4 ms·

Isn't it most likely that the codebase is just like any other huge one. It gets to be a house of cards and getting all the bugs out becomes an impossible task,

Isn't it most likely that the codebase is just like any other huge one. It gets to be a house of cards and getting all the bugs out becomes an impossible task, so you have to do the best you can. Would be nice if they would repatriate some of that overseas cash and increase their QA efforts but that doesn't help revenue in the short term. Also their competition is far worse in this area so nobody's breathing down their neck.

stcredzero 9y ago
Would be nice if they would repatriate some of that overseas cash and increase their QA efforts but that doesn't help revenue in the short term. Also their competition is far worse in this area so nobody's breathing down their neck. If Apple just made their QA efforts a minuscule fraction of the size of their efforts to get an edge in mobile chips and supply-chain logistics -- they could easily start to appear godlike again. Bad QA can be debilitating. Mediocre QA can be an anchor around your neck. Awesome QA is some kind of overpowered buff multiplier! It's exactly the sort of competitive advantage that a company like Apple would want to cultivate! So many of their competitors would fall sway to the cultural issues that go against QA getting the power to work to its full potential, making it an advantage that's very difficult to replicate. I think if Apple could do something like this, this alone would redeem them in the eyes of its customers -- Make it Just Work Again! (Please don't walk around in that hat!)
clintonb 9y ago
The aging codebase may be one part of the problem. The other, as alluded to in another comment, is the fact that some newer versions of the apps are not necessarily improvements. I agree with the commenter stating that the new Podcasts app is quite crappy. The old one was great in my opinion.
newscracker 9y ago
I've observed this in more than a few places — teams treating QA as the de-facto tester and gatekeeper that has to find all the bugs, while developers just write code to satisfy their interest in writing code, and not spending a lot of time testing it. I wonder if this is the case in Apple too, where developers just write something without a lot of testing before handover to QA, and QA is pressed for time and/or doesn't know enough to test it well before a release.

stcredzero 9y ago

Would be nice if they would repatriate some of that overseas cash and increase their QA efforts but that doesn't help revenue in the short term. Also their competition is far worse in this area so nobody's breathing down their neck. If Apple just made their QA efforts a minuscule fraction of the size of their efforts to get an edge in mobile chips and supply-chain logistics -- they could easily start to appear godlike again. Bad QA can be debilitating. Mediocre QA can be an anchor around your neck. Awesome QA is some kind of overpowered buff multiplier! It's exactly the sort of competitive advantage that a company like Apple would want to cultivate! So many of their competitors would fall sway to the cultural issues that go against QA getting the power to work to its full potential, making it an advantage that's very difficult to replicate. I think if Apple could do something like this, this alone would redeem them in the eyes of its customers -- Make it Just Work Again! (Please don't walk around in that hat!)

clintonb 9y ago

The aging codebase may be one part of the problem. The other, as alluded to in another comment, is the fact that some newer versions of the apps are not necessarily improvements. I agree with the commenter stating that the new Podcasts app is quite crappy. The old one was great in my opinion.

newscracker 9y ago

I've observed this in more than a few places — teams treating QA as the de-facto tester and gatekeeper that has to find all the bugs, while developers just write code to satisfy their interest in writing code, and not spending a lot of time testing it. I wonder if this is the case in Apple too, where developers just write something without a lot of testing before handover to QA, and QA is pressed for time and/or doesn't know enough to test it well before a release.