
How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs, Revamp iPhone Software - robin_reala
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/how-apple-plans-to-root-out-bugs-revamp-iphone-software
======
askafriend
This comment from a former employee on the iOS team provides some more context
around the software quality issues.

I think this is the more interesting point around which we should have this
discussion.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7x0eif/how_apple_pla...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7x0eif/how_apple_plans_to_root_out_bugs_and_revamp/du4z6bx/)

~~~
objclxt
I have a slightly different perspective (I worked on iOS 7 - 11). One of the
things about Apple that's different to many of the other tech conglomerates is
that engineering teams are given huge freedom to work the way they want (for
better and for worse). Because engineering is so fragmented you should always
take what one person says about the process with a pinch of salt.

So that means there are hundreds of source repos, patch review systems, and
the like. When I was there I saw teams using Phabricator, GitLab, GitHub,
plain e-mailed diffs, and more. In the same way EPMs and project process
varies massively across teams, so what that employee experienced is by no
means the norm. Certainly I didn't find this to be true at all:

> Nothing could be worked on if it wasn’t in Radar with a priority number
> attached and signed off by the teams’ EPM. No room for a side project or
> time away from your daily duties because there were always P1s to fix.

In fact, I worked on a major feature that was keynoted one year that came out
purely because of my side project work. If anything it was a frustration to
enter the "real world" where PMs had so much more power and influence than
they did when I was at Apple (where PMs didn't really exist, and EPMs existed
only to manage project timelines and drive features that HI / ID came up
with).

~~~
cageface
Based on your experience there what would you say is the cause of the recent
slip in software quality in both iOS and macOS? As an outsider it looks to me
like they're just pushing too hard to keep up with a yearly release schedule
but that's based on no inside knowledge at all.

~~~
masklinn
> Based on your experience there what would you say is the cause of the recent
> slip in software quality in both iOS and macOS?

It's not clear because there have been absolute shit-show releases going back
to the early days of OSX. Even the fondest-remembered releases were only so
after a ton of polish, and that was with releases slipping significantly (you
might see 3 years pass between major updates, and the new version would still
be completely unstable).

I'm sure yearly releases don't help, especially if there isn't a postgres-type
culture of "we ship what's ready", but software engineering issues at Apple go
back a long time.

~~~
gurkendoktor
What has definitely changed is the pace with which people are expected to
upgrade. When OS X Snow Leopard came out, you had to visit a store to buy the
DVD. Nobody would look down on you for running a "legacy OS" if you only
upgraded when .3 was out.

The ways in which this has changed affect both tech-savvy and casual users:

1\. Older versions of iOS (which didn't exist back then) don't receive
security fixes, so the only way to stay safe is to upgrade within days of the
initial release (ideally before Apple publishes its security KB article).

2\. Older versions of macOS often lag behind when it comes to security fixes.
There is no clear policy on whether it is safe to stay on release n-1. Apple
needs to be nudged to even document macOS security issues[1]. If you are
moderately paranoid about security, you have to install all updates on day one
(as on iOS).

3\. iOS and macOS automatically download OS upgrades and nag you to install
them.

4\. There is a narrative on community sites that Apple's products are only
good because Apple relentlessly kills legacy code and features (I don't even
agree with the latter part). Dropping support for anything older than a year
is considered a badge of honor because it means there will be "progress". The
more paying customers you inconvenience, the edgier you are.

5\. Apple feeds into this "old software is bad" meme by publicly LOLing at
Android's adoption curve every year.

6\. Emoji. I wish I was kidding, but only seeing squares when other people go
out of their way to express their emotions is actually annoying.

7\. If you are already on an OS that is buggy, you are more likely take the
plunge and update to a brand-new OS in the hope that _this_ time, things will
be better.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/953416156802703360](https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/953416156802703360)

~~~
savoytruffle
When Snow Leopard 10.6 came out in August 2009, it only supported Intel Macs,
which were at earliest from January 2006, about three and a half years
earlier. Typical Mac OS X releases up to El Capitan (september 2015) supported
10 years of Macintosh computers. Sierra/High Sierra still do, essentially.

~~~
newscracker
The support for older machines depends on multiple factors, like the multi-
year transition from 32 bit to 64 bit for the OS, including 32 bit EFI, 64 bit
EFI, etc. Some older machines were not supported by newer releases (not
talking about security patches) for longer than five years, IIRC. That's a
long period of time, but still quite short when compared to Windows support of
older machines during that time (this is not a great comparison because of
differences in annoyances and quality in the OSes, but more about the
companies' work).

~~~
gurkendoktor
Right. If Apple really switches to ARM Macs, I doubt they'll support existing
Intel Macs for anything close to 10 years.

------
IBM
Steven Sinofsky has a good Twitter thread about this [1]. He's one of the few
people actually qualified to talk about managing platforms and operating
systems at Apple's scale.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/963142502604779520](https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/963142502604779520)

~~~
pjmlp
Given what he pushed for with Windows 8, and killing WP 7 alongside XNA, I am
not so sure.

~~~
hyperrail
Steven Sinofsky wasn't in charge of Windows Phone when that division decided
to have no device upgrade path from WP7 to WP8 (or, for that matter, no
upgrade path _or_ application compatibility from WP6.5 to WP7.0).

The person in charge of Windows Phone then was Terry Myerson, who had an
entirely different reporting chain to Steve Ballmer from Sinofsky's. Myerson
was later promoted to run R&D for all Microsoft operating systems in early
2014. (Yes, that means he was also the person responsible for killing Windows
on phones most recently, at least for now.)

The death of XNA also didn't happen under Sinofsky's watch. XNA came out of
the Xbox division and was abandoned by the same division, before it was
combined with Windows under Myerson. If anything, Myerson kept XNA alive
longer by making sure it was still supported on WP8.0 and WP8.1 when he ran
Windows Phone, and by ensuring that Windows continued to fund MonoGame as an
open-source successor/replacement for XNA.

~~~
jrs95
The death of XNA is pretty disappointing, if they'd invested more in that then
Microsoft could have basically made Unity.

~~~
harrygeez
The problem isn't in the tech but devs these days are reluctant to write for
MSFT platforms, can't blame them though.

------
ProfessorLayton
This is sorely needed. Every iOS update has introduced bugs and UX gremlins
that have been dragging Apple's software quality through the mud.

Chief among them is Apple Music, since it is a huge part of Apple's service
initiative.

\- Their latest update now wastes space to tell me it isn't playing anything!

\- Often times just refuses to work. No error, no graceful recover. Just
silence. [https://imgur.com/a/VrO1Y](https://imgur.com/a/VrO1Y)

\- Airdrop seems to only work if I have a cable near me. When I really need
it, it fails miserably and I end up using dropbox or even emailing things to
myself.

~~~
RandomTisk
I don't encounter many bugs, but I'm considering getting android because
Apple's feature/UX choices are beyond insane today. There are two features
they're missing, that I feel should have been one of the first few added.

1\. You can't view a list of chapters in iTunes, like in Audiobooks from say,
Audible. Awful. I mean, I hate to be unkind, but are they seriously this inept
to not include a chapter list that you can view and jump to? 2\. You can't
keep the screen on while on a call, like say a conference call, where you
might want to remain muted until you want to speak. Awful x100,000,000.

My next phone I'll take a long look at Android.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
The problem here is that the “top 2 features that should have been in place
from day 1 and represent an insane usability gap” are different for every
user. So if they try and add all the weird corner case niche features, it’ll
be the standard unopinionated bloatware that most software is.

FWIW, I’ve never played an audiobook in iTunes (Audible), and I hadn’t ever
noticed the screen locking during calls thing. TouchID is so fast that it
never bothers me, I guess.

~~~
dahauns
>So if they try and add all the weird corner case niche features, it’ll be the
standard unopinionated bloatware that most software is.

While I agree with the sentiment behind the argument, these days the pendulum
is swinging _far_ too much in the other direction.

Sure, this choice is _always_ a tradeoff.

But today, so many applications and websites are being optimized for _the one
single most important_ use case at _total_ expense for everything else. Making
the software a true lowest common denominator, but seriously reducing actual
usefulness.

Just look at the example: I don't have hard numbers, but I'd wager that "Show
table of contents for an audiobook" is only a "weird corner case niche
feature" for a _very_ wide definition of the phrase (i.e. "everything below my
main feature").

------
reaperducer
Good. Let's hope that other companies follow (MS, Google, Adobe, etc...).

What I want for Christmas is to swap phones with Tim Cook for a week. I think
it would be eye-opening for him to have to use an iPhone that isn't fresh out
of the box for once.

------
vxNsr
>The company will continue to update its software annually, but internally
engineers will have more discretion to push back features that aren't as
polished to the following year.

Let's hope Microsoft follows suit. I would much rather have a product that
works the same way every time over one that can do 1000 things half the time.

Hopefully this will also give them time to reconsider some of the more ill-
conceived UX choices they've made in recent years. If they'd spent more than 6
months using the iPhone X I doubt it would've been released as is.

~~~
dingo_bat
I don't think Microsoft has a code quality problem at all. On the contrary I'm
hard pressed to point at any recent Microsoft software and say it's bug ridden
or low quality or badly designed. From iOS to Android to Windows, Microsoft
software is excellent.

~~~
computerex
The constant nagging for updates could be considered a flaw in design. I think
Microsoft has always had the reputation of producing buggy software with
usability issues. I think they have gotten a lot better at all that.

~~~
arvinsim
> The constant nagging for updates could be considered a flaw in design.

That's not a code quality problem.

------
mosselman
I Just opened the website on my phone and was greeted with some auto playing
video. How much of my monthly data that costs? No idea, but it is probably
more than I cared for. How much of it did I watch and hear? Nothing seeing as
I am on the bus. Not so strange as I am on a _mobile_ phone. I wouldn’t even
watch it on desktop let alone now. Bad practice

------
musha68k
This is happening almost exactly three years after many of us came to the
conclusion that “Apple has lost the functional high ground”.

Relieving to learn that Apple tries to get back into shape again!

Marco was right:

[https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-
grou...](https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836734)

------
heavymark
This rumor has been around past few months, hoping it's true. Though while us
technies in the minority would rather bug fixes than new features that don't
apply for us, the general public would be very upset if iOS12 changes are all
under the hood, as they would say Apple has fallen behind and people will
insert common statements every years like they are finally considering
switching etc. So while I hope the do fix long standing small bugs, I think
the average user would lose their mind if they do. I imagine it will be a mix,
some new features and some fixes.

~~~
bsimpson
The Mac has had an optimization-centric release following a feature release
many times (all the Snow releases, El Capitan). I don't remember mass
complaints.

(By its name, High Sierra ought to be an optimization of Sierra also, but its
bugginess suggests otherwise.)

~~~
username223
There wouldn't be mass complaints. My family are absolute non-techies, while I
am something like a techie, and none of us would complain if Apple did a few
pure bug-fix releases. Non-techies don't completely understand the current
situation where developers care far more about themselves than their users,
but they have learned that software "upgrades" will usually waste their time
and make their lives worse. Apple can actually fight this, since their users
are their customers.

------
gergles
I just hope they can make Spotlight work. I can drag down from the home menu,
type the full name of an app on the phone, and only get random other results
(or the App Store link to the app.)

e.g.: [https://imgur.com/a/jYE9M](https://imgur.com/a/jYE9M) (reminders is a
built-in app but apparently Spotlight's never heard of it)

~~~
whitehouse3
You can manually select which apps can be found with Spotlight in the settings
app. I had the same problem finding 1Password until I went into settings and
explicitly added it. This is terrible UX, but that’s how to fix it on your
device until Apple sorts it out.

~~~
gergles
Thank you for this! I had no idea, but about half the apps on my phone were
randomly set as "do not show in search". I definitely never had seen these
settings before, so am boggled as to why Apple just randomly decided to ship
an ineffective search.

------
tempodox
I'll hold my praises until I see how this actually works out. Xcode behaves
more like a roulette wheel with every update and by now, even Terminal crashes
on me every time I use it. It has gotten to the point where I consciously
avoid using Apple apps because It Just Doesn't Work. Thank the gods of FOSS
for iTerm2.

~~~
chime
After one of the recent updates, if I use a keyboard shortcut to switch to a
tab while the mouse is over the Terminal window, it starts to rapidly cycle
between tabs and will not stop until I move the mouse away. You can try to
reproduce this by opening two tabs in Terminal, moving the mouse over it, then
pressing Cmd+Shift+] for more than a few tens of ms.

This has interrupted my workflow enough that I started to look for
alternatives to Terminal.

------
suyash
This is a very common problem in large software companies that I can relate
to. There is always pressure of the next big release and as a result bugs get
punted, code starts to get out of order but there is not time to refactor and
pause as the next release is just behind waiting for more features and limited
bug fixes. Software Engineers and Management need to re-think of a better
strategy to deal with these issues.

------
steve19
I wish they would put focus on macOS. The recent bugs have been laughable. I
am seriously considering switching for the first time in about 16 years. The
lure of better more affordable dev hardware is almost to much.

~~~
dijit
The options are not strong elsewhere though. I went with a precision because I
assumed linux support would be top notch, and it was. But I widely suspect
other similarly classed devices are not. (see also; the comparatively buggy
XPS series also from Dell)

~~~
computerex
XPS is amazing.

------
andrewstuart
I tried to upgrade OSX the other day and the upgrade hung half way, leaving me
to restore my hard disk from backup.

More quality assurance and testing would be welcomed.

------
walterbell
Please enable per-app VPNs via Apple Configurator, i.e. without an enterprise
MDM. This will allow separation of work and personal VPNs.

Please allow auto-connect VPN profiles to be associated with a whitelist of
SSIDs, so that insecure networks (e.g. coffee shop) will auto-connect to a
VPN.

Finally, please add a Control Center button to reconnect the default VPN
profile.

~~~
mrkstu
Agreed on all of those. Additionally make re-connecting an iPad to an iPhone
sharing a connection automatic (optionally) if no known wifi networks are
available.

~~~
aetherspawn
For those of us with personal data limits, that could be annoying. I did that
once, forgot to disconnect and it used like 2gb (of monthly 8gb) performing
sync “over WiFi”. And Apple cares about this problem you can tell because the
WiFi off button now only lasts 24hr before automatically turning back on (to
avoid data waste).

~~~
izacus
Doesn't iPad recognise tethered connections as mobile connections (like
Android tablets do)?

------
bsaul
I hope they don’t only focus on some minor app bugs, but also address the big
giant elephant in the room : speed has been going down in a dramatric fashion
release after release since ios 7.

There’s one word i wish i’d seen and haven’t so far : refactoring.

------
randyrand
If they just added the ability to jump to a given date in text messages, I'd
be happy. That's a long overdue simple feature.

~~~
dkonofalski
That seems a lot less useful than a functional search for messages. I hate the
fact that I can only search for 1 instance of my search within a conversation.
There's no way to go to a previous or next instance from the instance that the
search feature already found. That sucks.

~~~
Kognito
This! The Mac Messages app has the same UI for search and its possible to jump
between the found messages using a keyboard shortcut. Makes me wonder if the
functionality exists in iOS too but someone forgot to build it into the UI.

------
pdimitar
The smartphone market isn't fiercely contested anymore IMO.

The features that Android and iOS offer are very similar. I am still very
annoyed that I can't make my iPhone X automatically increase ringer volume
when it gets out of range of my home WiFi (read: when I get out) while I can
do that on my Android (with automation apps) but truthfully, such complaints
are 3-4 at the most and I barely even notice the annoyance (at least not
often).

So the fierce competition is a moot point nowadays. I applaud Apple for
recognizing they need to focus on quality and I hope the results will come
soon.

------
EADGBE
As boring at it sounds, this is probably more important that most people
think. The "just works" mentality of iOS/Apple products is the key factor for
keeping it in our family ecosystem.

Just last night, I tried my damnedest to print an IRS PDF form online.
Printer's on, wifi is the same as my Thinkpad, printer is visible to laptop,
etc. Nothing worked. Print was "offline" for the print queue. Just pulled out
my phone, searched for the form name, opened the pdf and hit "Print" from the
share screen. It's always worked, and did perfectly again. That's the greatest
thing about it.

I didn't want to debug. I do enough of that shit at work.

------
CodeSheikh
I wonder if the mixed reviews of iOS 11 have led them to do such major
overhaul. Say if iOS was responsibility of one software dev team, and they
recently hired a new project manager to overlook iOS 11 development and
release then I would definitely transfer that PM somewhere else in the corp
along with QA guys.

For example that bug "typing the letter 'I' autocorrects to an 'A; with a
unicode [?] symbol instead" might not be that big of a deal, but as we all
noticed how such minute change had drastic ripple effect in entire Apple's
ecosystem.

------
kvczor
That's what I expect from Apple and that's why I'm buying their stuff - I want
it to work not to have all unnecessary whistles and bells.

------
jrobichaud
Another step toward “OS as a service” like many games and softwares.

I hope they will not fall in that pattern.

------
skittleson
Being customer obsessed is what this implies in my mind. "The renewed focus on
quality is designed to make sure the company can fulfill promises made each
summer at the annual developers conference and that new features work reliably
and as advertised..."

------
aj7
This totally off subject but how bout a charger cable with a 2-year lifespan.
So give me my negative points.

------
rusk
At last

------
freejulian
They should start by getting rid of Swift and all their proprietary APIs.
Xcode is a never ending exercise in frustration. Their storyboard UI builder
is even worse. And API's are constantly being deprecated and "best development
practices" constantly changing.

~~~
saagarjha
> They should start by getting rid of Swift and all their proprietary APIs.

Swift is open source, and parts of Foundation are as well. As for their UI
design toolkit, you can't possibly expect them to match that of their
competitors, right?

> API's are constantly being deprecated and "best development practices"
> constantly changing.

Believe it or not, but writing apps in a 32-bit C API (Carbon) may not be the
best way to do it. Modernization is crucial to making your platform better.

------
sjg007
I thought Apple cut their QA department a few, maybe 5 years ago.

~~~
minimaxir
[deleted]

~~~
x0x0
Yeah, but you get releases where I could hard lock the OS by
plugging/unplugging an HDMI monitor approx 20 times (7 MBPs bought over the
course of 3 months in late 2014; 3 different brands of HDMI monitor) and
that's the only way you can make sense of someone letting a bug like that out
the door.

------
abimaelmartell
Autoplay video, just what i wanted.

------
staunch
What originally made the iPhone unique and powerful was that it included a
full blown web browser, in the form of the Safari app. Steve Jobs announced
the iPhone as a "Phone," "iPod," and "Internet Communicator."

The name "Internet Communicator" indicates how different it is from the other
two apps. The Phone and iPod functionality are really a subset of the Internet
Communicator.

And because the future is open web technologies, not propriety platforms like
iOS, Apple should move towards that world by making advanced PWA (Progressive
Web Apps) the future of all apps on iOS.

It will make installing apps on your phone as safe and easy as bookmarking a
web site. It will be much closer to an optimal experience for users and
developers. It's the future and Apple should be first.

~~~
saagarjha
Interestingly, Steve Jobs's vision for apps on iOS _was_ essentially PWAs. He
was forced to back down after developer found their way around these
restrictions (i.e. jailbroke) and realized they could write much higher
quality, faster, and more efficient apps natively.

~~~
staunch
That's an imprecise version of the history but what does it have to do with
modern iPhones?

Many people said GUIs were too inefficient to be worthwhile on early PCs. Then
PCs got more powerful and no one says that any longer.

The iPhone 8 is orders of magnitude more powerful than early versions. The
world has changed and those old arguments no longer make sense.

~~~
saagarjha
Your argument doesn't really make sense: GUIs made a lot of software
accessible to the average user, while web apps does nothing of the sort. To
the end user, there are almost _no_ benefits to using a web app; they're
slower (yes, computers have gotten faster. That doesn't mean that the gap
between web apps and native ones doesn't exist), they less accessible, they
look worse, and they can't do half the things because they need to run in a
web browser. The only benefits are for the developer since they don't have to
spend time figuring out how to write native code for a handful of platforms
and can now just write software for the lowest common denominator.

~~~
staunch
The success of the GUI shows why computing is not driven by concerns over
efficiency. PWAs being less efficient than native apps is completely
irrelevant. What matters is functionality.

Most apps do nothing that requires being native at all. The fact that PWAs
have been implemented badly so far does not mean that there's anything
inherently ugly, slow, or less accessible.

Apple could go as far as they want in making PWAs and native apps feel
completely identical. They could even go as far as enforcing style,
performance, and accessibility rules for PWAs.

The benefit of moving to PWAs are many and the downsides are all solvable.

~~~
redial
> Apple could go as far as they want in making PWAs and native apps feel
> completely identical. They could even go as far as enforcing style,
> performance, and accessibility rules for PWAs.

But they _have_ gone as far as they want, you should be happy then, or do you
mean as far as _you_ want? And isn't one of the points of web apps to not be
enforceable by any single entity?

> The benefit of moving to PWAs are many and the downsides are all solvable.

Solvable only with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and many many
years of development. On second thought, they've had all that and are still
not even close.

