4 ms·

People seem to think that if they don’t experience a bug, it’s an “extreme edge case”, or that if they don’t experience it, it’s not an important bug.

matwood 6y ago
The reverse is also true. People think if they experience a bug, then everyone experiences the bug and it's the most important bug ever. Everyones setup and use case is unique. All the many interactions can lead to fairly unique bugs. Even if two people think they see the same bug, it could be two different bugs causing the same symptom. Let's take the bugs around re-installing that have been popping up on HN lately. How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? I don't personally know anyone who does that, it's certainly not something I've ever done with any of my Macs over the last 20 or so odd years. So while I think bugs around re-installing are important and need to get fixed, they are not something that a majority of users will run into this early in the m1's life.
- bordercases 6y ago
  In this case I doubt "two HN users doing daily development and production on a new Mac" are so unique as to be incomparable. And arguing that certain users are in a minority such that they can be ignored - without hard proof mind you, and keeping in mind that knowledge work is squarely the demographic for people requiring high performance processors in the Apple space (or else they wouldn't push that angle so hard in their advertising) - when the functionality was stable on previous platforms much older than the so-called cutting edge, is justifying a regression in functionality by blaming user expectations. This is consumer hostile.
  - matwood 6y ago
    > In this case I doubt "two HN users doing daily development and production on a new Mac" are so unique as to be incomparable. I would have argued the opposite. Every developer I know, myself included, tweaks every last aspect of their machine to their exact liking - even on a Mac. And I didn't say they should be ignored, and said the opposite. > So while I think bugs around re-installing are important and need to get fixed The point is it's a bug impacting a subset of users and needs to get fixed. IMO, it's not one worthy of multiple HN front page posts, but here we are :)
    - LeoNatan25 6y ago
      Clearly it is important to the people posting the issues, and people upvoting. People, which are some of the main target audience of “pro” dubbed machines. The truth is, however, that there is nothing “pro” about Apple products anymore. Anything outside of the most mundane happy-path is often broken in strange ways. And the typical Apple drone response is: “Who does that anyway? I certainly don’t! So manage your expectations.” Apple software is buggy and broken beyond belief. Hardware might be good, but that is increasingly beside the point, given how broken Apple software and UX are.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >The truth is, however, that there is nothing “pro” about Apple products anymore. The truth this is a tired of chessnut that we've been hearing for 15+ years... And yet, judging from their laptop choices at conferences, developer videos, and so on, over half of industry leading devs across many communities (from Node to Java, and from Go to Rust and whatever else) use those laptops. >Apple software is buggy and broken beyond belief. Not my experience. That said, you're free to use the non-broken Windows and/or Linux OSes!
        LeoNatan25 6y ago
        I have not been saying that in the past. I am saying it now. I also use Windows increasingly more and more, and experience significantly less bugs, even in old Win32 APIs which still “just work”, unlike Apple’s many many frameworks (new and old) which are broken in different ways. Or its system software, which keeps getting rewritten in half-assed ways with missing feature, and then never revisited or fixed.
      - matwood 6y ago
        > The truth is, however, that there is nothing “pro” about Apple products anymore. Anymore? I feel like a lot of people romanticize old Apple. For example, the first few versions of OS X were pretty bad. They did finally settle down, but then entered a yin/yang good/bad release schedule. There was time when installing a beta or even .0 version was almost guaranteed to lose data. Now, I tend to run betas pretty early on. There are some bugs, but they mostly work. I don't see Apple products as any more or less 'pro' than they have always been. Once the software catches up, my m1 MBA doesn't seem anymore or less capable than my G4 Powerbook. TBH, the M1 MBA is already more capable because at the time software had already moved on to Intel while I still had my G4. IMO, the biggest missteps that I would consider less pro on the portable side would be the 1 port MB, and the keyboard. Both of which Apple has moved on from, though the keyboard took way too long to address. I know people complain about ports, but I find usbc (unless there's only 1), the most pro thing about apple laptops because they can morph into anything a pro may need.
- cesarb 6y ago
  > How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? I do it on every brand new machine I buy; they come with Windows or Ubuntu, and I use another Linux distribution. And for Windows users, AFAIK for a long time the recommendation has also been to immediately wipe it and reinstall, to remove any shovelware which came with the machine.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    Ah, but you are hastily justifying the validity of your experience, you see, so cannot be forwarding criticism that the OP will recognize.
  - matwood 6y ago
    Windows sure, b/c they tend to come preinstalled with a bunch of garbage, but we're talking about Macs.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? Well, everyone who would sell their machine could go through that process. And if this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204426) is correct then I would not call it an 'edge' case. Besides It's a safety feature. You need it to work when nothing else works. It should be extremely reliable. And if it's not then the only 'reliable' feature of the Mac you have is DFU mode and booting from another Mac. I don't personally know anyone who does that. I personally don't know anyone who dealt with failing computers who doesn't do that. Besides you need partitions for multi boot configuration.
  - matwood 6y ago
    All your examples are not of people buying a brand new m1 and immediately re-installing. They are examples why it needs to get fixed, but right now likely has a low impact on the user base.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  >The reverse is also true. People think if they experience a bug, then everyone experiences the bug and it's the most important bug ever. The reverse is not always true, because some people have certain knowledge and if they experience some bug they could analyse it and make an educated guess about the quality of the product and importance of the bug. I personally have seen many bugs in Disk Utility. On my previous Mac I couldn't make volume to be named as I wanted in certain conditions no matter how hard I tried with diff scenarios. Disk Utility was simply renaming it to something else. Something unrelated. It was obviously a bug and it was reproducible. And this was not the only one. Another one I've seen that Disk Utility simply cannot format the drive. I've seen more and it's getting worse and worse. After seeng those I was wondering do they test it at all? Does one who tests it knew how to do it?
- kergonath 6y ago
  > How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? I do. I’m not sure why, but it’s an old habit and I like to take care of the software myself. I won’t say it’s typical, though. So, as you say, > they are not something that a majority of users will run into this early in the m1's life.
coldtea 6y ago
>People seem to think that if they don’t experience a bug, it’s an “extreme edge case” And they're usually right. From millions of units sold, a small number usually has a bug, unless it's an OS bug independent of the hardware (and also not dependent on the use of a specific software setup, e.g. some ACE plugin or some app messing with some system). 1000 people having the problem and 100 reporting it and some news sites picking it up can make for a big fuss in blogs and posts, but it's still around 1 / 2000 people having the issue in a 2M production run.
- LeoNatan25 6y ago
  I am mostly speaking about OS bugs, not hardware. The hardware side of Apple is still of high quality. It’s the software that is becoming increasing terrible. 1/2000 is still a big number, considering the Apple numbers. I doubt their hardware has so many issues.

matwood 6y ago

The reverse is also true. People think if they experience a bug, then everyone experiences the bug and it's the most important bug ever. Everyones setup and use case is unique. All the many interactions can lead to fairly unique bugs. Even if two people think they see the same bug, it could be two different bugs causing the same symptom. Let's take the bugs around re-installing that have been popping up on HN lately. How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? I don't personally know anyone who does that, it's certainly not something I've ever done with any of my Macs over the last 20 or so odd years. So while I think bugs around re-installing are important and need to get fixed, they are not something that a majority of users will run into this early in the m1's life.

bordercases 6y ago
In this case I doubt "two HN users doing daily development and production on a new Mac" are so unique as to be incomparable. And arguing that certain users are in a minority such that they can be ignored - without hard proof mind you, and keeping in mind that knowledge work is squarely the demographic for people requiring high performance processors in the Apple space (or else they wouldn't push that angle so hard in their advertising) - when the functionality was stable on previous platforms much older than the so-called cutting edge, is justifying a regression in functionality by blaming user expectations. This is consumer hostile.
- matwood 6y ago
  > In this case I doubt "two HN users doing daily development and production on a new Mac" are so unique as to be incomparable. I would have argued the opposite. Every developer I know, myself included, tweaks every last aspect of their machine to their exact liking - even on a Mac. And I didn't say they should be ignored, and said the opposite. > So while I think bugs around re-installing are important and need to get fixed The point is it's a bug impacting a subset of users and needs to get fixed. IMO, it's not one worthy of multiple HN front page posts, but here we are :)
  - LeoNatan25 6y ago
    Clearly it is important to the people posting the issues, and people upvoting. People, which are some of the main target audience of “pro” dubbed machines. The truth is, however, that there is nothing “pro” about Apple products anymore. Anything outside of the most mundane happy-path is often broken in strange ways. And the typical Apple drone response is: “Who does that anyway? I certainly don’t! So manage your expectations.” Apple software is buggy and broken beyond belief. Hardware might be good, but that is increasingly beside the point, given how broken Apple software and UX are.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >The truth is, however, that there is nothing “pro” about Apple products anymore. The truth this is a tired of chessnut that we've been hearing for 15+ years... And yet, judging from their laptop choices at conferences, developer videos, and so on, over half of industry leading devs across many communities (from Node to Java, and from Go to Rust and whatever else) use those laptops. >Apple software is buggy and broken beyond belief. Not my experience. That said, you're free to use the non-broken Windows and/or Linux OSes!
      - LeoNatan25 6y ago
        I have not been saying that in the past. I am saying it now. I also use Windows increasingly more and more, and experience significantly less bugs, even in old Win32 APIs which still “just work”, unlike Apple’s many many frameworks (new and old) which are broken in different ways. Or its system software, which keeps getting rewritten in half-assed ways with missing feature, and then never revisited or fixed.
    - matwood 6y ago
      > The truth is, however, that there is nothing “pro” about Apple products anymore. Anymore? I feel like a lot of people romanticize old Apple. For example, the first few versions of OS X were pretty bad. They did finally settle down, but then entered a yin/yang good/bad release schedule. There was time when installing a beta or even .0 version was almost guaranteed to lose data. Now, I tend to run betas pretty early on. There are some bugs, but they mostly work. I don't see Apple products as any more or less 'pro' than they have always been. Once the software catches up, my m1 MBA doesn't seem anymore or less capable than my G4 Powerbook. TBH, the M1 MBA is already more capable because at the time software had already moved on to Intel while I still had my G4. IMO, the biggest missteps that I would consider less pro on the portable side would be the 1 port MB, and the keyboard. Both of which Apple has moved on from, though the keyboard took way too long to address. I know people complain about ports, but I find usbc (unless there's only 1), the most pro thing about apple laptops because they can morph into anything a pro may need.
cesarb 6y ago
> How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? I do it on every brand new machine I buy; they come with Windows or Ubuntu, and I use another Linux distribution. And for Windows users, AFAIK for a long time the recommendation has also been to immediately wipe it and reinstall, to remove any shovelware which came with the machine.
- bordercases 6y ago
  Ah, but you are hastily justifying the validity of your experience, you see, so cannot be forwarding criticism that the OP will recognize.
- matwood 6y ago
  Windows sure, b/c they tend to come preinstalled with a bunch of garbage, but we're talking about Macs.
lovelyviking 6y ago
How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? Well, everyone who would sell their machine could go through that process. And if this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26204426) is correct then I would not call it an 'edge' case. Besides It's a safety feature. You need it to work when nothing else works. It should be extremely reliable. And if it's not then the only 'reliable' feature of the Mac you have is DFU mode and booting from another Mac. I don't personally know anyone who does that. I personally don't know anyone who dealt with failing computers who doesn't do that. Besides you need partitions for multi boot configuration.
- matwood 6y ago
  All your examples are not of people buying a brand new m1 and immediately re-installing. They are examples why it needs to get fixed, but right now likely has a low impact on the user base.
lovelyviking 6y ago
>The reverse is also true. People think if they experience a bug, then everyone experiences the bug and it's the most important bug ever. The reverse is not always true, because some people have certain knowledge and if they experience some bug they could analyse it and make an educated guess about the quality of the product and importance of the bug. I personally have seen many bugs in Disk Utility. On my previous Mac I couldn't make volume to be named as I wanted in certain conditions no matter how hard I tried with diff scenarios. Disk Utility was simply renaming it to something else. Something unrelated. It was obviously a bug and it was reproducible. And this was not the only one. Another one I've seen that Disk Utility simply cannot format the drive. I've seen more and it's getting worse and worse. After seeng those I was wondering do they test it at all? Does one who tests it knew how to do it?
kergonath 6y ago
> How many people buy a brand new machine and the first thing they do is wipe it and re-install? I do. I’m not sure why, but it’s an old habit and I like to take care of the software myself. I won’t say it’s typical, though. So, as you say, > they are not something that a majority of users will run into this early in the m1's life.

coldtea 6y ago

>People seem to think that if they don’t experience a bug, it’s an “extreme edge case” And they're usually right. From millions of units sold, a small number usually has a bug, unless it's an OS bug independent of the hardware (and also not dependent on the use of a specific software setup, e.g. some ACE plugin or some app messing with some system). 1000 people having the problem and 100 reporting it and some news sites picking it up can make for a big fuss in blogs and posts, but it's still around 1 / 2000 people having the issue in a 2M production run.

LeoNatan25 6y ago
I am mostly speaking about OS bugs, not hardware. The hardware side of Apple is still of high quality. It’s the software that is becoming increasing terrible. 1/2000 is still a big number, considering the Apple numbers. I doubt their hardware has so many issues.