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Ask HN: Why is iOS 11 such a mess?
94 points by remarkEon on Nov 7, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 105 comments
> Calculator input lag bug

> Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices

> Swiping right to open a text or app from the lock-screen will cause touchID to fail

> Battery life has absolutely collapsed (pretty much have to have low power mode enabled to make it through the day with moderate usage)

> iMessage bug corrects "I" to some unrecognizable symbol [1]

> Siri App Suggestions now appears to suggest most recently used apps, not frequently - defeating the purpose of the home-button double-click (I assume this was done to support functionality on iPhone X since that doesn't have a home-button).

This is just what I've experienced before noon today. Why the decline in software quality?

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/304153/ios-11-autocorrect-bug-typing-the-letter-capital-i

Edit: More since lunch

> Using bluetooth headphones to control Spotify music app...sometimes, but not always, pressing the button to restart paused audio will start iTunes music, even though I never use it anymore.

> I don't know what happened in the Podcast app, but my saved podcasts are not there anymore and the library is difficult to navigate.




They need to hit a panic button inside Apple, and use the time they've bought themselves by introducing 2018's hardware in 2017 (as they claim the X does), and focus 100% on software.

I think giving iOS design to Ive was an error, but even if they don't agree with that, they need to focus on software very clearly and very publicly, making iOS 12 a release like the old Snow Leopard MacOS release. Focus on quality and performance, not new features.


Bringing out the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 at the same time is already a confusing marketing mess and something that never would have happened under Jobs.


Yes it was such a huge marketing mess that Apple's guidance is that they will have a record breaking quarter during the 4th calendar quarter....


you say that but the people making these decisions are the people that knew Jobs better than you.


I disagree. I agree they need to focus on quality and performance and be public that they're working to address it. But they also need to focus on adding new functionality to catch up with Android and other flavours of Android. The mobile market is moving a little too quickly for them just to sit still and not move for 2 years.


They've already been sitting on the same physical design for the past 4 years, from the 6 to the 8. I wonder why they waited so long to release a new chassis. The fact that they took so long and when it finally does come, they jack up the prices for what should have been standard annoys me.


I'd politely disagree with the assumptions underlying the question.

Changing the physical proportions is a very big deal when you look at the long term impact on the development and app ecosystem.

iOS developers can test their design on the SE, the Plus and the regular size and it will cover over 4 years of phones in the hands of users.

And for what? Have people's hands changed shape or size? Once you've reached something that makes your customer base happy, you would want to have a new design that is substantially better. Novelty isn't a better selling point than knowing you'll be happy with what you get.

There's an old Wired article on the making of the iPod, where they reveal that they made over 100 prototypes, down to weights internally to check the balance and feel of the device. It's likely that there are thousands of iPhone prototypes they have tested out, and the models we have are the survivors of a much larger and longer process than is publically visible.


I agree. I'm 193cm (6'4") and have large hands. I still like the iPhone SE much more than any bigger screen.


IMO and as other outlets have stated I don't think they planned to release the X this year. You can tell a lot of this just by the way the software feels like it has been shoehorned in to work e.g. swipe down from the right for Control Center, swipe down from the left for notifications.


Those are both badly copied features from Android. On Nexus/Pixel tablets the top right was used for the system toggle, left was used for notifications. What I'm surprised by is that they didn't copy the "hard press where home should be for home", instead relying on swipe and press. The galaxy s8 supports both and the hard press is substantially more useful.


I'm earnestly appalled at how terrible this release has been.

I've had an iPhone since 3GS and this is the first time I can remember I've really regretted an update. I've NEVER experienced my iPhone completely locking up for 5-10 minutes right in the middle of me trying to get work done, not allowing me to even force-reboot it.

I have to power cycle it at least a dozen times a day now because it gets into a state where apps will no longer launch until I do it.

I'm not really a whiny user, but this is a whole new level of suck I've never seen before. It's a Windows ME grade of garbage release. Very disappointing as I felt iOS 10 was bulletproof and I relied on my phone to have my back as I was traveling and working, and now I'm constantly hoping the next app I switch to doesn't disable it for 10 minutes right in the middle of me doing something important.


Time to treat Apple releases like we used to treat Microsoft releases? (Always wait for the first service pack).


If iOS 11.1 can be considered "the first service pack", then even that sounds iffy. Or at least, what I'm reading suggests that even with that update, my battery life would still be crap should I decide to upgrade.

Though this gets to another problem with Apple's maintenance of iOS: If you don't upgrade to iOS 11, you don't get their fix for krack attacks. Microsoft, on the other hand, did have the common decency to continue issuing security patches for older major releases.


This. When Apple devices reach two generations old, they need to be forcibly removed from your environment, or they will quickly become gaping security holes. For a company that prides itself on its image of protecting users' privacy, it sure is behind the curve on software maintenance.


My family has 4 year old iPhone 5S in service that still receive all security updates.

Our Android devices on the other hand... not so much. Six months of updates seems to be about the max!


I think excalibur meant "when the software version is two versions back", not the hardware.

I suspect the family is still getting security updates because you are running iOS 11 on the 5S. I bought a 5S too back in 2013, it came with iOS 7. If you were still running iOS 7 (or 8, or 9, or probably even 10 now) on the device, you would not be getting updates any more.


Apple makes great hardware but they are falling farther and farther behind Android in software IMO. Modern Android on a good phone is just a smoother, more powerful, and more pleasant experience. I develop iOS apps for a living but I carry a Pixel 2 in my pocket and it's the best phone I've ever had.


Considering that unless you own a Google manufactured phone you have to wait for the latest OS and even then you only get 18-24 months worth of updates.


That's true and it's one of the main reasons I use a Google phone. But it's also true that you don't need an OS-level update to get a lot of the newest features and services on Android. Google has broken out a lot of their services and apps into separate updates so you can get them even if you're not running the latest version of Android.

I don't need an OS update to get the latest Chrome or Gmail or Maps, for example, unlike iOS.


I experienced the power cycle issue too. I narrowed it down to happening when apps update. If you turn off automatic updates for apps, you should not get into a state where you need to restart as often.


My obnoxious solution to this after restoring a backup multiple times: delete all your apps, and reinstall them. This ALMOST fixed it.

It's a pathetic solution, but it worked when nothing else would including "set up as a new phone". The apps had to break, then be deleted and reinstalled a second time, to finally work.

The other issues with 11 remain however.


> Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices

wait, isn't that expected behavior anyway? You're getting on an airplane and turning off all the radios; bluetooth operates via a radio.


Is there an actual bug here? It's much nicer than before in my opinion. It actually remembers whether your Bluetooth radio was On or Off when last in Airplane Mode and that's a new feature of iOS 11 as far as I'm aware. I frequently go in and out of Airplane Mode without dropping Bluetooth. What's the bug?


Right??? I was very confused how this was considered a bug considering every other device in the world works this way.


But how are you going to listen to music on your wireless Airpods during the long flight, given that you showed courage in abandoning your audio cables? Delightful.


You hit the airplane mode button, and then hit the Bluetooth button to re-enable Bluetooth but not other radios.


And then the airplane crashes. (Or so I'm told.)


Only if you also use the calculator.


BT is allowed on flights.


I think the bug is, that Bluetooth is set to ON every morning. I have to deactivate it in order to save battery when I don't use it.


For the iPhone 8, the screen does not dim or turn off at all when any app is open. This has been reported on Apple's support forums and one of the solutions that worked for several devices, including my spouse's device, is - restart the phone.

My first thought was that "iOS is the new Windows where the primary recommended solution to a problem is to restart the device."


I keep losing audio controls on my lock screen - not just navigation, even volume. Alarms have also started making no sound in the morning.

I've just picked up the habit of restarting my phone before I go to bed at night. I am just shocked that so many existing features got broken in odd ways.


I get this too. I thought it was because my phone is older (iphone 6). Since the upgrade my phone has been AWFUL and is beginning to cause more frustration than it's worth.

I also subscribe to Apple Music and it is driving me crazy. Since the upgrade it randomly starts over with my songs in alphabetical order and not on shuffle so even if I'm ok with it I have to touch my phone to shuffle them.

All that worked just fine in before the upgrade. Now if I don't restart the phone frequently it breaks a couple times a week.

My phone is bought and paid for, but when the time comes for a new one if this is still happening I am likely going Android and using google play for music.

I am beyond annoyed with it. I've always used iphones since smart phones came out, but I have nothing against android and if this keeps up I'm gone. At that point I'll keep using Androids until it does something incredibly annoying and causes me to look elsewhere.

Apple is very close to losing a customer for generations of phones to come if they don't figure things out.

Edited to add: also now my song list has random songs grayed out. I haven't taken time to look into it but this was not an issue before I upgraded to 11. The same song will play fine if it naturally gets queued or I search for it, but touch it to play... nope!


I’ve had the opposite problem for years in Apple Music: it’s impossible to turn shuffle _off_. It keeps getting re-enabled randomly, and the UI for finding the setting required a Google search.

Maybe caused by some weird interaction with my car head unit (Nissan/Infiniti) or something because it always reports shuffle as off even when it is on!


To be fair, I'm having a similar problem with my Android. The calendar background service seems to get stuck after a few days and stops showing notifications. I now have a daily reminder to convert all important appointments into Slack reminders because these actually work all the time.


I have the same on the latest ipad pro...


I usually read about the bugs but never experience them. I assume it's because I'm a super light phone user.

This time, using the camera on my SE from the lock screen randomly causes my phone to become un-unlockable and forces me to reset. It's really annoying not knowing which goofy thing my kids do I won't be able to photograph.


Another for the list - the new Podcasts app is terrible

Edit: it's as if they tried to make the interface less efficient than before - it makes it much more difficult to find subscribed to podcasts you haven't listened to in a while


You've gotta go Pocket Casts. I took the leap and never looked back. It's miles better.


The web client which keeps in sync with the phone clients is so nice. I get home, put the phone in my pocket, and start the podcast I was listening to at exactly the same place it was when I got out of the car. And vice versa, of course.

For a one-time fee service, it's pretty amazing!


Totally agree and that one-time fee thing is a lost art!


Funny, I thought the same thing, but I thought "Gotta just be me, maybe I forgot how it used to work" it's like everything I used to do is gone and/or buried. The default behaviors are all totally opposite of what I want.


Unfortunately it has the same download bugs. Often when you press the download button, a podcast is marked again as not downloaded after downloading has completed.

Overcast, on the other hand, works fine.


I've seen something similar - a few podcasts begin to download at once, progress indicators don't move above 0% on any of them, but then you hit play and it's already downloaded


The UX for it is pretty puzzling. I'll give it a couple of months to get used to it, but so far it's non-trivially confusing.


I'm on a phone - maybe the 'double the size of everything' changes work better on an iPad?


I ditched that disgraceful application for downcast after it used my whole data allowance by not respecting a download on WiFi only setting. This was a previous iOS release, but once bitten twice as shy. I will never take another look at podcasts because it already cost me real money.


Anecdotal, but that's never happened to me w/ PocketCasts in any release on any iOS or Android.


The podcast app has always been terrible.


I use the iPhone 6s. It was responsive, and battery would last at least half the day just fine. Right after the upgrade, batter would last for maybe 1 hour, tops, 30 minutes on average. No minor upgrade fixed the problem, and apparently its a widespread one too. I am getting either the 8+ or the X, but I still think this is ridiculous at best.


Half the day was normal to you?! What are you guys doing with your phones, I use some cheap chinesium android and it gives me easy 2 days of battery if not more.


I get substantially better battery life on my iPhones than my Androids, although I've been pretty happy with the Note 8 so far. Reasonably happy with 7+, curious to see what happens w/ the X.


Your battery is probably degraded, and no software update will fix it. Lion batteries just don‘t last forever.

You can get a replacement battery for your phone for €25. If you don’t want to do the replacement yourself, any 3rd party repair shop will replace it in 15 minutes. You can also go to an authorized service provider, but that will cost €100 and take much more time.


Batteries do not degrade all at once right after a software update.


Half a day, while far from ideal, was long enough for my needs. However, as soon as I upgraded, and not a minute earlier, the battery problem manifested. Now, it could be a coincidence and it is indeed just a problem specific to the battery, but its at best suspicious - the timing is. I will replace the batter anyway, and I am getting a new iPhone next week, I just don’t appreciate being “forced” to upgrade -- conveniently when the iPhone X came out, no less.


If your battery only lasted half a day before, it was already a severely degraded battery. The update will put a lot of strain on the battery (iPhone does a lot of re-indexing and other stuff after the upgrade), which might might have caused the battery to deteriorate even more.

And, as I said, you are not forced to upgrade. A battery replacement is cheap and quick and will solve all your problems and your phone will feel like new.

I also have the iPhone 6S, and I've also been having trouble with the battery. I've had to replace it twice. (First time Apple replaced the whole phone because of a manufacturing defect, second time I went to a 3rd party repair shop)

Sure, it would be nice if Apple products lasted forever without service. Unfortunately they don't. But servicing iPhones has become extremely cheap and extremely quick -- as long as you stay away from authorised service providers.


I am not concerned with the replacement costs -- it's just where I live, getting the battery replacement will likely mean that I have to ship it to another city(Athens), or, maybe, find some place in a different city in the island (Crete) who may be able to do it. Its a hassle and an inconvenience for me.

What is odd is that is seems to be related to rendering; sometimes when I scroll on either direction on Tweetbot or on Safari, the iPhone will stall for maybe 500ms and the battery will drop by 20% or so instantly. Other times, I will app-switch to Slack and it will do the same. Reading content in black background/white text on the other hand, doesn't seem to be draining the battery. So I think its safe to assume this is an upgrade related problem. Also, I have disabled spotlight indexing and pretty much everything else I could, and it's also been quite some time since the upgrade for any upgrade tasks to be running to completion still.


I had the stalls as well, and they went away after replacing the battery.

I’m pretty sure that there is no way to fix your phone with software. It’s a hardware problem. Just replace the battery, and it’ll work fine again.

I don’t know where you live in Crete, but typing “iphone repair cityname” in google should quickly get you to a place that can replace your battery in 15min.


>Right after the upgrade, batter would last for maybe 1 hour, tops, 30 minutes on average

What are you doing on your phone for that type of battery life? My phone (iPhone 6 Plus) has definitely been slower, but my battery life seems to be the same post upgrade. My phone is mostly idle throughout the day.


On iPhone 7 Plus and iPad Pro battery was awful for me until I did a totally clean install and manually added back apps. Massive bore but fixed battery problems.


I tried that to no avail. Reset and install, no change whatsoever


My 6 had it's battery life destroyed under standard usage.


Which version are you on now ?

There were definite performance and battery life issues with 11.0 most of which were fixed with 11.1 and improvements are coming as well with 11.2. For me personally it's on par with iOS 10 for battery life.


Same here with an iPhone 7. I am permanently in low power mode and even then I barely make it through the day - and I am hardly using the phone. It is ridiculous.


Replace your battery.


I would have expected someone working at Apple who should be getting paid a high salary and writing software that is used by millions of people to have huge pride in their work. This means testing what they deliver in isolation and on integrated builds. So either apple staff are under too much pressure that quality control has gone out the window or they have the wrong kind of people. For instance are they missing the type of people who are obsessive about detail.


You must have never worked on a project with more than 10 people on it.


I have worked on a project with hundreds of people on it. But if I take the calculator example where you can’t add numbers together properly because of the animation lag, I doubt that more than one or two developers built that. Someone should have had the pride and passion to test that themselves, raise it and fix it. So either the organisation and culture is very bad at apple or the individuals don’t take enough responsibility. Maybe it’s both.


> I doubt that more than one or two developers built that

Indeed, and it no doubt passed all the unit tests and was marked as good to ship.

But I suspect what they were lacking was an aggressive, adversarial QA specialist with the mindset of "how would a user break this in daily use".


That's really surprising considering that we've seen beta releases of iOS for quite a number of years now.

Isn't the point of a beta release to make sure that the OS is battle-tested with users who would use it like they do in real life?

Would have thought it might have covered most of the typical real-world use cases. Especially since it probably has one of the highest number of users/testers of any beta software programs.


> So either apple staff are under too much pressure that quality control has gone out the window

We will never know, but I'm guessing this is the reason.


Also: Safari crashes with force touch click-through fairly often. Lots of notifications seem to flick around faster than I can see them or react. Weird bias towards closing app over switching apps in the app switcher.

It does seem a particularly messy release, perhaps akin to iOS 7. But many things also seem snappier and more useful. Like another commentator, I put it down to teething problems.


Since installing iOS 11 some things that keep happening:

1) I turn off wifi only to notice internet stuff not working later, only to realize wifi has turned itself back on and connected to a random open network.

2) Almost any time I try to update any app(s), all apps freeze and won't function until I force restart my phone.

3) Random freezes and crashes all the time.

4) Much worse battery life on iPhone 7


(1) is a "feature": https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086


Wow, so tapping the wi-fi icon only temporarily disables it, rather than doing what (I'd argue) most people expect, which is disabling it until enabled by the user. Oof.


All valid points.

Personally I find that iOS recently has really fallen behind, the hardware coming from Apple is still best in class, software is terrible. Notifications are abysmal, the UI in places feels pieced together, some of the UI just doesn't make sense, functionality is lacking in a number of areas. That doesn't even start on the bugs.

To be honest the software and the software alone is pushing me more and more to Android as I'm really disliking the lack of traction from Apple on improving iOS.


I feel about the same... they're usually on top of chip design, power efficiency/etc, but quality of the software lately seems really questionable. They have been getting too aggressive with pointless stuff and losing sight of the basics.


I switched from Android to iOS for the first time with the iPhone 8 plus and while the camera is the best camera I've ever owned on a smartphone, I'm pretty disappointed with iOS. I'm probably going to switch back to Android in a couple years. I can't recall a new Android release ever being this buggy for this long.


> I can't recall a new Android release ever being this buggy for this long.

It has been what, 2 months?


My old Samsung camera was significantly better than anything including my 7+. I'll see how the X goes if I ever get it. Note 8 camera is also quite a bit better than the 7+ IMO.


What phones have you owned?


I think that the root cause of all the issues (hardware + software) are that since Steve's death the "less is more" has been replaced by "more, more, more". The first requires a lot of efforts and leadership. The second is easy and typical in the corporate world lead by managers (away from the final customer and the product but obsessed by internal procedures).


My guess would be iOS11 overall 64bit application switch and deprecation of 32bit processors on older devices is making it slow overall.


I would expect the opposite, being able to remove support for 32-bit.


Mail regularly crashed for me whenever I opened it. Deleted all my mail accounts and switched to the GMail app. Madness.


I _still_ don't understand how multiple apps and the associated gestures work on iPad. Is there a support doc or something to which somebody could point me?


Upgrading to iOS 11 has effectively bricked my phone, it’s painfully slow. The thing I find (sadly) amusing is I cannot use the torch feature now. Works roughly 20% of the time. It’s binary, on or off, and it doesn’t work. What the fuck is going on?


Probably for the same reason external monitors on touchbar MacBook Pros are totally screwed up in High Sierra. Quality control has gone to shit again.


Every iOS has been a mess since iOS 7 at least, and the reason seems pretty straight-forward: every year there is an expansion in scope while maintaining a strict 1-year development cycle. This necessarily means that the bugs start to pile up (since the main focus is constantly some set of new features, never fully allowing a true stabilization period), and I suppose its reached a point now where they are evident to even the untrained eye, but the writing was on the wall for quite a bit if you ask me. Just take a look:

1. iOS 7: Major overhaul of the UI means the entire system is going to be in flux (to this day UI doesn't feel as polished as iOS 6, whether you prefer that style or not). Either way, the focus was monopolized by remaking every UI widget. Also, Swift announced.

2. iOS 8: Apple Watch year. Major amount of work getting iOS to run on a third platform (iPhone, iPad, Watch). Surely lots of attention drawn away to get the Watch shipped, plus associated iPhone support for the Watch. This was also the year a new screen size was introduced with iPhone 6 Plus (arguably the downscaling shouldn't have affected mainline iOS stability too much, but just to highlight ever increasing support for different stuff). Also, third party keyboards.

3. iOS 9: Support for the latest gimmick "3D Touch" which required every app to add a bunch of (IMO) useless new undiscoverable affordances as well as long overdue major overhaul of iPad features: multitasking, etc.

4. iOS 10: Entire new class of apps for Messages and associated entire new App Store. Basically a mini-OS in Messages. Also, surely while all this is going on iPhone X is being worked on in the background.

5. iOS 11: Another major UI overhaul with tons of old affordances replaced, replacing Touch ID with Face ID, ANOTHER new screen size added with iPhone X.

iOS 1-3 were great because they did LESS. Its easy to forget that for example Apple used to outsource its mapping to Google. Now Apple needs an entire huge team JUST to have all the data it used to simply get access to. iOS used to also be more elegant because it did LESS -- remember, we couldn't even copy-paste before. These things add up, you can't go from supporting 1 device to 3 classes of devices with at least 4 variations on each and doubling the amount of apps you spit out and maintain without something having to give. And it's not just from a QA side either, the very nature of the phone has gotten more confusing: with every year, we've shoved more and more of the desktop's features into the phone, and as it turns out, there was no magic - if you want to be able to do 100 things, you may very well need 100 new code paths and a 100 overloaded hard-to-learn gestures. Maybe there existed an alternative path to the "dream" of a device as simple to use as iPhone 1 that let you do everything a desktop can, but we certainly won't know anytime soon.

Just think about it, you basically get 6 months of iOS N.0-N.6, then a WWDC where iOS N+1.0 Beta is announced, which of course has to entice people with M "new!" features, and the cycle begins again.


iOS 9: Support for the latest gimmick "3D Touch" which required every app to add a bunch of (IMO) useless new undiscoverable affordances as well as long overdue major overhaul of iPad features: multitasking, etc.

3D touch also adds weight, complexity and cost to the screen, for a feature most users completely ignore. I consider it one of Apple's biggest feature misfires.


I wish Apple followed Google's lead here and detached some of the basic applications from iOS releases, like the calculator, Safari and others. In Google's case, that improved the quality of the Android experience ten-fold, IMHO.


Hitting airplane mode drops connected bluetooth devices, until you reenable it while in airplane mode. It then remembers that you want bluetooth to remain on in airplane mode.


Hasn't been this always the case?

AFAIK airplane mode should kill all radio signals.


This is not new behavior.


My best guess: Some part of the QA team moved to work on High Sierra or other project.

Specially since Sierra/High Sierra got Siri and many iOS features.


> Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices

Huh, doesn't happen to me


Wait, hasn't this always been the case?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4pwv0l/i_finally_f...


That's what I thought, too. Many times under iOS 10 I would accidentally activate Airplane Mode, causing my AirPods to disconnect. This is not a new problem.


Oops, I obviously pasted the wrong link. But, my point stands. This did happen before iOS 11.


This nonsense again. This has been happening for years.

What happened was that Apple switched from Waterfall development to Agile. And what came from this was more regular and frequent releases at the cost of less polished releases. The way it works is Apple releases 11.0 with only P1 issues fixed, then from 11.1 -> 11.6 the focus is on P2 followed by P3 etc. Then a seperate team continues to work on 12.0.

11.1 was just released and 11.2 just went public beta and is another few weeks away. And none of the bugs you have listed are even all that serious.

And Apple had to release 11.0 as it was ready to coincide for iPhone X launch.


I would much prefer to have an iOS update that's ready to go, not one with "only" P1 issues resolved. That sounds like a terrible way to treat your customers. If that's true that they switched to Agile, what advantages did they honestly gain from it aside from swifter releases (if that's even an advantage at all)?

> And none of the bugs you have listed are even all that serious.

If the standard we're now using to critique Apple is now "well these bugs aren't that serious no big deal" the company is in trouble.


It's a new release, not a general decline in quality. This always happens, it's just that iOS updates are infrequent enough that people forget about the day 1 bugs.

You want to be on the cutting edge? This is what you get! I didn't even have to tell my mother not to update, she knew to wait a few months.


No, this is does not always happen. This is why we're here discussing this. Why are so many HN commenters so quick to just flatly ignore the fact that the very reason you're seeing this conversation in the first place is because lots of people agree with the OP, or believe it to be an important discussion? Your comment could be summed up as "Bah, humbug."


We're on the 4th update for this OS, it's almost been 2 months since release, I don't think calling them day 1 bugs is at all fair here.


> You want to be on the cutting edge? This is what you get!

That's what betas are for.




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