered-while-helping-my-family-over-the-holidays/
======
fredsted
I've been using all Apple products for almost 10 years, still do, but I've
almost lost faith in Apple's ability to engineer reliable software. It's
gotten really bad lately.

It's sad, because I really like their whole infrastructure with iCloud and
sync between devices.

I don't know what happened, maybe they just have too many products and
operating systems to support.

~~~
jcoffland
If you ever look under the covers at how Apple products are programmed you
will know why. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but if you compare, for example,
the programming documentation on MSDN to Apple, it's night and day. Microsoft
has clearly documented 95% of their APIs and for the most part, they are
stable. Apple's APIs change constantly and are poorly documented. The
documentation they do have is incomplete and full of dead links. How can you
write good software on top of this?

~~~
millstone
I agree that Microsoft's documentation is stellar for their Windows APIs.
Apple's is noticeably worse.

However Microsoft's APIs are not "more stable" than Apple's - in fact the
Microsoft APIs change constantly. See Win32 -> MFC -> WinForms -> Silverlight
-> WPF -> UWP -> WinRT... Or for languages, maybe you want to use or C++/CLI
or C++/WinRT or C# or VB.NET or F# or JavaScript or the language they'll
introduce next week. The treadmill is real and exhausting; what is a modern
Windows app anyways?

For comparison Apple wants you to write Mac or iOS apps in Swift, or in
Objective-C if you can't use Swift.

~~~
jcoffland
Microsoft's APIs are added to constantly. Apple continually breaks backwards
compatibility.

~~~
steeleduncan
Microsoft abandon the entire API, and replace it with something new every
couple of years (the grandparent comment has a good list). This has the
benefit that once software does work it should continue working more or less
indefinitely.

Apple have mutated the same API over many years, however Xcode's default
settings drift, deprecations are frequent, and the new macOS is rarely
backward compatible with a large application. This means that each summer when
the new Xcode/macOS combination is released you have to spend some time
getting up and running again.

I doubt that the ideal situation of a continually developed API with perfect
backwards compatibility exists. In that case the getting your code building
and running with the new Xcode/macOS each summer is likely less time consuming
than rewriting against a new API every 5/10 years. If you are maintaining well
established code, then the opposite is true.

~~~
pas
You can still install .NET 1.1 and run shit.

I recently installed something that was probably first targeted Windows 98.

The APIs listed by GP are deprecated and the platforms are not shipped/enabled
by default, but that's worlds apart from intentionally breaking them (with
almost no communication).

Of course, I still prefer a good package manager and direct access to the
source on GitHub/GitSomewhere, but MSDN is very well maintained.

------
drcongo
I attempted to set up a laptop for my daughter before Xmas with my own admin
account and hers as a managed account with parental controls on. We fire it up
on Xmas morning and it's forgotten almost everything I set up - in particular
the whitelisted apps. I switch to my user, set it all up again, switch back,
it's forgotten again. Did some googling and it turns out this bug has been
around for at least two years [1][2]. This seems like absolutely fundamental
functionality, there are effectively no parental controls as it's unable to
remember any of the settings.

[1]
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7275030](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7275030)
[2] [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/220067/cannot-
save...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/220067/cannot-save-changes-
made-to-parental-controls-profile)

~~~
thinkythought
Ran into this one at work. We wanted to have a public imac as a simple
terminal for clients to use our website and set things up. Nothing that needed
to be super secure, basically just to walk them through the interface of our
stuff etc if they asked, and that we could leave them alone at without any
ability to bork the system.

This ended up being such a crapshoot that we had to buy deepfreeze because
even the freaking guest account doesn't consistently work the way it
should(or, hasn't worked consistently across versions of OSX over the past few
years) and basic things like auto updates of software/the OS kept breaking if
someone didn't regularly sign into the admin account.

It turned from a quick project that should have been easy and apple-y with
basic security settings and enabling auto updates into something that someone
from the team has to grab a checklist and verify once a month. It's a complete
joke.

It's worth noting apple literally buys deepfreeze for the systems in their own
stores. You'd uh, think that their own functionality in the OS would be able
to handle that.

------
Shank
> The installer nukes user accounts that have been around for years to replace
> them with new user accounts without warning (in this case, _assetcache
> replaced the intermapper user).

Surely this can't be counted as bug. A system account changing to a new user
account that does system things (that no normal user will ever touch) should
have no impact on the system at all.

------
olingern
The current releases within the Apple ecosystem are _rough_. Currently weening
myself off of iMessage to reduce the pain of potentially moving outside of the
OSX ecosystem.

Apple is basically handing Microsoft a golden ticket. With Windows looking
pretty dev friendly these days, there's finally some competition for an OS
that's both UI and dev friendly.

~~~
ohthehugemanate
Give one of the friendlier linuxes a try. Since you're used to working with a
unix-ish environment, it will be pretty familiar. Ubuntu (and Mint) do a great
job with their UI. With the quality and diversity of software available, I
don't miss OSX at all.

The only caveat: libre Office sucks; I've switched to gdocs instead. Maybe
it's a configuration thing, but the alternatives are just so easy now, I
hardly bother.

~~~
pjmlp
Graphics programming, 3D debuggers, 3D drivers issues and power management are
other caveats.

~~~
brokenmachine
Also audio.

Linux audio is pretty disappointing. It took me hours of googling and mucking
around to get surround audio over HDMI working for my ubuntu HTPC.

I ended up having to completely disable PulseAudio which means there can't be
any desktop sounds at all, but at least the audio works in surround from Kodi
now.

Also every time I do an update I need to reinstall Nvidia drivers. Which might
also break the fragile audio over HDMI setup, who knows?

------
roryisok
I recently started using macos for work. I'm on sierra and every day I get
pestered about upgrading to high sierra. Every day I also read a new reason
not to do that. Is there any way I can turn it off?

~~~
sjwright
System Preferences > App Store

Click the padlock and authenticate

Uncheck "Automatically check for updates"

~~~
SyneRyder
Is there a way to just disable the High Sierra notification? I'd still like to
be automatically notified of point releases / security updates to Sierra.

[This is a bit diversionary, but I've often seen your username here and
wondered if we went to the same school, or if it's coincidence. You'll
recognize my username if so.]

~~~
sjwright
[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=disable+the+High+Sierra+n...](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=disable+the+High+Sierra+notification)

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8181588](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8181588)

[I don't recognise your username but I have an astonishingly poor memory for
names. School was Camberwell Grammar. If correct, my email is username at
gmail.]

~~~
SyneRyder
Ahh, that solves the mystery (but thanks for Whirlpool!) I had you confused
with the Sydney-based simon-wright.com.

Thanks for the tip and the LMGTFY! That did the trick :)

------
rcarmo
Ironically, when I was posting this, rotation lock froze on my iPad (another
recurring bug that has been around since iOS 9).

------
melling
I discovered over Christmas that Siri’s and my idea of “next” Monday is
different. I blogged about it yesterday:

[http://h4labs.org/siri-next-monday-isnt-christmas/](http://h4labs.org/siri-
next-monday-isnt-christmas/)

If you ask Siri now, it thinks next Monday is the 15th.

Tonight’s bug occurred on the Watch. It told me to close my Activity rings
like yesterday, even though I closed them several hours earlier.

—-

Update

I wanted to add that Alexa and Google define “next Monday” as I do. I didn’t
add that to my blog because the point wasn’t to try and criticize Siri.
Ambiguity will always be a problem.

~~~
mathw
I was always taught growing up that "next" Monday is the one after "this"
Monday which is the first Monday you will encounter moving into the future.

I was surprised as an adult to discover that this is not universally held.
Since it's pretty obviously ambiguous, I would expect my voice assistant to
ask for clarification on which one I meant, and maybe learn from that if it's
the kind of assistant which keeps user profile data (which is probably all of
them).

~~~
natch
I was taught that there are two interpretations, and therefore it's always a
good idea to ask for clarification. At least when interacting with humans.

So, what you said is exactly right: Siri should get clarification. And also
when stating things in the form of "next Monday" Siri should clarify what is
meant, or just avoid the form altogether by instead saying things similar to
"this coming Monday" or "the Monday following this one."

~~~
melling
In an ideal world Siri would ask you once then learn your style. I would also
like to offer a correction. I don’t want Siri to always ask “Did you mean...”

------
reacharavindh
I wish someone who works for Apple uses a throwaway to explain how employees
feel about all this, and whether the QA team is getting any flack..

------
natch
I have seen a few bugs as well, I'm sad to say. Most impactful is that Time
Machine no longer works... I don't think there is any step that I have not yet
tried, short of meeting personally with the developer of the Time Machine
software, an option that I don't think is in the cards.

~~~
72deluxe
What do you mean that it no longer works? Do you mean it won't find drives,
won't back up to existing backups, won't restore?

I only ask because I'm still on Sierra and see this list of broken features
under High Sierra as troubling.

Hopefully they can do a "Snow Leopard" next release - 0 new features, loads of
bug fixes.

~~~
natch
It never finishes. At any given time what it says differs, but at the moment
the pulldown menu says "Backing up: 2 KB of 115.3 MB" and it's not moving. It
will move slowly, make some progress, then the rightmost number will creep up.
It never gets ahead of whatever is mysteriously changing data on the disk, I'm
guessing. Even when I leave it alone and go on vacation for a week without the
laptop, with all apps closed and the laptop left running.

Eventually the Time Capsule disk (3TB) fills up, from my 1TB laptop, without
ever having finished a backup.

It was happening on Sierra for me too.

------
rado
My only serious problem with macOS is keyboard language when switching between
apps. It changes the current app's language to the one used by the previous
app. Reported it countless times, had a few email exchanges with Craig
Federighi, still unsolved after 13 years. Can anyone write an app to keep each
app's input language? I think the OS part that deals with that is still
Carbon...

------
smt88
I noticed these headsmackingly obvious bugs starting around 2010. It seems
like they've multiplied since then.

I'll never understand how such a massive company can have such poor quality
control on their flagship products.

------
cjsuk
The only bug I know of that actually annoys me is on the recommended music in
the music app, when you click on the artist it redirects you back to the
recommended playlist rather than the artist.

I really have had no other problems, which is a rather nice surprise if I'm
honest.

~~~
jordansmithnz
I’m glad I’m not the only one that noticed this! It’s a small detail and easy
to miss, unless you’re an actual user. It makes me wonder if the engineering
team doesn’t use Apple Music as their daily music player.

You can work around it by the way, by tapping on now playing -> triple dot ->
album cover -> artist.

~~~
cjsuk
That workaround makes me happy. Thank you - much appreciated!

------
viraptor
> Users (with >500 UIDs) can “disappear” until reboot; e.g. id returns nothing
> for the user.

And randomly later as well. Every few weeks my terminal will complain it can't
run sudo because the user doesn't exist. Reopen the terminal -> everything's
fine :(

------
thirdsun
I really wish Apple would fix its SMB implementation - it's a mess.

I'm accessing an NAS from multiple macs and a PC. The performance and
reliability with the PC is flawless when it comes to file transfers, browsing
and general access. With the macs it's often uncertain whether finder.app will
be able to connect, ask for my credentials again, fail to connect, seem to be
connected, but really isn't, requiring a restart of the process, not show the
NAS in the sidebar or anything inbetween.

And that's not even touching the subpar performance during transfers and
listing of large directories.

Of course the NAS might be to blame but I see the same issues at work with the
NAS.

------
pjc50
> Since I can’t copy files across the network to synchronize photos with other
> family members (an incredibly common workflow which Apple still hasn’t
> supported in any way)

Yes. Photo library handling is still pretty bad on all the popular OSs.
Everyone wants to sell cloud products to do this, rather than any kind of
"local" sync. One of these days I'll write the application to do this.

------
jaxondu
One more bug in case Apple is reading this (used to file bugs under Apple's
BugReporter but seems like no one is reading them): When you AirPlay a video
from iPhone to Apple TV 4th gen, you then can not use the AppleTV Remote
hardware to pause and play, as the audio will be lost. All with latest iOS,
tvOS.

~~~
jaxondu
Another very annoying bug. When you press the Home button with your non-Touch-
ID registered finger, an "Enter Passcode" screen will appear. But when you
cover that finger let say with a tissue paper and press, nothing happen. So I
can not unlock my iPhone 6s when I go jogging as I put the phone in a case
with a clear front plastic. Even when I use the AssistiveTouch and place a
virtual Home button I get the same bug. But this bug does not occur all the
time, probably 80-90% of the time. Did Apple change the TouchID feature to
require sensing our flesh in order to work?

------
endymi0n
> "Americans have an impoverished and immature conception of technology, one
> that fetishizes innovation as a kind of art and demeans upkeep as mere
> drudgery."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835256)

------
dilap
It's very frustrating. I don't think Tim Cook actually uses computers that
much.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
To be fair, when you have his kind of money, you have "people" to use
computers for you.

~~~
dilap
Yeah, I think that's part of the problem.

I remember when Apple introduced Force Touch (now the more politically-correct
3D Touch), and Tim said he used force touch to preview emails "all the time".
No you don't dude, no one does. That's the most ridiculous made-for-a-demo
feature ever.

(I would happily disable 3d touch completely except for it artificially turns
off the camera and flashlight buttons on the home-screen. The feature would be
useful if they'd just used it as a shortcut for long press.)

------
blinkingled
I just upgraded my older 10.12 installation on the Macbook - forget bugs for a
moment, the installation of updates is a criminally slow and punishing (time
wise) endeavor on the Mac compared to Windows 10. It's like no thought went
into it to make it fast at all!

------
seba_dos1
Recently I've spent just a few days with macOS and iOS trying to port a game
to iOS and I could add a few bugs to this list. Most of them rather cosmetic
and just annoying, but speaking about the quality of the software
nevertheless.

~~~
basdp
Try to port it to Android next, great fun! You’ll appreciate iOS more after
that ;-)

~~~
seba_dos1
Already did earlier. Had it's own pile of annoyingness, sure, but general
impression wasn't that bad (well, was bad, until I've seen iOS).

But it could be just that nothing has been falsely advertised to me with
Android and I knew what to expect :P

~~~
pjmlp
Well I spend most of my Android coding with the NDK, and I consider it lacks
lots of love.

While some things are understable due to the security issues of using C and
C++, having to use JNI to call native libraries on device (Skia, libpng, ...)
or C for C++ APIs, feels less understandable.

Or how gdb support is hit-and-miss, depending on device's firmware.

Oh and the fun of combining CMake, ndk-build and Gradle experimental plugin
builds.

~~~
seba_dos1
The tooling is better on iOS indeed (aside of being limited to macOS, which is
a major PITA, but thankfully there's ssh and stuff). That's not the point
though.

What I meant is the overall quality of implementation, not the system designs
themselves, where both have their obvious upsides and downsides. What I mean
is that you can't have WebGL context in WebView on iOS without risking crashes
when your app goes to the background, because you can't use OpenGL when in the
background and Apple's own WebView doesn't respect their own rule on that
(which turns out is why AdMob users are often having seemingly random crash
reports for their apps, I've learned from googling this issue). What I also
mean is that I've found some reproducible UI glitches in Android during a few
months of usage, and I've found similar amount of them during a few days of
iPhone usage.

It feels messy, even though Apple is in position where it's way easier for
them to keep it tidy than in the every-vendor-can-do-anything-they-want-
kindergarden of Android. Which is really telling.

------
basdp
Are you using non-apple servers or other devices in your home network? If not,
that’s probably the reason of most net related bugs. Also, do not try to do
things manually on Apple machines. Do not “copy files” if you want to sync
photos, instead, do it the Apple way. It sucks, but it’s the only way.

------
teaneedz
iOS can't even get text selection for copy/paste to work right!

Reported this several times from multiple devices to Apple from normsl support
up to Tim Cook.

Apple is synonymous with Bugs.

------
singularity2001
the iOS 11 'bugs' to me read like a testimony of how very stable the system
is.

