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iOS 11 bugs are so common they now appear in Apple ads
- pasta 9y agoI don't know iOS inernals, but to me it looks like they started using multiple threads for the UI? Smart when you want to update multiple areas of the screen at once, buggy when multiple areas have to sync animations?
- firmgently 9y ago'text-display' should be triggered on 'animation end', surely multi-threading wouldnt mess with that as it's an async/event-driven thing (I know nothing about multi-threading)? ...or the text could have an animated mask to reveal it in sync with the bubble animation. Either way, fairly basic stuff to implement.
- tinus_hn 9y agoThe balloon probably isn’t specified to clip the text because normally it is big enough anyway.
- tobyhinloopen 9y agoor it was made to clip, but someone else fixed a bug that was caused by clipping, so he disabled clipping, causing this bug
- aphextron 9y ago>I don't know iOS inernals, but to me it looks like they started using multiple threads for the UI? Smart when you want to update multiple areas of the screen at once, buggy when multiple areas have to sync animations? iOS has always used separate threads for UI rendering standard since GCD was added in iOS 4. This is just lazy mistakes and poor QA.
- iaml 9y agoGP is implying they started using multiple threads exclusively for UI instead of a single one.
- 0x0 9y agoI'm pretty sure that iOS renders UI on a single thread? You can't even create UIImageViews off the main thread without risking severe breakage. Fortunately, modern Xcode has an Analyze option that will flag attempts to access UI off the main thread. GCD is a nice API for scheduling async tasks but that doesn't mean those async tasks can access UIKit or OpenGL contexts safely?
- dep_b 9y agoCorrect, you need to do everything that touches the UI on the main thread. But I never ran into problems that it would lead to frame drops, scrolling frame drops are because too large calculations are done (especially on the main thread) while displaying a new cell. I don't say it's trivial always to do complex stuff in a non-blocking way but if I can do it probably somebody working at Apple can do it too.
- manmal 9y agoI‘m intrigued where you got that info. As an iOS dev, I can tell you that an app should not access UIKit stuff off-main-thread. Facebook does off-main-thread layouts [1], but they still rely on backing views on main thread. Or do you mean that the rendering/compositing itself is multithreaded? [1]: https://code.facebook.com/posts/721586784561674/introducing-asyncdisplaykit-for-smooth-and-responsive-apps-on-ios/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/721586784561674/introducing-...
- aphextron 9y ago>I‘m intrigued where you got that info. As an iOS dev, I can tell you that an app should not access UIKit stuff off-main-thread. Facebook does off-main-thread layouts [1], but they still rely on backing views on main thread. Right, I wasn't implying UIKit stuff is done multi threaded. I just meant that the best practice is to do all your UI work in the main thread, and use GCD for any blocking operations which shouldn't be on the main (animation) thread.
- krutzger 9y agoShitty animation no one notices is nothing to worry about. Those utf8 bugs that kill your phone on the other hand... How many of those had Apple had by now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUE9mCN7sek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUE9mCN7sek
- jpalomaki 9y agoApple was once known for its attention to details like this. That attention made iPhone and iPad such hits.
- krutzger 9y agoIf you have been an apple costumer for a long time you should recognize this pattern. Once the product gets too complex and competitors start closing in attention to details will be replaced by bugs. It's like apple can't do agile development of their life dependent on it.
- exikyut 9y agoFor reference, this was briefly downvoted (visibly gray) at one point.
- madeofpalk 9y agoHow is that important?
- huhtenberg 9y ago> Shitty animation no one notices is nothing to worry about. Jobs would've had a seizure at this statement.
- duncanawoods 9y agoI think it may even be a way to raise the dead. This is how we get a fire-breathing ZombieJobs stomping on Cupertino.
- extrememacaroni 9y agoOh no, not a glitch that needs to be slowed down about 10 times to be anything more than unnoticeable. Those are the worst!
- eknkc 9y agoSo it is visible for like 50 milliseconds during the animation and not at all looks bad when you actually see the animation happening in real time.. Yeah, APPLE IS DOOMED! I'm not creating excuses but this is ridiculous. As if there is a shortage of Apple stuff to complain (like shitty mbp keyboards breaking all the time, siri the moron, fucked up security issues popping up weekly..) this is making headlines.
- bsaul 9y agoI've been developping ios apps since ios 3, and i can't tell you how glad i am to see this apple media bashing trend. They build the most expensive products, lock you in using their tools and their hardware, take a 30% cut on all income, rejects apps for very very various reasons, some of them borderline illegal (like the competing with apple apps clause), and they're the most profitable company in the world. AND, their software quality has been declining for the last 4 years without any sign of them taking notes. So, yeah, please more shitstorm, someone needs to shake something inside, because a whole ecosystem of businesses (like mine) has been built relying on their product being flawless.
- tempodox 9y agoI wish I could give you more upvotes.
- samastur 9y agoI will not argue against your experience. I had my share of problems with iOS (and Android and really any large enough piece of software). Two points though. As someone living in the wrong EU country to sell apps on Play store I am far less bothered by Apple's 30%. I would certainly welcome that percentage to be lower and have more flexibility on the platform itself, but it is not a particularly offensive number when compared to any other industry where you need a distributor. Second, do you really rely on any product to be flawless? To me that seems an unreasonable position to have.
- baxtr 9y agoPeople think that this is a bug. But it’s not. The way it is rendered helps actually people to read the message faster. This was proven in studies.
- casperc 9y agoInteresting, got a link?
- extrememacaroni 9y agoI'd be inclined to agree if it weren't showing dark colored text on a dark colored background.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- trevyn 9y agoAgree, this may have been a deliberate choice. Human perception is weird.
- panic 9y agoEven if the animation is intentional, the second line of text should still be clipped to the bounds of the notification.
- devposter 9y agoDo you have the link to the studies?
- digi_owl 9y agoPoe's Law strikes again...
- tobyhinloopen 9y agoFound the Apple fanboy. I get it, their stuff is nice (and I own many products) but it is obviously one of their many bugs.
- 9y ago
- juanmirocks 9y agoMe personally, I've had less issues with iOS 11 than with previous iterations and I'm happy overall with wit iOS 11. Is the data (say, normalized number of issued bugs) really showing a decrease in reliability of iOS over time or rather the contrary? Not an Apple evangelist here, but it would be good to be fair. Let's please remember that often a few loud voices are just that, loud, but few.
- bsaul 9y agoEveryone i know who's an iOS developper noticed the same thing about iOS11. But you're right in the sense that every new release (at least since iOS 7) brings its share of bugs and slowdowns. Which isn't a reason not to be angry..
- jinushaun 9y agoiOS 11 is by far the buggiest iOS release in my experience. I have multiple devices and I held off as long as I could to upgrade my main device after seeing the myriad of bugs on my other devices. They broke the touch screen. Even clicking on buttons isn’t reliable anymore, never mind the keyboard issues. Speaking of which, they also broke the keyboard in iOS 11. Typing is almost as bad as old Android. IMO, it all went downhill after the “flat” iOS 7 release. It was unstable beta software then, and it’s still unstable beta software now. Apple would rather add Animoji than fix these long standing iOS 7 bugs.
- acdha 9y ago> They broke the touch screen. Even clicking on buttons isn’t reliable anymore, never mind the keyboard issues. What keyboard issues? The symptoms described sound like a hardware problem.
- hedora 9y agoNot the poster you replied to, but the keyboard is ridiculously slow sometimes. It can take a second or so for letters to echo until the keyboard code warms up its cache, or whatever it’s doing immediately after it is displayed. I’ve also noticed that I sometimes have to click the fingerprint sensor 4-5 times to get the pin screen to display. Clicking works reliably once the phone is unlocked. They definitely broke the touch screen on iPhone X, at least during winter weather. They had a point release of iOS where that was one of the headline bug fixes.
- bringtheaction 9y agoBut actually aside from the example in the article being rather silly I believe that something we could learn from this as developers is that in some situations it might be valuable for us to record our monitor with a high speed camera and look at it slowed down. This mainly has value for game development I think, but other programs that feature a lot of animation could benefit from it as well. When I say “high-speed camera” you might think of cameras that cost in the range of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars but actually from what I’ve seen on YouTube even a camera that would capture some hundred FPS could provide interesting insight. Preferably at a not too low resolution though. Some cameras like that exist for the price around some hundreds to under a couple of thousand dollars. It might be worth looking into. And let me know if you find one that seems especially good and with not too big of a price tag because I am looking too and haven’t found quite the perfect one yet. Btw it probably helps if you have some other intended use for the camera as well like for example to take photos and pictures of things in the nature.
- franciscop 9y agoI normally write my CSS transitions [1] at 3-5x the time they will be in the final version. So if I intend for `transition: all .3s ease`, then I'll write `transition: all 1s ease` and test it like that. I actually try different speeds, first a decent one (2-3x) not to be slowed down and then a slower one (~5x) to make sure it is works as intended. I've found this much easier to debug and find issues. The only problem with this approach is that, since you are making things in slow motion, it's easy to over-animate things and make it look messy on normal speed. So just compensate for that and everything is fine. [1] example: https://picnicss.com/ https://picnicss.com/
- systoll 9y agoChrome's devtools let you set all animation to run at at 1/4 or 1/10 speed, simplifying that process a bit. https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/inspect-styles/animations https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/insp...
- spicyj 9y ago
- planetjones 9y agoI know a lot of the comments are saying what a bad example. And how trivial it is. But it’s a clear illustration of Apple’s lack of attention to detail now. I dare say there was a time when Apple would never have published such an advert. Likewise there was a time they would never publish software with the embarrassing bugs we have seen through macOS and iOS.
- baxtr 9y agoYou mean like back in the days when Apple Maps was released? Or when we had Antennagate?
- vkou 9y agoOr back in the Mac OS 9 days? Remember that spinner, that indicated that one userspace app crashed you? By this point, blue screens in Windows were quite rare.
- jimktrains2 9y agoThe joys of cooperative multitasking.
- madeofpalk 9y ago> Likewise there was a time they would never publish software with the embarrassing bugs we have seen through macOS and iOS. When was this? Remember Snow Leopard? The release The Internet likes to parade as the Last Good OS X Release? It had a bug where your all user data will be deleted if logging into the Guest account. Here's a headline from the time: Snow Leopard Bug is a Doozy, How Did Apple Miss it? [1] Sound familiar? Or in 2010 (and all the times after) when they couldn't get DST right and would screw up people's alarms. [1]: https://www.cio.com/article/2423952/security0/snow-leopard-bug-is-a-doozy--how-did-apple-miss-it-.html https://www.cio.com/article/2423952/security0/snow-leopard-b... [2]: https://www.cultofmac.com/60691/ios-alarms-broken-for-new-zealand-users-after-daylight-savings/ https://www.cultofmac.com/60691/ios-alarms-broken-for-new-ze...
- chrisvalleybay 9y agoYou know what's funny? The base premise of the ad would be that you can unlock anyone's phone with your face. In the ad she is unlocking everything, even those that do not belong to her. How could they miss this?
- bnj 9y agoYeah, from where I sit, sure—maybe this UI thing is a glitch, maybe it’s to preference readability, have to assume it’s a glitch because it doesn’t look good. But really, the problem for me is that the ad itself is a colorful simplistic mess. And am I the only one who finds it infuriating that the timing in other parts of the ad is off? At one point one of the cars bursts open before she looks at it. If you’re going to follow through on this concept, IMO it really needs to be frame-level precision.
- chris_wot 9y agoThe whole thing is stupid. If I look at my phone, does that mean I want it unlocked? Not really.
- shurcooL 9y agoA way to interpret it is that when she looks at her phone and it unlocks, it gives her the idea that it’s her superpower and she can look at anything and have it unlock. In reality, it’s the iPhone doing it, and it only does it when she looks at it. Basically, the ad tries to show how the girl feels. I think it captures that pretty well; at least I liked it (more than most other recent Apple ads).
- teaneedz 9y agoExactly what I was thinking. This is supposed to make me want to use FaceID? To me, it highlights the bad side of FaceID. The iMessage bug though just made me laugh. QA, software development and UX is at an all time low for modern Apple. I've been an Apple product user for a long time while watching this decline. Yes bugs have always existed, but not as ubiquitously as now.
- dictum 9y agoFrankly, after the misguided whimsy of "what's a computer?" I don't expect much from them. (It was the first Apple ad to mock a segment of its own customers, as opposed to mocking competitors' customers, a dubious but established marketing strategy)
- nothis 9y agoSo I thought people were exaggerating but something I recently found that is weird is the time slider not progressing for music/podcasts playing while on the lock screen. I thought it’s just when you play something out of Safari but it’s also happening with the official music app? Like what the hell?
- nkkollaw 9y agoI thought it was impossible, but I guess those that said that Apple without Steve Jobs would go to waste were right. They won't go bankrupt anytime soon, but it's not the same Apple. I've personally switched to PC with Xfce after a few nightmarish 6 months with the new MacBook Pro...
- seba_dos1 9y agoA few months ago I've bought an iPhone for testing and development. I've used it for a few days total, yet I can already count something about a dozen of UI glitches I've found just by using it, and one severe stability issue with underlying frameworks. It looks really untidy.
- jordache 9y agofor any ad, I'm sure the editor and the final stackholders are going through every scene in detail, those frames showing the text message on the lock screen, I'm sure has been viewed hundreds of times by multiple people. Yet no one thought that the UI was weird with that messed up animation?
- Aloha 9y agoHas anyone considered the possibility that this isnt a bug?
- knodi 9y agoI think this yearly new iOS release schedule is really wearing on the quality of iOS, although its still leagues about Android its just not high quality as it use to be. iOS11 has been riddled the bugs and bad design. Apple in general seems to be suffering from this as High Sierra has also been a cluster fuck.
- nxc18 9y agoHave you tried stock Android lately. I just switched to a cheap (<$300) Android phone from an iPhone and it's been better in every way except the camera. iPhone used to be miles ahead of Android, but the lack of product focus and the decreasing attention to detail at Apple have allowed Android to catch up. One example: my iPhone shit the bed recently and I tried factory resetting it. In the OOBE, I had to enter my Apple ID credentials and do two-factor auth 3 separate times. Apparently the different screens were implemented by different teams and didn't share the authentication context. I only had to sign in to my Android once.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- remir 9y agoIs it possible that the multiple bugs in iOS 11 could be attributed (in part) to the frustration felt by Apple's engineers about the open office floor plan in the new campus?
- ninkendo 9y agono. (not least because they didn't move in until a good while after ios 11, which was released a good year after the development was heating up the most.)