8 ms·

People nowadays praise Apple for their hardware, mainly their silicon - not their software. Maybe it's time for Apple to shake things up and promote someone els

People nowadays praise Apple for their hardware, mainly their silicon - not their software. Maybe it's time for Apple to shake things up and promote someone else to VP of Software engineering?

bsaul 4y ago
I’m with you, however mac os remain the best dekstop OS and iOS remain the best mobile one, even after all those years. So, they must be doing something right..
- GrabbinD33ze69 4y ago
  I agree, in my experience, MacOS is one of the most reliable operating systems I've used in terms of lack of crashes or spurrious bugs; the most common bug I see is my mouse pointer dissapearing, which is fixed by opening the tasks view.
  - DelightOne 4y ago
    My mouse pointer also disappeared for a time when it by accident crossed over to my iPad. After disabling that feature it never happened again.
  - pohuing 4y ago
    If only they could so something about the truly terrible window switching crap, where you'll have to hit the same icon in your doc multiple times to eventually with a bit of luck get to the window you wanted. Why can't we have window previews like Windows has had since Windows 7 or just about every DE on Linux
    - mml 4y ago
      hold down option when you release the selection to force hidden windows up. i too hate this behavior.
    - resist_futility 4y ago
      Right or control click the dock icon and choose the one you want. You can also press control-down arrow key to show current app windows or up for all windows/desktops.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  iOS lacks many features that have been standard on Android for years and the only reason it feels so smooth is because the UI thread has pretty much the highest QoL that anything can ever have. iOS would rather drop your network call than drop a single frame. Android variants all have things that iOS can only dream of having in five years (notifications was a fun one), just spread very unevenly throughout manufacturers. Samsung currently has a very good Android build. Calling it the best is very far fetched.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Yeah, android is lightyears ahead in a few things, but hardware and privacy-wise iphones are simply that much better. I try to reevaluate the platform every now and then, but the closest I got to changing was Pixel 6 with Graphene - which I decided against due to frequent hardware bugs..
  - dangus 4y ago
    The copying of features isn't one-sided. Both companies have had firsts there: https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/stolen-features-android-apple/ https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/stolen-features-android-app... When I switched from Android to iOS in 2016, I was shocked at how little was different, and I can only assume gulf has narrowed since then. A lot of features Android users just assume iOS users don't have are there: vendor-agnostic password manager integration, Safari browser extensions, Safari content (ad) blocker API (Chrome is restricting ad-blockers soon!), more complete home screen customization and widgets, lock screen customization and widgets (iOS 16, upcoming), custom third-party keyboards, grouped/customizable notification system, native console wireless controller support from all three consoles. Features like granular privacy controls and screen recording (with the exception of some obscure Android OEM builds) debuted on iOS first. I'd be skeptical with anyone declaring either platform "best," I think they're both roughly equivalent. However, I do think that anyone who uses macOS is insane to go with Android. There are simply too many useful integrations between the platforms to ignore, combined with the fact that, even if the iPhone isn't the best phone, it's usually in the top handful of choices in terms the overall package.
    - 4y ago
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"...however mac os remain the best dekstop OS..." I would say this is a matter of opinion.
  - markmark 4y ago
    Certainly not one I agree with.
- imron 4y ago
  > So, they must be doing something right.. Resting on laurels, while trying to figure out how to destroy everything good about macOS by making it more like iOS.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > best mobile one It stagnated enough for android to come really close, while the other issues didn’t improve much (side loading will be on Apple’s dead body, default apps setting still being too few), and there is no end in sight to the constant nagging for more service revenue. Nowadays both OS are mostly on par, for instance android 13’s per app language setting is one of those QoL things that were iOS’s turf but are now more prominent in android.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Not really. Remember that their "competition" at the time the iPhone came out was utter shit, and Android (although a far cry from those days) is still pretty much shit.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Symbian was quite alright from user point of view, not so much from Symbian C++ developer experience though. Some of its features are yet to appear on iOS.
    - NonNefarious 4y ago
      I remember its existence but never used it. It was also not popular in the USA. Motorola dominated, and if you looked at their offerings and their syncing software it was incredible how utterly incompetent it was. For example, their contacts didn't have addresses... I mean, WTF? And the syncing software (to Outlook, for example) just straight-up didn't work. I had a Motorola phone with 32MB of memory, and it couldn't hold the data my 8MB Handspring Visor could. When the iPhone came out, that was the dominant landscape: PDAs and horribly incompetent phones. Internet browsing meant WAP (a clumsy attempt to dumb Web pages down enough to show on tiny, all-text phone screens) or a Blackberry. Blackberry rested on its laurels and a shitty, shitty browser until dead. There are plenty of things that Apple remains bafflingly ignorant of, or just petulantly refuses to fix on its mobile devices. Great example: The iPhone, after 15 years, STILL doesn't notify you of missed calls. That's right: You don't even have the OPTION to get audible alerts of missed calls, but meanwhile you can get up to 10 alerts of missed TEXTS. That is simply stupid. Then came the Apple Pencil... and no support for it in iOS. Every app developer had to implement handwriting recognition independently. WTF? Why didn't Apple simply allocate a square area in the on-screen iPad keyboard to accept written characters, which Palm OS nailed in the '90s? Annnyway... I looked up Symbian because I work in Qt a lot now, and it was originally from Nokia. I knew it had been developed for phones, but could not imagine why. That's because I didn't ever interact with Symbian or see it in the wild and know it was from Nokia. So thanks for the note. I think Qt is pretty cool, and my team just made a good desktop app with it. I'm curious why the C++ Symbian experience wasn't good.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Even though I really dislike how Google screws Java developers with their Android Java approach, I really appreciate their "my way or the highway" regarding the use of managed languages on the platform. So I wouldn't consider iOS the best mobile one in that regard, as probably no one that suffers being brought sundenly to the home screen due to pointer errors in Objective-C.
dangus 4y ago
I view it a different way: macOS and many of Apple's built-in apps/utilities are, at the very least, a less bad option compared to many others. OS utilities like Image Capture, Preview, Apple's screenshot utilities, Spotlight, Quick Look, and quite a few others have been basically "killer apps" that make me want to use macOS over Windows for decades now. Even basic areas like system settings have been a point of frustration for Windows for an extremely long time now, with Microsoft taking many years to truly migrate off of the Control Panel and deliver something half-decent in the Settings app. The Windows 11 iteration finally starts to feel like it's a little bit cohesive (but I still hate the Devices settings panel). The whole situation has really been a mess going back to Windows 8. Another example: anytime someone says that printers universally suck I know immediately that they're Windows users because of just how much better Macs interact with printers and scanners and how much better and more reliable their configuration interface is. Apple single-handedly saved the entire printer industry from the depths of hell with AirPrint, before that Bonjour, and before that shipping OS X with preinstalled printer drivers. Windows 10 couldn't decide what screenshot app I was supposed to use, thank goodness it's been consolidated after Windows 10's inclusion of two separate apps both worse than Apple's tooling. Plus, Apple has to get credit for the sheer number of decently high quality non-enterprise apps that Apple just gives you for free. Microsoft doesn't make anything that approaches the quality you get from Apple's free iMovie, Photos, Podcasts, Books, iTunes/Music, Contacts, Mail, Pages/Keynote/Numbers (without paying).
- markmark 4y ago
  The only one of those apps I used when I was on mac for a few years was iMovie (actually my wife used it, I didn't use any of those apps). Finder on the other hand...
  - dangus 4y ago
    "I don't use all the things that are better about Mac than Windows" is not a very strong argument for the merits of Microsoft's OS.
lawgimenez 4y ago
I agree, SwiftUI's progress is just very slow. Especially their multiplatform support in Xcode 14. UI will look good in iOS but on macOS it's just very bad.

People nowadays praise Apple for their hardware, mainly their silicon - not their software. Maybe it's time for Apple to shake things up and promote someone else to VP of Software engineering?

bsaul 4y ago

I’m with you, however mac os remain the best dekstop OS and iOS remain the best mobile one, even after all those years. So, they must be doing something right..

GrabbinD33ze69 4y ago
I agree, in my experience, MacOS is one of the most reliable operating systems I've used in terms of lack of crashes or spurrious bugs; the most common bug I see is my mouse pointer dissapearing, which is fixed by opening the tasks view.
- DelightOne 4y ago
  My mouse pointer also disappeared for a time when it by accident crossed over to my iPad. After disabling that feature it never happened again.
- pohuing 4y ago
  If only they could so something about the truly terrible window switching crap, where you'll have to hit the same icon in your doc multiple times to eventually with a bit of luck get to the window you wanted. Why can't we have window previews like Windows has had since Windows 7 or just about every DE on Linux
  - mml 4y ago
    hold down option when you release the selection to force hidden windows up. i too hate this behavior.
  - resist_futility 4y ago
    Right or control click the dock icon and choose the one you want. You can also press control-down arrow key to show current app windows or up for all windows/desktops.
ohgodplsno 4y ago
iOS lacks many features that have been standard on Android for years and the only reason it feels so smooth is because the UI thread has pretty much the highest QoL that anything can ever have. iOS would rather drop your network call than drop a single frame. Android variants all have things that iOS can only dream of having in five years (notifications was a fun one), just spread very unevenly throughout manufacturers. Samsung currently has a very good Android build. Calling it the best is very far fetched.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Yeah, android is lightyears ahead in a few things, but hardware and privacy-wise iphones are simply that much better. I try to reevaluate the platform every now and then, but the closest I got to changing was Pixel 6 with Graphene - which I decided against due to frequent hardware bugs..
- dangus 4y ago
  The copying of features isn't one-sided. Both companies have had firsts there: https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/stolen-features-android-apple/ https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/stolen-features-android-app... When I switched from Android to iOS in 2016, I was shocked at how little was different, and I can only assume gulf has narrowed since then. A lot of features Android users just assume iOS users don't have are there: vendor-agnostic password manager integration, Safari browser extensions, Safari content (ad) blocker API (Chrome is restricting ad-blockers soon!), more complete home screen customization and widgets, lock screen customization and widgets (iOS 16, upcoming), custom third-party keyboards, grouped/customizable notification system, native console wireless controller support from all three consoles. Features like granular privacy controls and screen recording (with the exception of some obscure Android OEM builds) debuted on iOS first. I'd be skeptical with anyone declaring either platform "best," I think they're both roughly equivalent. However, I do think that anyone who uses macOS is insane to go with Android. There are simply too many useful integrations between the platforms to ignore, combined with the fact that, even if the iPhone isn't the best phone, it's usually in the top handful of choices in terms the overall package.
  - 4y ago
FpUser 4y ago
>"...however mac os remain the best dekstop OS..." I would say this is a matter of opinion.
- markmark 4y ago
  Certainly not one I agree with.
imron 4y ago
> So, they must be doing something right.. Resting on laurels, while trying to figure out how to destroy everything good about macOS by making it more like iOS.
makeitdouble 4y ago
> best mobile one It stagnated enough for android to come really close, while the other issues didn’t improve much (side loading will be on Apple’s dead body, default apps setting still being too few), and there is no end in sight to the constant nagging for more service revenue. Nowadays both OS are mostly on par, for instance android 13’s per app language setting is one of those QoL things that were iOS’s turf but are now more prominent in android.
NonNefarious 4y ago
Not really. Remember that their "competition" at the time the iPhone came out was utter shit, and Android (although a far cry from those days) is still pretty much shit.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Symbian was quite alright from user point of view, not so much from Symbian C++ developer experience though. Some of its features are yet to appear on iOS.
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    I remember its existence but never used it. It was also not popular in the USA. Motorola dominated, and if you looked at their offerings and their syncing software it was incredible how utterly incompetent it was. For example, their contacts didn't have addresses... I mean, WTF? And the syncing software (to Outlook, for example) just straight-up didn't work. I had a Motorola phone with 32MB of memory, and it couldn't hold the data my 8MB Handspring Visor could. When the iPhone came out, that was the dominant landscape: PDAs and horribly incompetent phones. Internet browsing meant WAP (a clumsy attempt to dumb Web pages down enough to show on tiny, all-text phone screens) or a Blackberry. Blackberry rested on its laurels and a shitty, shitty browser until dead. There are plenty of things that Apple remains bafflingly ignorant of, or just petulantly refuses to fix on its mobile devices. Great example: The iPhone, after 15 years, STILL doesn't notify you of missed calls. That's right: You don't even have the OPTION to get audible alerts of missed calls, but meanwhile you can get up to 10 alerts of missed TEXTS. That is simply stupid. Then came the Apple Pencil... and no support for it in iOS. Every app developer had to implement handwriting recognition independently. WTF? Why didn't Apple simply allocate a square area in the on-screen iPad keyboard to accept written characters, which Palm OS nailed in the '90s? Annnyway... I looked up Symbian because I work in Qt a lot now, and it was originally from Nokia. I knew it had been developed for phones, but could not imagine why. That's because I didn't ever interact with Symbian or see it in the wild and know it was from Nokia. So thanks for the note. I think Qt is pretty cool, and my team just made a good desktop app with it. I'm curious why the C++ Symbian experience wasn't good.
pjmlp 4y ago
Even though I really dislike how Google screws Java developers with their Android Java approach, I really appreciate their "my way or the highway" regarding the use of managed languages on the platform. So I wouldn't consider iOS the best mobile one in that regard, as probably no one that suffers being brought sundenly to the home screen due to pointer errors in Objective-C.

dangus 4y ago

I view it a different way: macOS and many of Apple's built-in apps/utilities are, at the very least, a less bad option compared to many others. OS utilities like Image Capture, Preview, Apple's screenshot utilities, Spotlight, Quick Look, and quite a few others have been basically "killer apps" that make me want to use macOS over Windows for decades now. Even basic areas like system settings have been a point of frustration for Windows for an extremely long time now, with Microsoft taking many years to truly migrate off of the Control Panel and deliver something half-decent in the Settings app. The Windows 11 iteration finally starts to feel like it's a little bit cohesive (but I still hate the Devices settings panel). The whole situation has really been a mess going back to Windows 8. Another example: anytime someone says that printers universally suck I know immediately that they're Windows users because of just how much better Macs interact with printers and scanners and how much better and more reliable their configuration interface is. Apple single-handedly saved the entire printer industry from the depths of hell with AirPrint, before that Bonjour, and before that shipping OS X with preinstalled printer drivers. Windows 10 couldn't decide what screenshot app I was supposed to use, thank goodness it's been consolidated after Windows 10's inclusion of two separate apps both worse than Apple's tooling. Plus, Apple has to get credit for the sheer number of decently high quality non-enterprise apps that Apple just gives you for free. Microsoft doesn't make anything that approaches the quality you get from Apple's free iMovie, Photos, Podcasts, Books, iTunes/Music, Contacts, Mail, Pages/Keynote/Numbers (without paying).

markmark 4y ago
The only one of those apps I used when I was on mac for a few years was iMovie (actually my wife used it, I didn't use any of those apps). Finder on the other hand...
- dangus 4y ago
  "I don't use all the things that are better about Mac than Windows" is not a very strong argument for the merits of Microsoft's OS.

lawgimenez 4y ago

I agree, SwiftUI's progress is just very slow. Especially their multiplatform support in Xcode 14. UI will look good in iOS but on macOS it's just very bad.