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It's pretty insane this sort of bug either passed or didn't even go through code review and testing at Apple, a company which has approximately infinite resourc
by danra 9y ago
It's pretty insane this sort of bug either passed or didn't even go through code review and testing at Apple, a company which has approximately infinite resources and whose marketing pitch is making high-quality products.
I loved Apple products and still do, but as both a user of and a developer for their systems, I feel the quality has been steadily going downhill the last few years.
- rusk 9y ago> whose marketing pitch is making high-quality products "It just works" was retired some time ago. "Think different" is the modern day mantra. It's less of an open-ended commitment.
- rangibaby 9y agoI remember the Think different posters from when I was a kid. As far as I can tell "It just works" is from the PC vs Mac tv ads from about ten years ago.
- rusk 9y agoPerhaps you're right, but the comparative prevalence of these phrases does seem to correspond to largely different customer experiences.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoIt's less of an open-ended commitment. Biting.
- toyg 9y ago> a company which has approximately infinite resources I believe the leadership insists in keeping up a pretension that this is not actually the case. To be fair, most of that "infinity" is sitting in offshore bank accounts and can only be used as leverage for borrowing rather than being spent directly.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoTo be fair, it doesn't need to be spent in the US.
- jonknee 9y ago> can only be used as leverage for borrowing rather than being spent directly Or , they could pay the tax and use the money (crazy idea I know).
- pducks32 9y agoIf they thought of doing that they could and probably should be sued. CEOs have a fiduciary duty meaning they are legally implored to do what is best for the company and bringing money back at a 40% tax is not in the financial interest of the company.
- toyg 9y agoAny judge would rule that following the law of the land is not against the interest of the company.
- module0000 9y agoThe judge has zero say in the CEO keeping his job though, and firing is a foregone conclusion when you make a decision that kills shareholder value. Decisions that don't increase shareholder value are "dubious" at best, and decisions that obviously decrease shareholder value are "insane" at best to the board.
- pavlov 9y agoI don't know. Serious QA problems in Apple software isn't anything new. Remember when iTunes 2.0 would wipe out hard disks? https://apple.slashdot.org/story/01/11/04/0412209/itunes-20-installer-deletes-hard-drives https://apple.slashdot.org/story/01/11/04/0412209/itunes-20-... The problem was an installer script that ran "rm -rf" as root: https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/itunes-2-0-an-analysis-of-what-went-wrong/ https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/itunes-2-0-an-analysis-of-what-...
- buttscicles 9y agoValve did the same thing when they first brought steam to Linux. https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/17/scary_code_of_the_week_steam_cleans_linux_pcs/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/17/scary_code_of_the_w... (article) I can imagine myself doing the same thing as well had I not heard about this back then
- auggierose 9y agoThe problem with testing is that it has the potential to gobble up infinite resources without actually adding much value. Just because you tested something, doesn't mean it will work reliably. It's that simple.
- throwanem 9y agoNo, but if your tests are good, they'll catch bugs and especially regressions that would otherwise make it to production. Of course there's a balance to be struck, but it's approximately as sensible to devote zero resources here as infinite. On the other hand, good review would much more likely have caught a bug like this than good tests would. "Why are you passing the password as the password hint?" Simple as that. Again, there's a balance to be struck, and I don't claim code review is a panacea. But I do think it's a very worthwhile, and in the general case necessary, part of an engineering culture strongly oriented toward reliability.
- ShinTakuya 9y agoHonestly, unit testing good code should have a minimal impact on overall productivity. I'm not suggesting rigorous testing of all possible inputs, but at least testing one good case and one bad case can save you a lot of headaches and only takes a couple minutes to code in most cases. I mean I agree with your general point in that testing too much is also a bad thing, but too often I hear this used as an excuse for not testing at all. And that's how we end up with legacy monstrosities that you can have no confidence in modifying that so many of us have to deal with.
- veidr 9y agoI think you might be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Apple's always had horrible show-stopping bugs, in every single OS X / macOS release[1], from when simple operations like updating iTunes or enabling the OS's Guest Mode might delete your home directories, to this latest failure. I suspect one reason is that they like one-person teams so much. I like one-person projects too! But there is always pain when you have to hand such a project to a new person, because the old one quit, or died, or whatever. Overzealous secrecy even when not warranted for any actual business-relevant reason also probably inhibits software quality. As does change for change's sake. [1] EDIT: except maybe Mac OS X 10.6? Does anybody remember any critical bugs in that one? I think that might be the unicorn.
- rangibaby 9y ago> EDIT: except maybe Mac OS X 10.6? Does anybody remember any critical bugs in that one? I think that might be the unicorn. Google "10.6.0 font problems", this caused a major headache at my work
- haikuginger 9y agoAlso caused major issues for the rare users who had antivirus software installed.
- rusk 9y agoexcept maybe Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. What a wonderful high-point in Desktop OSes that was. Seriously considering rolling back one or two of my old computers, even just to have a living breathing reference-point.
- madeofpalk 9y ago> a company which has approximately infinite resources The classic Apple problem is they they compatibility have much less corporate employees than other tech companies and they're stretched too thin, despite all their money.
- astrange 9y agoHave you read "The Mythical Man-Month"? It's not possible to get better software with more people, only more software of the same quality.
- madeofpalk 9y agoHave you read the Mythical Man-Month? I havent, but my understanding of the general crux is that is that adding more people to a late project only makes it later. Not (again, from my understanding) the problem Apple faces. Of course, nine women can't make a baby in once month, but loosely speaking the narrative that's been mentioned is how Apple doesn't have two women to make two babies in 9 months.
- Twisell 9y agoI strangely feel reassured by the post-mortem of this bug: -It appear genuinely involuntary -It's a (collective) human mistake not a design flaw -It was quickly fixed -Frankly if it's the only noticeable bug linked to the conversion of a huge userbase to a new file system this is actually a huge success