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Opinion: Apple’s software bugs may be overplayed, but they do still need faster fixes

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No one will be surprised to hear that I greatly prefer Apple’s platform to those of competitors. I’ve often argued that if you want a single ecosystem where everything Just Works across devices, Apple still has a significant lead, even if other platforms are gaining ground.

But that doesn’t mean I think Apple’s own platform is perfect. There are reliability issues that mean the platform doesn’t always live up to that Just Works ideal, and there are annoyingly persistent bugs which the company doesn’t seem in any hurry to fix.

In a podcast interview on Friday, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi argued that while all software has bugs, the sheer number of users means that complaints are “amplified,” making them appear more prevalent than they are in reality. There may be some truth in this – at least on the iOS side – but I’d argue that Apple allows known bugs to persist through too many platform and app releases …

I’m of course not the first person to suggest this. Walt Mossberg was one of the most high-profile examples, in a recent piece simply entitled Apple’s apps need work.

In the last couple of years […] I’ve noticed a gradual degradation in the quality and reliability of Apple’s core apps, on both the mobile iOS operating system and its Mac OS X platform. It’s almost as if the tech giant has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to these core software products, while it pursues big new dreams, like smartwatches and cars.

With a billion iOS devices now in use, Apple’s SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi has a reasonable case when he argues that the sheer number of users give an exaggerated impression of the problem (hat-tip to Business Insider for highlighting the quote).

Think how integral your iPhone, your iPad, and still, your Mac are to your life. How many hours a day. We see the usage metrics. What this means is, when you have a billion people running phones in every corner of their lives with all these third party apps, with all these countries and all these languages, there are going to be issues, there are always going to be issues, but there are plenty of people who could encounter one, and now it’s amplified.

A subsequent blog post by Alexandra Mintsopoulos made a similar argument, that there’s a kind of echo-chamber effect when tech bloggers all write about similar issues.

If you follow enough people on Tech Twitter and listen to enough podcasts, you will begin to see this small and insular group start to say and believe the same things, which eventually leads to their audience coming to believe it as well.

Mintsopoulos argues that the real metrics are that Apple’s customer satisfaction is at an all-time high, and that the company’s continued commercial success means there can’t be a major issue, else people would be abandoning the platform.

I’m somewhat in agreement with that viewpoint. iTunes aside, I don’t think there’s a major issue with the quality of Apple’s software and systems. I also think that the vast majority of non-tech customers either don’t experience issues or, if they do, think they made a mistake or simply don’t care enough about it to complain. The majority of issues probably have the greatest impact on techier users, who are more demanding and use a far greater number of features.

But, as Mossberg puts it:

I hold Apple to its own, higher, often-proclaimed standard, based on all those “It just works” claims and the oft-repeated contention by Mr. Jobs and his successor, Tim Cook, that Apple is in business to make “great products.”

And “minor” bugs can become extremely irritating if they are persistent, and if Apple repeatedly fails to fix them. Let me give an example.

dock

With multi-monitor setups, the OS X dock randomly moves between them. This bug appears to have been a feature gone awry: if you move the pointer to the center-bottom of any monitor and hold it there for a second or two, the dock is supposed to switch to that monitor. If this worked reliably, and it didn’t happen randomly, it would be a useful feature – but it doesn’t and it does.

Try to use it as designed, and sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it will work one minute and not the next, other times it will work perfectly all day then not the following day. For some people, unchecking Displays have separate spaces in System Preferences > Mission Control will fix it, for others not.

Failure of a design feature to work as advertised is one thing, but unprovoked random jumping is another. At least once a day, the dock will just randomly jump to a different monitor when the pointer is nowhere near the bottom of the screen. That’s irritating.

It does this even when using only a single external monitor plus the built-in one on a MacBook Pro, and it does it even when that external monitor is an Apple Thunderbolt Display. I emphasize that not because I think it could be a hardware issue, but simply to underline that this is a setup where Apple has complete control of both hardware and software – so there is no possibility of a third-party being at fault for sketchy drivers or similar.

This is a bug that was introduced with Mavericks and has persisted not just through minor dot releases, but through Yosemite and into El Capitan. More than two-and-a-half years later, it’s still annoying me on a daily basis.

I can understand that fixing it wouldn’t be right at the top of Apple’s to-do list. Macs are a smaller platform than iOS, and among Mac users only a small minority use multiple monitors. But it should surely be positioned somewhere on a to-do list such that it isn’t allowed to persist for years on end?

mail

Now, I get Federighi’s second point: that once you take all the third-party apps into consideration, there’s almost an infinite number of variables involved, so tracking down bugs can sometimes be extremely tricky. But my counter-argument to this would be: Apple Mail.

This is a piece of Apple software sitting on an Apple platform that has problems even on fresh OS X installs. Not problems affecting just a handful of users, but extremely widespread ones. A quick Google for ‘Apple Mail problems’ generates, at the time of writing, 67,200,000 results. (To be fair, a search for ‘Outlook mail problems’ generates slightly more hits, but that’s not really company in which Apple wants to be seen.)

And the problems have been myriad. New mail that doesn’t get flagged as such. Repeated requests to re-enter passwords. Account information that randomly disappears. Mail delivery that stalls until you take the app offline and online again. The app getting stuck on ‘optimizing your mail database.’ Searches that don’t work. Mail that can’t be deleted. The entire app operating painfully slowly, or freezing altogether.

Now, I fully accept that I’m listing here problems that have occurred in different generations of the app, but – again – if problems are allowed to persist for too long, or an OS X update resolves one issue while introducing another, then eventually a series of individually smaller issues add up a collectively bigger problem. I’m not alone in abandoning Apple Mail altogether, despite my general preference for using Apple software precisely because I want the most stable experience possible.

icloud

And then there’s iCloud. Again, it’s absolutely reasonable for Apple to talk about the sheer scale of the service, and how occasional downtime is to be expected for at least some of those users. Apple says that 782 million people use iCloud, and – to illustrate the workload involved – tells us that the servers process a mind-boggling 200,000 iMessages per second.

That’s an almost unimaginable amount of data, and to expect all iCloud services to work perfectly all of the time over every connection type is clearly unrealistic. All the same, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to complain when sometimes a Note that has existed for years is suddenly and persistently unavailable on one of my devices, and that on numerous occasions, editing a note that is available will duplicate, rather than edit, the note on another device.

So sure, problems will occur from time to time, but Apple needs to do more to address the persistent and long-standing ones.

And here’s one small thing Apple could do to alleviate the frustration when things do go wrong: tell us about it! Almost every single time I’ve experienced an issue with an iCloud service and visited Apple’s system status page, it’s been full of green lights. Everything fine here, move along, nothing to see, the computer is your friend. That is often the case even hours after Twitter is full of people reporting the same problem.

If Apple were to promptly and reliably update its status page, that would achieve two things. First, it would mean customers could avoid wasting time trying to diagnose a problem locally when the fault is with Apple’s servers. Second, it reduces frustration levels simply to see that Apple is aware of a problem, and is working on a fix.

Screen Shot 2016-02-15 at 14.44.11

So yes, I accept the various points that have been made by Apple and others. The scale of the problem has been exaggerated. Apple’s software development is not in crisis.

But the company is allowing bugs that affect sizeable numbers of people to go unfixed for too long, and even issues which affect only relatively small numbers of customers should not be allowed to persist for years. It is too often failing to deliver on its number one selling point: integrated hardware, software and services that Just Work. And that’s a problem the company needs to fix.

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Comments

  1. Felipe Rodrigues Sousa - 8 years ago

    So much so that I’ve now abandoned Mail all together and I’m using outlook both on Mac and iPhone.

    • Lawrence Krupp - 8 years ago

      But I use Mail exclusively with absolutely no issues to report. I therefore cancel out your opinion. And so it goes. Malcontents tend to scream and holler the loudest while satisfied users just go about their business and say nothing. Like any troubleshooting site out there bugs and glitches are amplified by the minority into show stopping events. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        Yeah, I’m a mail user and I have no need or desire to look elsewhere. i used to use Outlook when I was forced to back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and by using Outlook, it helped develop a phobia I have about most Microsoft software. I can really only use Microsoft app and that’s Excel. That’s it for me. That’s all I use that Microsoft has their name on, other than Silverlight, which is just an extension. Other than that, I’m Microsoft FREE!!!!!!!! I’m in the process of getting rid of Gmail, but since it’s tied to YouTube, that might take me a while.

      • Daniel Beehn - 8 years ago

        Do you really cancel it out, though? Obviously, there are issues with the software, otherwise he wouldn’t have voiced his displeasure like he did.

        More than likely, your use case is different, and as such, you don’t encounter the same issues. That doesn’t mean the software is perfect.

      • chris9771 - 8 years ago

        It’s not an opinion if he states he personally had problems and he is migrated to Outlook, that is indeed a fact for him. I have the same situation as you in that I have no mail issues to report whatsoever.

      • Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 8 years ago

        You get bit by a vicious dog. I don’t. Ergo there is no dog?

        Bugs aren’t opinions, they are code fact.

    • PMZanetti - 8 years ago

      I use Outlook on the Mac because Mail.app is missing some Exchange features, not because it has bugs. Outlook on iOS is so terrible though, I couldn’t imagine using it over Mail.

    • cdm283813 - 8 years ago

      I hate Mail as well. I use Spark and I actually find it better than gmail on Android also. It really allows me to keep my mailbox clean.

  2. PMZanetti - 8 years ago

    As Apple introduces new features, they introduce new bugs. Such is life in software. Idiotic comments like those from Mossberg are simply inappropriate and lack the basic understanding of this fact. They haven’t taken their eye off the ball with their core apps. They have introduced new features which naturally bring new bugs. That is how it works in the real world.

    And this summary judgement: “But the company is allowing bugs that affect sizeable numbers of people to go unfixed for too long, and even issues which affect only relatively small numbers of customers should not be allowed to persist for years. It is too often failing to deliver on its number one selling point: integrated hardware, software and services that Just Work. And that’s a problem the company needs to fix.”

    …is your opinion, and not a very apt one.

    The correct summary judgement is this: We have seen more bugs in Apple software in recent years, as the ever growing list of new features and capability outpaces even their own ability to fix every bug before release. Fortunately, Apple is making conscious decisions about how to handle this reality, and steadily fixes bugs in prompt maintenance releases.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

      It is indeed my opinion, as per the heading of the piece. :-) Your point that ‘more features = more bugs’ is, of course, perfectly fair – but that does not excuse bugs in existing features that have been allowed to persist through successive generations of operating systems and apps.

    • Daniel Beehn - 8 years ago

      And the fact that you have your head so far up Apple’s behind and can’t see the forest from the trees is idiotic, as well.

      Granted, more features does equal more bugs, but we’re talking about bugs that have existed for a while, and still aren’t fixed through multiple software releases. Basically, don’t add new features if you can’t handle fixing the ones you’ve had.

      • PMZanetti - 8 years ago

        I can assure you that “don’t add new features if you can’t handle fixing the ones you’ve had” wouldn’t fly in any software company operating today. Does it frustrate users when bugs sometimes don’t get fixed, or take a long time to get addressed? It can, yes. But those users are not privy to discussions that lead to those decisions and priorities, and really are not in any position to comment.
        I know everyone thinks they are entitled to an opinion, but whether or not your opinion is an informed one, is another matter.

      • Daniel Beehn - 8 years ago

        @PMZanetti To me, though, that shows what Apple really cares about–the investors–and not their customers, as they claim. If they really want all their customers to be happy, they’d be wise to have either a major update to their software (a la Snow Leopard) or point-release that did nothing but squash bugs. They shouldn’t worry about the investors–Apple has more than enough money in the bank to weather a storm.

      • PMZanetti - 8 years ago

        @Daniel That is nothing but a lack of understanding on your part about software development. You equate my use of the word “priorities” with some ridiculous association with shareholders. By priorities, I mean development priorities…the bugs that matter most, the bugs that really need to be fixed first, and those that may NEVER need to be fixed, because fixing them would cause other even nastier bugs.

      • mrobertson21 - 8 years ago

        @PMZanetti you aren’t saying anything revelatory, though you obviously think that you are. that corporations of any kind must engage in massive internal and external dialogue to make even the smallest move is pretty much common knowledge. I’m sure that the author of this post understands that.

    • tissot11 - 8 years ago

      I don’t agree with your opinion. A company that demands a higher premium should make its customer happy by both releasing new features and most importantly making these features work properly aka fixing the bugs. And why they insist on releasing a new OS X every year when they can’t fix bugs in the current version of OS X? And do you have any evidence to back up your claim “Fortunately, Apple is making conscious decisions about how to handle this reality, and steadily fixes bugs in prompt maintenance releases.”? You just seem to be an arrogant Apple fanboy who thinks his opinion is an informed one!

      • PMZanetti - 8 years ago

        Again, you know nothing about how actual software development works, and therefor your opinion of “I think they should just fix all the bugs” is bunch of nonsense. Yet you call me arrogant for explaining to you that its not just as simple as “get your shit together”. The irony!

      • tissot11 - 8 years ago

        I think you should get “your shit together”. And don’t be an expert on teaching about the software development. Only lazy software developers justify having bugs in the software for years.

      • @PMZanetti I think your response is bit dishonest, as nobody said “they should fix ALL the bugs” (just use Cmd+F). However many ppl say they should move focus bit more towards fixing existing, especially long-standing bugs. Eg. I have to struggle with some really fatal to me regressions in 10.11, and to me there is no excuse for breaking some well known OS X feature in major release, then not fixing such regression by subsequent point releases. On other hand as a developer I have no choice but to use new OS X when working with Xcode.

        So I am talking here about breaking existing core features, and so called “conscious decisions” (you call it) to not care about that and instead spending their time on some nonsense stupid, but marketable new features rather than fixing the bugs. You think this is OK? You think this is how actual software development works? Maybe in your company, but fortunately not in mine, because I don’t agree on that. Maybe Apple’s arrogance is giving more profit, but I choose to be less arrogant and more honest to the users, even for less profit.

        I agree with @tissot11 that Apple pretending that they produce premium quality stuff is just pompous rubbish. The irony is new OS X beta releases labeled with mysterious “stability fixes and improvements”, but none of many bugs I reported to Apple (then closed as duplicates) are fixed. Use of such label however does not make OS X more stable anyhow, unless they’ve really fixed something.

      • PMZanetti - 8 years ago

        @nanoant It’s always phrases like “To me, there is no excuse.” Well, exactly. TO YOU, there is no excuse. To you. To the actual software developers and projects managers, there are lots of reasons and trade offs and decisions that you wouldn’t understand.

  3. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

    http://www.apple.com/feedback Preaching to the choir isn’t going to help fix specific bugs that only affects a VERY small portion of the user community. Maybe that’s why the delay in the bugs you are complaining about.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

      Yep, I don’t expect it to be top of the list, as I say, but 2.5 years is a very long delay …

      • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

        Send in your issue with the feedback site or with those developer/public beta programs. I kid you not, I submitted a bug I was having with an older beta and they actually replied, which was a few hours later, but they had released a new public beta that fixed the bug. but they did respond and luckily for me, they fixed the issue immediately.

        But seriously, submit through their feedback sites or whatever channel they have for the Developers/Publc Betas. They do read them and they do fix stuff. The more people complain about something, the higher they prioritize it. It certainly won’t hurt to submit.

      • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

        I do indeed submit bug reports; some get addressed, some don’t. But I completely agree with you that we should all do it.

  4. iSRS - 8 years ago

    One of the interesting things I found in the interview was this. When talking why things like Bluetooth Keyboard Support was missing from the Apple TV 4 at launch, the response was something to the tune of “We wanted it to be there. But we have limited time and resources at any given time. When we looked at the overall usage of a Bluetooth keyboard from the analytics data sent to us. It is generally a low percentage of users that use this functionality. What may surprise is, that it goes to almost zero during WWDC. What we take of this is that a large portion of the people who use this functionality are the tech industry writers, developers, etc.”

    In other words, they knew they would get to it, but that it wasn’t the “killer functionality” that the tech blogs would have you believe. And, funny enough, it was an issue for less than 8 weeks.

  5. I encounter tons of simple and very annoying bugs across OSX since last major 3 releases and still not fixed. Some of them were reported to bugreporter.apple.com but are either still “Open” or “Duplicate (Open)” in their system.

  6. DAVID - 8 years ago

    I don’t have a problem with people saying that Apple should fix bugs, especially bugs that have persisted for a while (though let’s be careful — it’s sometimes hard to tell how difficult a bug is to fix. The combination of a minor bug with a complex fix can often lead to lengthy delays). It’s the insistence that Apple’s gotten _worse_ at it. Apple’s always had bugs and the “Just Works” has always been more theoretical than actual. iTunes 2 (!) munched data on installation; System 7 was buggy as heck; and so on.

    It is too often failing to deliver on its number one selling point

    And that’s *always* been the case. There was no magic golden age when everything worked.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

      Yes, bugs have always existed, for sure.

    • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 8 years ago

      I had one, what I thought was a bug, and it turned out to be something that conflicted with some other software that was running. I didn’t think to check to see if other code was interfering, but once I did, I could figure out where to go from there. Yeah, iTunes is in badly need of an Overhaul. I think they just need to get rid of Eddy Cue. I’m not impressed with him at all, he seems more like a talker and more impressed with himself and promoting himself. As much as I don’t like iTunes to manage a rather large catalog of various formats MP3, AAC, AIFF 16 and 24 bit, as well as some DSD files. I hate to say it, a lot better than the other choices. At least from what I’ve seen. I tried Media Center from JRiver. It’s just code that needs to also be re-written but they have to get rid of their UI staff, which extends back to Microsoft since Media Center is just a port from the Windows version. I hate it when companies are too cheap to write code for a different platform and they do the lazy port job, especially when they charge a lot of money for their software.

      • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

        Yes, indeed, software conflicts can be a nightmare to resolve. My Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner stopped working one day, tried all kinds of things to sort it – reinstalling software, drivers, etc – and it finally turned out to be a QuickTime conflict between the scanner software and some wireless cam software that only occurred when QT was updated.

    • PMZanetti - 8 years ago

      David, you’re preaching to bunch of entitled brats that think their $2.99 a month they pay for iCloud demands Apple produce the first bug-free software in history.

  7. Daniel Beehn - 8 years ago

    Amen. The biggest reason why I switched away from iPhone so many years ago was because for a company that prides itself on everything “just working”, Apple’s software quality is terrible–especially iCloud. I had problems with iCloud randomly deleting some of my iWork files, iMessages not sending and receiving correctly, and so on. Not to mention having to deal with all of the downtime that iCloud suffers from all the time.

    Ever since switching to Android and Google’s cloud services, I haven’t had to deal with any of that. All my files are fine, and while Google does suffer the occasional downtime, it doesn’t happen anywhere near as often with iCloud. It boggles my mind as to why, if Google doesn’t have these problems, why Apple has to.

    And on another note–they really need to address the big elephant in the room, iTunes. There’s no reason why, if I want to add a song or a ringtone from my computer to my phone, that it has to be synced through a specific iTunes profile. I had a coworker the other day that needed to add a song from her work computer to her phone, but couldn’t do it because she normally syncs with her Mac at home, and had she tried it, she probably would have wiped everything off of her phone. Meanwhile with my Android, I can just hook it up to any computer and drag the files over to the Music folder. So simple!

    • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

      I have ranted at length about iTunes … http://9to5mac.com/2015/07/28/opinion-itunes-nuke-from-orbit/

    • Douglas Brace - 8 years ago

      iTunes and syncing is my biggest headache when consulting with individuals for my technology side work, especially if someone doesn’t have a backup and their SSD or HDD crashes or experiences a problem. Users should be able to sync (either manually or automatically or with specialized settings) or reverse-sync to any authorized iTunes library (whether new or old) on any computer without fear of wiping out the mobile devices contents.

  8. rogifan - 8 years ago

    Eddy Cue needs go. Most of Apple’s software problems fall under his org, iTunes need to be completely blown up. Cook needs to hire someone to run iCloud that actually knows something about the cloud. Poach someone from Microsoft, Google or Amazon.

  9. Joan Bou - 8 years ago

    Workaround to Mail.app issues:
    1.- Enter to this URL
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/
    2.- Download and Install Mozilla Thunderbird.
    3.- Import your mail
    4.- Done!

  10. olivertwist78 - 8 years ago

    Another bug worth noting is the inability to forcibly eject the “invisible” optical disc, especially iMac and MacBook without pinhole ejection mechanism. Superdrive isn’t one of the most reliable features in iMac and MacBook. I cannot tell you how many I have to put up with this “invisible” optical disc in the past. If the optical disc icon is not visible in the Finder, Desktop, or Disc Utility, pressing the Eject button or typing a line command in Terminal, like drutil eject, would not work. Not even this procedure from Apple Support worked: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT2285

    The “Hail Mary Pass” involved shutting down the iMac and MacBook with a button pressed down on the mouse during the booting up. Really disruptive! To this day, I never understood why Apple has not bothered to develop a better procedure that does not involve rebooting and holding down the mouse button. Not even an explanation why pinhole mechanism was eliminated in the subsequent iMac and MacBook with Superdrive.

    I decided to buy the external optical disc burner that has mechanical ejection button. Apple owes me money for this…

  11. Apple software is probably the only piece of software remaining that ‘JUST WORKS’ and doesn’t get lost in all the new features that you’ll never even use hype , I hope they don’t kill it

  12. k m (@nyctenor) - 8 years ago

    This goes way beyond just software ‘bugs’. It also has to do with Apple’s constantly removing features, which used to work well in our operating systems. I had the same issues with Mail freezing and not showing up in the ‘reading panel’. With the ‘help’ of a tech support rep from Apple, they gave me instructions which DELETED all my “saved on my computer” folders entirely, over 7 years of emails that I had saved in various folders. I am still trying to restore them via backups.
    When i upgraded to Yosemite, and Apple Music came along, which I never enrolled in, IT TOOK THE MUSIC TRACKS I ripped from my CD collection (each track in order, for each CD/Album) and SCRAMBLED all the tracks, placing them in some incomprehensible order strewn among folders it created for it’s own purpose. This, in effect, rendered my music unusable for any other operating system. I had learned, fortunately from my previous experiences with Apple to make multiple backups, thank goodness). Ultimately, I moved everything to a Windows 10 computer, and am using that flawlessly. My music folders and tracks remain untouched, in the order which i created. Apple just does ANYTHING it wants to with your computer, takes away features that you used with upgrades, and now with it’s new ‘look’ makes most of the screen unreadable to people with eyes over 50+.

  13. Start here:

    Mail incorrectly reports new mail. Mail incorrectly reports read and unread messages.

    Logic Pro no longer has a keyboard shortcut to audio preferences, nor does it allow you to make one or place one on the sidebar.

    Logic Pro no longer has a command to repeat regions a specific amount of times.

    Final Cut Pro hides common tasks under new labels. Masking, matting and tracking mattes have disappeared even after how many updates.

    Safari cannot handle Flash Plugin effectively. Safari chokes on javascripts it doesn’t understand.

    Pages is a travesty. It dopiest support features it had 5 years ago.

    I could go on… but that’s enough for now.

    All of the above mentioned are easily repeatable on different machines.

  14. Here’s a few more.

    Back to My Mac fails to connect reliably. (Every other VNC does fine including shareware).

    Oh, iCloud sucks top to bottom and is crazy expensive for online storage. Considering that Amazon just gave me unlimited storage for the year for $10.

    iOS is no replacement for Mac OS if you can’t have a credible way to look at the file system.

  15. Jimmy Hauser - 8 years ago

    I can’t fathom why people use Macs. OS X does everything so backwards, I will never get used to it. And I tried. Three times, with three different Macs. And all three times I wound spending all my time in bootcamp.

    • Jimmy Hauser - 8 years ago

      BTW, the one thing I really like is the iOS call forwarding. It’s still the only reason I keep using an ipad rather than a windows or android tablet. I am always on my ipad and if I get a phone call, I don’t have to fumble around for my phone.

    • paulywalnuts23 - 8 years ago

      How is everything so backwards? Sure the buttons are on the other side of windows and scrolling has been inverted, which you can change back. However, all the basic computer functions are the same. When training people on the Mac who have come from a Windows background the biggest thing I find I need to focus on is the location of things and explaining what correlates to what between the Mac and PC for example, Control Panel is Systems Preferences.

      • paulywalnuts23 - 8 years ago

        And when I as locations I mean where is the Applications and Documents folder and such.

  16. taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

    I haven’t had much problems with bugs, to me the problem is the core apps for OS X and iOS are lagging behind and. It as good as they used to be. Apple needs to reorganize its software teams to focus more on each platform and the core apps. iTunes and Safari used to get feature updates through the year on OS X and now just get updated with the yearly version of OS X minus bug updates.

    Apple needs to fix work conditions like high work hours, low pay and the way directors treat the employees. Hopefully this will be addressed with the new campus. Apple is loosing quality work to other Valley tech companies because of those issues. The software coming out of Apple is. Or as good as it has been in the past and devices like the Apple TV should never been released with its software such in flux after release. It’s more of a beta project then the Apple Watch

    As far as bugs the feedback app should be part of iOS and OS X for everyone. I have had replies from Apple on most bugs I have reported. With the diagnostics that are sent when you report a bug it allows Apple to see what is causing it instead of bugs reported in the support forums.

    Ben I know you have written about iTunes failings before, but plenty of the core apps need attention, reworked or just frequent updates. Since its beta Photos has. Or received a major update. Apple used to release updates to OS X apps frequently and not just with the yearly OS X update. I think Mossberg is right that the core apps need more focus and a much bigger issue then bugs. The bugs have a easy solution put a feedback app on all devices for the public not just testers. Thee feedback app is a very good app for reporting bugs.

    • taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

      Things like Apple having to pull the iOS 8.0.1 releases shortly after release because it disabling Touch ID and celuar connection should never happen.

      Quality control needs to be addressed along with focus on each individual app and service. Apple shouldn’t have to switch engineers from iOS to finish OS X or pull OS X engineers to finish software for Apple Watch.

      I think the biggest issue is Apple needs to hire more top notch designers and focus on software for all its apps and focus on the OS for each device. We need a padOS or a yearly iPad specific iOS update once a year in the spring separate from the iPhone and api update we see at WWDC every year.

      I hope the new campus serves as a platform to reorganize the teams and get the quality of software and service we should have from Apple.

  17. My 5cts… My general issue with Apple (mainly OS X) software quality is that somehow after Snow Leopard Apple has lost some of the basics of user interface design. It feels like form is winning over function & clarity… i.e. no more colored sidebar in Finder, iTunes clarity gone, AddressBook with checkboxes instead of the clear 3 column overview -which is ‘kinda’ back now, Finder columns which keep on resizing, no folders on top in normal lists, in Mail the ability to create new folders is hidden, … All in all with a UX tweak version Apple could counter many, many of these issues… El Capitan corrected a lot of things mainly in the background, it’s time for a new Snow Leopard version of El Capitan with focus on the user interface.

  18. pdixon1986 - 8 years ago

    going back a few years i would say the “it just works” comment had more stable grounds…

    Back then of course Apple actually had a tighter grip on things – either you did it their way or not… gradually in recent years they have moved away from that and are saying “well, ok… if you want it we will try to give you it”… so gradually more and more has been added that many in the old Apple Eco system would say isn’t needed.
    Apple are trying to please the masses, and entice android users — you can’t please everyone, as soon as you try to you end up creating problems…

    Certainly over the years the quality of products has gone down, they often seem unfinished, software still feels in late beta testing, and apple doesnt seem to “just work” anymore…

    Yes it is great to have options – but if other people are opting for other software because of bugs and missing key features or poor performance, then someone isnt doing a good job — have options, but people should be opting for other software because of personal preference…for example someone who is used to windows and outlook may wish to continue using outlook.

    Last year i was very disappointed by Apple — this year i am due for a phone upgrade, but i am already considering other options… the iphone for me has become old and boring and it doesnt excite me anymore – plus, I live in japan and it doesnt seem we will be getting apple pay anytime soon considering the tech used is from here and has been used for over a decade :-(

  19. Mike Sullivan - 8 years ago

    I changed from Windows to a Mac about two years and I do prefer OS X to Windows for more intuitive use and stability. Yeosomite was buggy for sure, but has mostly come right with El Capitain. An ongoing annoying bug for me is Airdrop. It has always been unreliable to the extent of not really qualifying as a feature. Currently my iOS devices can drop to my iMac, but my iMac can’t even find my iOS devices, and the help desk can not resolve it, so I have given up on it as a feature. I think that type of unresolved bug in a new feature indicates a drop in quality control that needs to be rectified. If it’s not going to work, it shouldn’t be promoted as a new feature. I think expecting no bugs is over aspirational, but do think standards have slipped too far and need to be resolved at the sacrifice of another 500 emoji……..

  20. jramskovk (@jramskovk) - 8 years ago

    I’m generally a big fan of Apple’s hardware and own both an iPhone, iPad and rMBP, but I do think Apple needs more focus on their software efforts. Plenty of relevant things are mentioned here and I would like to argue that it’s not just bugs, it’s also missing features and stuff that Apple with it’s premium pricing and “it just works” motto that gives me high expectations about their products. These expectations haven’t always been met. A problem is that Apple doesn’t really have any serious competition. Google really can’t provide the same level of integration. Microsoft can, but they failed to join the smartphone revolution in time and simply aren’t relevant there currently and it’s not until recently that we’ve seen Windows laptops that rivals the Macbooks.

    Various stuff I would like to add to that list:
    1) Remember discoveryd? It took them about half a year before they decided to drop it. When so many people have issues, you drop everything and provide a fix ASAP, Apple didn’t.
    2) iCloud just doesn’t seem to be stable enough. I can’t find any uptime statistics and it would also be difficult to make them, especially for thirdparties, but I see “iCloud is down” articles way more often than I see articles about anything form Google being down.
    3a) iMessage is a mess. I have disabled it because it’s too much of a hassle. It’s a service they have provided for years and it’s still a mess. When I had it enabled, I regularly experienced that it failed to send a message or thought a person was using iMessage, but wasn’t. Sometimes I could choose “send as SMS/MMS”, but more often than not, that option simply wasn’t available. Another issue was that I regularly could send text, but images was a no go. I haven’t had any of these issues since disabling iMessage. I didn’t want to disable iMessage, because I quite liked being able to use my rMBP to reply to messages.
    3b) iMessage issue: A lot of people use Android phones, but have an iPad. When I had iMessage enabled and sending a message to my brother, I sometimes wondered why he didn’t reply. It ended up being because I sent an iMessage to his iPad, instead of a SMS to his Android phone. Furthermore…
    3c) Even though I have iMessage disabled, I experience iMessage getting enabled again when upgrading to a new IOS release. That’s quite annoying.

  21. tissot11 - 8 years ago

    Really a nice article! I’m also a long time Mac users and it’s getting really annoying that the bugs in OS X have not been fixed for years. I have some bugs myself reported and Apple engineers collected data twice from my Mac but it has been a year and nothing has been fixed. Except the acknowledgement that they are aware of the issue and it will be fixed sometime. Despite the fact the betas are seeded on a weekly basis and for months, the realise notes of point updates only mention one or two issues being fixed. It clearly means that the Apple software team is incapable now of fixing them. All these people who think they know better and have informed opinion and are defending Craig’s opinion suggesting that it’s a PR problem are nothing more than just ignoramus Apple fanboys.

  22. TiM (@timnphilly) - 8 years ago

    I don’t mean to come off as an Apple apologist, but I give Apple big kudos for adding so many new features in its platforms in such a quick, dramatic fashion within the past couple years. I can deal with a few buggy quibbles, as I enjoy all the power that Apple has added into its operating systems.

  23. ciaphuas - 8 years ago

    Why does Apple get a pass for their bugs, when the competitors don’t? I thought the premium price I am paying for Apple products for them to Just Work. Sounds like Apple just has great marketing selling the same stuff as everyone else while at the same time charging a ridiculous premium.

  24. Apple Music is still bizarre and baffling. It avoids Apple’s traditional ease-of-use, and it also lacks clever features from the old Beats Music.

    iTunes is also still a mess.

  25. Peter (@airingcupboard) - 8 years ago

    I’ve used a Mac since 2004 and I have to say I’ve never been so unimpressed by either Apple’s software or hardware. OSX found its market on stability and ease of use. The core apps were well designed and not just easy to use but also fun to use – they encouraged new use cases and exploration. The shift seems to be from customer to company strategy. Apps now suffer from an ideology of minimalism and are as interesting as watching paint dry. iTunes is truly a bizarre confection – a sort of buggy OS within OSX. Why does syncing have to happen in a music app? Why can’t it be baked into the OS? Why are videos handled there? Why is my iPhone or Device at the top of a long list instead of being separate from it so that managing music is easier? Why can’t the app work a asynchronously? Why does it hang when I perform a simple search? Why is it so joyless? I now play music on a piece of networked Hifi.

    Without going into the mishmash OSX has become (and yes I have provided feedback to Apple), the lack of practical workhorse MacBook Pros – with ports and expandability really make me question the value of Mac portables and as they are becoming so similar – where is the differentiation that warrants the ‘pro’ title? Pretty rather than practical isn’t my vision on computing.

  26. betamaxbanditiii - 8 years ago

    I’ve just been listing repeatable bugs for myself – I’ve got so used to them appearing and I was wasting too much time unsuccessfully trying to fix them. I’m up to 28 at the moment, and that’s just on iOS (across an iPhone and iPad). For example, apps still get stuck updating, even though that was supposed to be fixed in the last point update. Mail breaks and crashes on a regular basis (frequent select-all cmd-c is a necessity when writing longer emails), and attachments only work sometimes. The define word feature sometimes doesn’t work (in apps where it normally works). Airdrop is patchy and I’ve given up on Airplay. Handoff opens a Safari page but nothing loads. Overnight software update has never worked. It does seem to be getting worse, and the increase in features seems to have occured at the expense of robustness.

  27. I’ve been using Macs near exclusively for about 10 years now, but if you still buy into the mantra of It Just Works then you’ve drunk the kool aid or you’re insane.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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