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The people who wrote NeXT as well as early OS X and its underpinnings were hyper-competent. As they’ve gotten older and cycled out they’ve been replaced by peop

by donatj 4y ago

The people who wrote NeXT as well as early OS X and its underpinnings were hyper-competent. As they’ve gotten older and cycled out they’ve been replaced by people who seemingly don’t even understand what made early OS X so amazing let alone how to create reliable software. There was a time in the mid aughts where Apple software was some of the most well built, most reliable software in existence. Those days are long gone. Part of me blames the yearly release cycle. Rather than a rock solid OS every couple years, we get incremental junk where they haven’t had the time to refine anything, just rushing to meet the impending yearly deadlines.

vbezhenar 4y ago
Honestly I think it's all about priorities and budgets. Apparently even most rich company don't want to spend money to fix bugs. There's nothing that would prevent Apple to hire thousand developers who will just spend their time fixing old bugs and clearing bugzilla. You don't even need much skill for that, only determination and particular kind of character to enjoy this activity and there are people out there who like it. You can provide full support and backporting fixes for 3 years, for example, so people might choose level of stability by delaying upgrades and without fear of being left behind.
- bluedino 4y ago
  > There's nothing that would prevent Apple to hire thousand developers who will just spend their time fixing old bugs 1. Find a thousand people who are capable of doing this job 2. Find a thousand people who want to do this job 3. Spend $300,000/year total keeping each of them employed ($3 billion)
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Or simply: - Stop mandated yearly releases - Stop mandated "release must have new features or else" - Stop superfluous changes that take away time and focus. Examples: all the recent redesigns (attempt to butcher Safari, and System Preferences being the biggest ones) Boom. You have enough people to focus on improving things instead of always scrambling to meet deadlines with random changes.
brainzap 4y ago
Humanity is missing a thing that allows us to pass on learnings and experience.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  idk, mentorship, apprenticeship, ojt, postion rotation etc arent enough?
dangus 4y ago
This is nostalgic bias. Early OS X was a mess. Doing basic tasks like resizing a window was laggy and slow. There were most definitely bugs and issues. What evidence do we have that today's corporate-employed developers are less competent than before? You're blaming annual releases but Puma, Jaguar, and Panther were all a released year apart. My take on it would be that the early OS iterations were more impactful and exciting, but now macOS is mature and "complete," so of course all the additions are going to be convenience and consumer features rather than things that make the core OS better.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > This is nostalgic bias. > Early OS X was a mess. The OS was steadily and visibly improving. However, once it reached maturity, Apple decided to throw all care (and its own HIGs) out of the window. And now the OS has moved from stagnation to steady degradation.
  - dangus 4y ago
    This discussion reminds me of the technology adoption curve: https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-customer-segments-technology-adoption/ https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-custo... The truth is, HIG is a guideline. That’s the G. It’s a living document that changes, like language. A lot of changes that happened to macOS and Apple software looked bad at first release, like Final Cut Pro X. Many of those decisions were the right move in the long term. Don't mistake early iteration deficiencies of rewritten component with an overall trend of degradation (again, see Final Cut Pro). If you’re a late majority adopter or laggard, you might just not be comfortable with change at first or ever, and that’s perfectly okay. And sure, not all change is good, but bad software doesn’t make Apple money, either.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Apple's HIGs were carefully researched and validated. The original HIGs from the 80s even had an extensive bibliography linking to and citing extensive user research. What are the current changes except "we don't understand how desktop OSes work, and we've only worked with iOS, so there"?

by donatj 4y ago

vbezhenar 4y ago

Honestly I think it's all about priorities and budgets. Apparently even most rich company don't want to spend money to fix bugs. There's nothing that would prevent Apple to hire thousand developers who will just spend their time fixing old bugs and clearing bugzilla. You don't even need much skill for that, only determination and particular kind of character to enjoy this activity and there are people out there who like it. You can provide full support and backporting fixes for 3 years, for example, so people might choose level of stability by delaying upgrades and without fear of being left behind.

bluedino 4y ago
> There's nothing that would prevent Apple to hire thousand developers who will just spend their time fixing old bugs 1. Find a thousand people who are capable of doing this job 2. Find a thousand people who want to do this job 3. Spend $300,000/year total keeping each of them employed ($3 billion)
- dmitriid 4y ago
  Or simply: - Stop mandated yearly releases - Stop mandated "release must have new features or else" - Stop superfluous changes that take away time and focus. Examples: all the recent redesigns (attempt to butcher Safari, and System Preferences being the biggest ones) Boom. You have enough people to focus on improving things instead of always scrambling to meet deadlines with random changes.

brainzap 4y ago

Humanity is missing a thing that allows us to pass on learnings and experience.

andrekandre 4y ago
idk, mentorship, apprenticeship, ojt, postion rotation etc arent enough?

dangus 4y ago

This is nostalgic bias. Early OS X was a mess. Doing basic tasks like resizing a window was laggy and slow. There were most definitely bugs and issues. What evidence do we have that today's corporate-employed developers are less competent than before? You're blaming annual releases but Puma, Jaguar, and Panther were all a released year apart. My take on it would be that the early OS iterations were more impactful and exciting, but now macOS is mature and "complete," so of course all the additions are going to be convenience and consumer features rather than things that make the core OS better.

dmitriid 4y ago
> This is nostalgic bias. > Early OS X was a mess. The OS was steadily and visibly improving. However, once it reached maturity, Apple decided to throw all care (and its own HIGs) out of the window. And now the OS has moved from stagnation to steady degradation.
- dangus 4y ago
  This discussion reminds me of the technology adoption curve: https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-customer-segments-technology-adoption/ https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-custo... The truth is, HIG is a guideline. That’s the G. It’s a living document that changes, like language. A lot of changes that happened to macOS and Apple software looked bad at first release, like Final Cut Pro X. Many of those decisions were the right move in the long term. Don't mistake early iteration deficiencies of rewritten component with an overall trend of degradation (again, see Final Cut Pro). If you’re a late majority adopter or laggard, you might just not be comfortable with change at first or ever, and that’s perfectly okay. And sure, not all change is good, but bad software doesn’t make Apple money, either.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Apple's HIGs were carefully researched and validated. The original HIGs from the 80s even had an extensive bibliography linking to and citing extensive user research. What are the current changes except "we don't understand how desktop OSes work, and we've only worked with iOS, so there"?