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I doubt it is developer apathy. It smells like a management issue. iOS is where the money is. I don't know anyone at apple, but here's how I imagine it is there

I doubt it is developer apathy. It smells like a management issue. iOS is where the money is. I don't know anyone at apple, but here's how I imagine it is there: Every OSX engineer probably has more bugs on their plate than can be fixed in one career, in addition to feature development tasks. The OSX team is severely understaffed both because it is not a priority at Apple, and because it is getting harder and harder to find engineers that are able to/willing to work on this kind of code - a Byzantine labyrinth of C flavors that's been accreting lines for decades. The OSX team is in a desperate fight for recognition and status against the iOS team. They believe (and are probably right) that the only way to gain executive mind share there is to build out new visible features, no matter how useless. Witness dark theme, stacks, dynamic desktop, siri on the desktop, a steady stream of useless iPhone integrations, etc. All the troops are ordered to march relentlessly toward feature development. Stability and bug fixes be damned. It bet it takes at least three weeks of focused effort and red tape macheteing to fix this bug and it is way down on someone's list. Even if you fix it the change won't make the next OSX key note at the annual IOScon or whatever it is called, so it won't help your career one iota. Again - this is just how I imagine it is there. I don't really know.

tyingq 7y ago
Is there some credible source as to what percentage of revenue or profit MacOS drives versus the rest of the org?
- jacobsenscott 7y ago
  I'm sure there are lots. This shows iphone dwarfs all other sources of revenue https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q4-18-Data-Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q4-18-Data-Summary.pdf Apple is a phone manufacturer. Computers are a side business.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    A side business that is still a requirement for anyone to ship software into Apple’s iPhone ecosystem, so there’s at least some incentive for Apple to continue supporting it. But given that developers have no choice in the matter, they’re stuck putting up with whatever issues Apple doesn’t bother to fix. I’m sure Apple is well aware of that when prioritizing what bugs are important.
    - drspacemonkey 7y ago
      Don't forget us devs who are required to use OSX as a matter of corporate policy. I'd much rather be on Linux
  - maxhedrome 7y ago
    Apple is a phone manufacturing outsourcer
  - jorvi 7y ago
    I always show people this[1] graph when they complain about Macs feeling like an afterthought to Apple. It's because they are, in terms of total profit. [1]http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Apple-earnings-chart-Q2-2016.001-1.png http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Apple-...
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    If spun off into its own business, the Macintosh business would still be a fortune 500 company. I get that Apple makes more revenue from other products, but the Mac is still extremely profitable. They ought to give it some attention on those grounds, if nothing else.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deergomoo 7y ago
  According to their recent financials, 8% of revenue (vs 54% from iPhone, 10% from iPad, 20% from services, 9% from everything else (wearables, accessories, etc).
tomduncalf 7y ago
The iPhone integrations (assuming you mean Handover) are one of my favourite parts of the MacOS/iOS ecosystem and one of many reasons why I can't see myself moving away from either OS for a long time. I've also experienced very few bugs in MacOS which have affected me on a day to day basis. Not saying they aren't there, but to me the MacOS team are doing a pretty great job.
- jacobsenscott 7y ago
  For any feature on OSX there are some people who love that feature. But the reality is the core reliability of OSX has been declining for years, and many of the bugs are becoming more egregious. Especially some of the recent security issues. They are all symptoms of an under-resourced team. I have no doubt the OSX engineers are heroes to a person. But I can't imagine they have the resources they need. I also can't imagine Apple really cares when accessories appear to be on track to generate more revenue than macs in a few years.
  - x0x0 7y ago
    I administer approximately 30 macbooks. 2018s with a few 2017s still in there. They're mostly unreliable garbage. In particular, zoom.us, our teleconferencing solution, crashes them regularly with spewed messages about GPU stuff in console. We're about at the point of running windows vms so my salespeople can have a reliable conferencing solution. The keyboards also do not hold up at all. I've gotten into a shouting match at an apple store after buying their "warranty" and learning that a keyboard repair would mean the laptop would disappear for a week. That's not a warranty; that's some Dell consumer-grade bullshit. I basically had to buy a floater laptop on the spot. Two of the laptops, including my cofounder, have keys that don't work, but they're too busy to deal with Apple's bs to get them repaired. I'm aware that after the WSJ embarrassed them the wait is supposedly shorter, but it's not anything reasonable. They should be able to do a keyboard swap in an hour while you wait. Their busted ass OS also has automatically (!!!) disabled Filevault, refused to turn it back on, including spending 6 hours on technical support and an OS wipe. We had to take that laptop into the mac store for them to service. Folks, don't wait on installing an mdm -- just because you turn Filevault on, it can silently disable itself.
Bahamut 7y ago
There's no "OSX team" at Apple. That would go against Apple's whole corporate structure.
- anbop 7y ago
  Surely there is some team that develops OS X. That is the OS X team.
  - astericks 7y ago
    Well, officially, OS X doesn't exist anymore. It's "Mac OS" now I believe. But yes, they'd be the Mac OS team
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      macOS
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      The full name was always "Mac OS X" and the most-major version number is still 10, so...
  - larkost 7y ago
    No, much of the codebase is shared, and where the codebase is not shared the teams usually are. There are undoutably exceptions to this, and this may fall into one of those, but your blanket statement is just not how Apple operates internally.
  - thelopa 7y ago
    Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but they are right. there isn't an OSX team. Apple doesn't slice things up that way. If there were an OSX team then surely there would be a manager for that team, right? The only person that could plausibly fill that role is Craig Federighi... but he arguably fills the same role for iOS, too. In the Scott Forstall days, there was a distinct iOS team (Scott) and a distinct OSX team (Craig). now there isn't.
shuckles 7y ago
Engineering is not organized by platform, but function. Apps that are cross-platform have engineers who move back and forth between macOS and iOS. Lots of code is also reused between the two. Both platforms use essentially the same tooling and languages (if anything, iOS development is more painful), though certainly iOS codebases tend to be better because they are newer. A fight for attention by a specific, resource-starved macOS engineering team could not be more incorrect. That’s simply not how Apple works. You have to come up with a different explanation for these perceived quality problems.
- bangonkeyboard 7y ago
  > You have to come up with a different explanation for these perceived quality problems. The developmental move to agile deadline-driven feature-sprints under Craig Federighi.
- skywhopper 7y ago
  Well, customizable menu-based keyboard shortcut support is not a cross-platform feature. So maybe there's no one responsible for it? Which amounts to a management/resource-allocation problem as suggested above. The team organization you describe would contribute to the problem of this sort of Mac-specific thing being marginalized and de-prioritized, exactly as described above.
  - shuckles 7y ago
    No. There is no fight for recognition or status of the kind the parent extrapolates. “Resource allocation problem” is general enough that it could explain basically every bug, so that’s not particularly helpful. The way to think about this is that the menu bindings are AppKit features which share resources with UIKit. An interesting theory would be one which identifies (i) who in the organization gets to gate what ships and decides it’s good enough (ii) what are their incentives. At a company like Apple which is huge, has marketing deadlines, and is coordinating hardware, software, and services releases, both items have very subtle and interesting answers.
perfmode 7y ago
It’s dangerous to craft rich narratives without access to even the slightest bits of ground truth.
- jacobsenscott 7y ago
  I did make it very clear twice I am just imagining, and have no ground truth. It does appear to have struck a nerve - it is not an uncommon scenario in this industry. Like I said, I don't know if that's what is actually happening at apple.
  - perfmode 7y ago
    “Making it clear” doesn’t do anything to mitigate the danger. The danger is in doing the thing. The way to win the game is to not play.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  Narratives in general can be very dangerous, even if there is a lot of truth in them. In fact, our worldviews are constructed out of narratives that define our sense of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.
buzzert 7y ago
I’ll tell you as an Apple employee—engineers and first/second level managers don’t give a shit about market share or which platform makes the most money. Most of the engineers I work with are very personally motivated because macOS is their favorite operating system. Yes, there is feature creep and it does have a bit to do with executive mind-share. But don’t attribute to greed what you could attribute to the age old problem of managing software complexity.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I thought you worked on UIKit ;)
- jacobsenscott 7y ago
  I don't doubt the rank and file are dedicated to the projects they work on. But I imagine the people higher up the chain care very much where the money comes from, and priorities will naturally fall out of that.

tyingq 7y ago

Is there some credible source as to what percentage of revenue or profit MacOS drives versus the rest of the org?

jacobsenscott 7y ago
I'm sure there are lots. This shows iphone dwarfs all other sources of revenue https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q4-18-Data-Summary.pdf https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q4-18-Data-Summary.pdf Apple is a phone manufacturer. Computers are a side business.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  A side business that is still a requirement for anyone to ship software into Apple’s iPhone ecosystem, so there’s at least some incentive for Apple to continue supporting it. But given that developers have no choice in the matter, they’re stuck putting up with whatever issues Apple doesn’t bother to fix. I’m sure Apple is well aware of that when prioritizing what bugs are important.
  - drspacemonkey 7y ago
    Don't forget us devs who are required to use OSX as a matter of corporate policy. I'd much rather be on Linux
- maxhedrome 7y ago
  Apple is a phone manufacturing outsourcer
- jorvi 7y ago
  I always show people this[1] graph when they complain about Macs feeling like an afterthought to Apple. It's because they are, in terms of total profit. [1]http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Apple-earnings-chart-Q2-2016.001-1.png http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Apple-...
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  If spun off into its own business, the Macintosh business would still be a fortune 500 company. I get that Apple makes more revenue from other products, but the Mac is still extremely profitable. They ought to give it some attention on those grounds, if nothing else.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deergomoo 7y ago
According to their recent financials, 8% of revenue (vs 54% from iPhone, 10% from iPad, 20% from services, 9% from everything else (wearables, accessories, etc).

tomduncalf 7y ago

The iPhone integrations (assuming you mean Handover) are one of my favourite parts of the MacOS/iOS ecosystem and one of many reasons why I can't see myself moving away from either OS for a long time. I've also experienced very few bugs in MacOS which have affected me on a day to day basis. Not saying they aren't there, but to me the MacOS team are doing a pretty great job.

jacobsenscott 7y ago
For any feature on OSX there are some people who love that feature. But the reality is the core reliability of OSX has been declining for years, and many of the bugs are becoming more egregious. Especially some of the recent security issues. They are all symptoms of an under-resourced team. I have no doubt the OSX engineers are heroes to a person. But I can't imagine they have the resources they need. I also can't imagine Apple really cares when accessories appear to be on track to generate more revenue than macs in a few years.
- x0x0 7y ago
  I administer approximately 30 macbooks. 2018s with a few 2017s still in there. They're mostly unreliable garbage. In particular, zoom.us, our teleconferencing solution, crashes them regularly with spewed messages about GPU stuff in console. We're about at the point of running windows vms so my salespeople can have a reliable conferencing solution. The keyboards also do not hold up at all. I've gotten into a shouting match at an apple store after buying their "warranty" and learning that a keyboard repair would mean the laptop would disappear for a week. That's not a warranty; that's some Dell consumer-grade bullshit. I basically had to buy a floater laptop on the spot. Two of the laptops, including my cofounder, have keys that don't work, but they're too busy to deal with Apple's bs to get them repaired. I'm aware that after the WSJ embarrassed them the wait is supposedly shorter, but it's not anything reasonable. They should be able to do a keyboard swap in an hour while you wait. Their busted ass OS also has automatically (!!!) disabled Filevault, refused to turn it back on, including spending 6 hours on technical support and an OS wipe. We had to take that laptop into the mac store for them to service. Folks, don't wait on installing an mdm -- just because you turn Filevault on, it can silently disable itself.

Bahamut 7y ago

There's no "OSX team" at Apple. That would go against Apple's whole corporate structure.

anbop 7y ago
Surely there is some team that develops OS X. That is the OS X team.
- astericks 7y ago
  Well, officially, OS X doesn't exist anymore. It's "Mac OS" now I believe. But yes, they'd be the Mac OS team
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    macOS
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    The full name was always "Mac OS X" and the most-major version number is still 10, so...
- larkost 7y ago
  No, much of the codebase is shared, and where the codebase is not shared the teams usually are. There are undoutably exceptions to this, and this may fall into one of those, but your blanket statement is just not how Apple operates internally.
- thelopa 7y ago
  Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but they are right. there isn't an OSX team. Apple doesn't slice things up that way. If there were an OSX team then surely there would be a manager for that team, right? The only person that could plausibly fill that role is Craig Federighi... but he arguably fills the same role for iOS, too. In the Scott Forstall days, there was a distinct iOS team (Scott) and a distinct OSX team (Craig). now there isn't.

shuckles 7y ago

Engineering is not organized by platform, but function. Apps that are cross-platform have engineers who move back and forth between macOS and iOS. Lots of code is also reused between the two. Both platforms use essentially the same tooling and languages (if anything, iOS development is more painful), though certainly iOS codebases tend to be better because they are newer. A fight for attention by a specific, resource-starved macOS engineering team could not be more incorrect. That’s simply not how Apple works. You have to come up with a different explanation for these perceived quality problems.

bangonkeyboard 7y ago
> You have to come up with a different explanation for these perceived quality problems. The developmental move to agile deadline-driven feature-sprints under Craig Federighi.
skywhopper 7y ago
Well, customizable menu-based keyboard shortcut support is not a cross-platform feature. So maybe there's no one responsible for it? Which amounts to a management/resource-allocation problem as suggested above. The team organization you describe would contribute to the problem of this sort of Mac-specific thing being marginalized and de-prioritized, exactly as described above.
- shuckles 7y ago
  No. There is no fight for recognition or status of the kind the parent extrapolates. “Resource allocation problem” is general enough that it could explain basically every bug, so that’s not particularly helpful. The way to think about this is that the menu bindings are AppKit features which share resources with UIKit. An interesting theory would be one which identifies (i) who in the organization gets to gate what ships and decides it’s good enough (ii) what are their incentives. At a company like Apple which is huge, has marketing deadlines, and is coordinating hardware, software, and services releases, both items have very subtle and interesting answers.

perfmode 7y ago

It’s dangerous to craft rich narratives without access to even the slightest bits of ground truth.

jacobsenscott 7y ago
I did make it very clear twice I am just imagining, and have no ground truth. It does appear to have struck a nerve - it is not an uncommon scenario in this industry. Like I said, I don't know if that's what is actually happening at apple.
- perfmode 7y ago
  “Making it clear” doesn’t do anything to mitigate the danger. The danger is in doing the thing. The way to win the game is to not play.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
Narratives in general can be very dangerous, even if there is a lot of truth in them. In fact, our worldviews are constructed out of narratives that define our sense of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.

buzzert 7y ago

I’ll tell you as an Apple employee—engineers and first/second level managers don’t give a shit about market share or which platform makes the most money. Most of the engineers I work with are very personally motivated because macOS is their favorite operating system. Yes, there is feature creep and it does have a bit to do with executive mind-share. But don’t attribute to greed what you could attribute to the age old problem of managing software complexity.

saagarjha 7y ago
I thought you worked on UIKit ;)
jacobsenscott 7y ago
I don't doubt the rank and file are dedicated to the projects they work on. But I imagine the people higher up the chain care very much where the money comes from, and priorities will naturally fall out of that.