Apple Has A Serious Problem With Software Quality

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ZDNet just realized Apple has a serious problem with software quality. ;)

It looks like Apple has a serious problem when it comes to software quality, and it is something that the company needs to address if it wants to avoid a backlash. I agree with writer and developer Marco Arment when he says "software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that I'm deeply concerned for its future."
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Heh. I realized this as soon as I "upgraded" my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0. Literally made the phone unusable.

and iTunes will always be garbage.
 
They are definitely suffering from the Microsoft approach ... as the number of devices and configurations they are supporting has increased their ability to test the wide range of functions and performance impacts has been affected ... they need to automate more tests and do a better job of unit testing ... or reduce the number of products they are permitting to have upgraded (like Jobs originally proposed and they never implemented)
 
I read a similar article about a week ago. I think it highlights a bigger problem: that mainstream news outlets are loathe to criticize Apple products in general. Many of these software issues have been festering for years, and are very large ones that wouldn't escape notice. It shows the power of mindset, particularly for expensive gadgets largely used by non-technical people. "It's the best because I have one."
 
As an avid computer enthusiast for over 15 years I still cannot figure out the ins and outs of iTunes. Wife used to have an iPod, forget that noise. It takes a CS degree to unregister an iPod, I threw one out that was given to me due to frustration. I avoid the company.
 
Who cares about software. LOOK AT HOW THIN IT IS.
 
Customers are catching on that they're just increasing the OS version number while stripping out features for older models so you're not gaining anything but, on the other hand, intentionally slowing down older devices to force people to upgrade.
 
pxc said:
I read a similar article about a week ago. I think it highlights a bigger problem: that mainstream news outlets are loathe to criticize Apple products in general. Many of these software issues have been festering for years, and are very large ones that wouldn't escape notice. It shows the power of mindset, particularly for expensive gadgets largely used by non-technical people. "It's the best because I have one."
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Media has been trained by Apple not to report anything negative otherwise they get their privileges revoked like Computer Bild for confirming the bend issue:

http://www.computerbild.de/artikel/cb-News-Handy-Apple-boycotts-COMPUTER-BILD-An-open-letter-to-Tim-Cook-10953399.html
 
iTunes is the devil and has been since day 1, but it was an outlier. While Apple's software has always been sparse on options and customization, it used to have polish.
That seems to have really fallen off in the last 3 years. I was really happy with my iPhone and the random iMac I have at work for publishing stuff. Now I hate both and jumped ship to Android and only use the iMac when I absolutely have to.
 
pxc said:
I read a similar article about a week ago. I think it highlights a bigger problem: that mainstream news outlets are loathe to criticize Apple products in general. Many of these software issues have been festering for years, and are very large ones that wouldn't escape notice. It shows the power of mindset, particularly for expensive gadgets largely used by non-technical people. "It's the best because I have one."
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I agree. Apple has had any many quality problems as anyone else. There's nothing magic about them, regardless of what some seem to believe.
 
Apple at its core (no pun intended) is a hardware company. Their software is all about driving their hardware and while obviously critical, their software is secondary.
 
"The launch event here marked yet another milestone, noted Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive officer: "Now I'm going to do something I've never done before--I'm going to give you a demo on a PC. Jobs said as he walked the audience through a demonstration. "This is not some baby version--it's the whole thing," he said, noting that the two versions have all the same functions. "It's probably the best Windows app ever written."

One of the greatest lies ever told. Even for Jobs, a consummate liar, that was a stretch.
 
Apple is just eying the money they are making. They know they got a devoted crowd that will buy their crap no matter how bad the software they put on it is. Security wise, Apple's software is a ticking time bomb before it goes, look at the whole celeb photo leak. Apple knew of the issue 6 months before the leak happened, did nothing. I wouldn't even think about storing 1 piece of info on apple servers ever.
 
A "serious" problem? No, not really, inasmuch as Apple users have complained about software quality all along, just like Windows users. The rose tinted nostalgia glasses like to tell us that there were no software quality issues during the Steve Jobs era and that Apple is now neglecting software quality, but that's just not true. Apple's software quality is still elite tier, but they definitely have QA issues to work out.
 
The sad thing is they seem to have decent ideas, and they seem like they could execute it awesomely, but then it comes out of the gate all 1.0 goofy.

I've got a problem at work now with Yosemite (we're a Mac shop), I can't even freakin' do the initial setup on the network, for whatever reason if it's on the network it hangs just before the diagnostics checkbox page. The whole Mac just beach balls. This causes all kinds of delays in deployment and has ZERO reason to happen.

Ugh.
 
I do agree to an extent that some of the Apple software is incredibly bad. For example iPhotos and iCloud are really bad compared to solutions put out by their competitors (no easy sharing). Secondly, the Safari browser isn't all that good, you can't click a button for example to request a desktop site like you can in Chrome and other browsers. It also doesn't give you access to configuration options on the fly unless you go to the general settings - things that just make their software a pain to use.
 
locsplitter said:
Heh. I realized this as soon as I "upgraded" my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0. Literally made the phone unusable. and iTunes will always be garbage.
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I had the exact same experience, as did millions of other iphone users. iOS 4 simply didn't work with earlier phones, it was rushed to be issued with the iphone 4. I had purchased an iphone 3gs because I didn't want another tech thing to fiddle with, I just wanted it to work. Then it took a dump, and the newest version of itunes screwed up my computer as well. Of course all I had to do was reformat and reinstall everything, and go back to the previous iOS and everything worked again. And turn of ALL automatic updating. But paying customers shouldn't be used as beta testers.
 
Terpfen said:
A "serious" problem? No, not really, inasmuch as Apple users have complained about software quality all along, just like Windows users. The rose tinted nostalgia glasses like to tell us that there were no software quality issues during the Steve Jobs era and that Apple is now neglecting software quality, but that's just not true. Apple's software quality is still elite tier, but they definitely have QA issues to work out.
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Fair enough but Apple marketing helped to perpetuate "rose tinted nostalgia" with marketing like the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign. That campaign did end over 5 years ago and even I admit that some of the ads were very good and reasonably correct. But some were horribly distorted. No viruses on the Mac. True enough. The one about Macs being all about the fun stuff, very misleading.
 
heatlesssun said:
Fair enough but Apple marketing helped to perpetuate "rose tinted nostalgia" with marketing like the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign. That campaign did end over 5 years ago and even I admit that some of the ads were very good and reasonably correct. But some were horribly distorted. No viruses on the Mac. True enough. The one about Macs being all about the fun stuff, very misleading.
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The one about macs not getting virus's was a total lie. One the biggest lies of all. It was only like 1-2 years ago Apple removed that outright lie claim from their website.
 
Arbit3r said:
The one about macs not getting virus's was a total lie. One the biggest lies of all. It was only like 1-2 years ago Apple removed that outright lie claim from their website.
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Actually it is still correct if you would look up the definition of a virus. Macs CAN get MALWARE (Think trojans or the like), but that's not a virus.
 
Domingo said:
iTunes is the devil and has been since day 1, but it was an outlier. /QUOTE]

Due to all the problems I've had with office systems due to iTunes, I consider it malware. It's one of the 1st things I uninstall if someone is having problems and an AV scan didn't find anything. Amazing how many times the system stabilizes after removing all the Apple software.
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This guy writes for ZDnet?!
Ever since Windows 2000, Apple has been been below the curve stability or feature wise.
 
Meh ... never had a problem with itunes. This includes authorizing or De-authorizing computers. I find it quite handy, and easy, to be able to share a media library between my phone, my wifes phone, and the family ipad. Additionally I use apple TV and airplay quite frequently.
 
heatlesssun said:
Fair enough but Apple marketing helped to perpetuate "rose tinted nostalgia" with marketing like the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign.
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This is nonsense. You're still butthurt over those commercials, nothing more.
 
Terpfen said:
This is nonsense. You're still butthurt over those commercials, nothing more.
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Those commercials were specifically targeting supposed weaknesses in Windows PCs. Some were pretty funny because there was a lot of truth in them, like the ones about bloatware and viruses. Others were extremely deceptive, like the one about Macs being more fun than PCs because of apps like iPhoto to manage vacation pictures while never once mentioning the word "games".
 
5150Joker said:
I do agree to an extent that some of the Apple software is incredibly bad. For example iPhotos and iCloud are really bad compared to solutions put out by their competitors (no easy sharing). Secondly, the Safari browser isn't all that good, you can't click a button for example to request a desktop site like you can in Chrome and other browsers. It also doesn't give you access to configuration options on the fly unless you go to the general settings - things that just make their software a pain to use.
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who told you that there's no easy sharing from iPhoto or iCloud?

They're literally the easiest apps to share from: click the little arrow button and send direct or send out the link. can even be set up to just share content automatically. not sure how it could be easier than that.

I don't know what you mean regarding a desktop view button in safari. I've never seen that in chrome...the only thing I've seen like that are generated from the sites themselves. I haven't used chrome on android for about a year so maybe that has changed but it'd be strange if the button was a browser option rather than a site option.
 
Ironically it's Linux of late that is the most stable...shame it isn't up to being a consumer or gaming OS (yet).
 
I am not an Apple fanboi or anything, but I do like the iphone, ipad, ipod, and Apple TV.
I just don't care for iTtunes that much. seems to be rather laggy on my my high powered desktops.

I also like the design and craftsmanship of the Mac's but I just don't care for OSX. I like Windows 7.
 
im not a huge mac fan. i've owned a few in the past just from buying them in good deals/partial trades... but DaT TrackPad doe.... its soooo niceeeeeeeee..... The rest is garbage.
 
in the end they probably really don't care...because their os is free now! they should charge some?
 
I use OS X on a daily basis at work - Yosemite has been solid for me. I've noticed a lot of bugs in iOS8 - none have been showstoppers, but wow - looks sloppy. One specific example is a rotation bug. I can't always reproduce it, but it usually happens at least a few times a day. The device gets "stuck" in portrait or landscape. You have to quite the program and restart to fix.
Xcode has also had its fair share of bugs over the years. They have fixed a lot of them - the latest version has been pretty stable. No real complaints here.
Tough challenges - marketing/sales demands lots of new features. The developers are probably in a crunch to get them done on time. I've been a developer - it SUCKS when someone else promises something will be done in a shorter amount of time than is really feasible. That means you spend a lot of extra hours hacking something together to meet a deadline.
The sad thing about hacks is there is never time to go back and fix it proper. We had a source code file - probably about 10 years old? - that was used in a lot of different products. It had apologies from developers about the hacks made :) Even though you were hacking a hack, you had sympathy for the poor bastard that did this in the past.
Thank goodness I left that place years ago - nightmare.
 
Long time ago it was about Quality.
Now... it's image (what he said... basically).

The old-school iFanBoy crowd is honest about their affinity and that's all good. No arguments. I also have my own preferences so we're not going to argue about various flavors of trinket branding.

What annoys me though are those that are utterly blind+ignorant to system: build, internals, and infrastructure.

An iProduct, like all the other crapWare out there, emits its fare share stink. Buy into the image and be done with it.

If you're after quality/reliability... do your research and purchase:
- optimal hardware
- the best OS platform to run on that hardware (hypervisors are looking very, very good these days).
- then run either Linux, iOS, or Win depending on the task-at-hand.

If you just want to blend into the latest crowd, go for it and good-for-you. But, don't be asking me to help you get something to run on a platform that was better suited for the nightclub scene...
 
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