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Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

325 points by frizlab 3y ago

saagarjha 3y ago
Wait, you can’t file feedback from the web anymore? That’s incredibly stupid. Their feedback app itself breaks half the time, so I guess they wouldn’t be getting my reports then even if they wanted them.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  https://www.apple.com/feedback/ https://www.apple.com/feedback/
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    If reporting feedback using Feedback Assistant is akin to shouting into the void, using that site is like doing that but in the vacuum of space.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      I can't speak for its efficacy, just it's existence.
- dwaite 3y ago
  I'm not sure what that is about, https://feedbackassistant.apple.com https://feedbackassistant.apple.com
redleggedfrog 3y ago
Actions speak louder than words - Apple is letting it's developers know what it thinks of them. You're going to have to raise quite the ruckus to get them to change their behavior. There's really no impetus for them to change when they're sitting on a mountain of cash.
- omnicognate 3y ago
  I never thought I'd wistfully look back on Steve Ballmer yelling DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!! Apple seem to view external developers as a kind of infestation. The systems and processes they subject them to seem designed to actively discourage them.
  - kyriakos 3y ago
    Stockholm syndrome with a hint of masochism. App developers seem to stick with apple regardless of what they are being subjected to.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      When the bank robbers share their loot with the hostages, Stockholm Syndrome can't be too surprising.
    - latexr 3y ago
      > App developers seem to stick with apple regardless of what they are being subjected to. Because the alternatives aren’t preferable. The indies who have been exclusively using and developing for Apple platforms for years know that Windows and Linux aren’t better¹, just a different set of annoying trade offs. Apple platforms aren’t perfect, but they are the least bad option in that context. They also used to be better in many regards, which makes the situation frustrating due to the wasted potential. ¹ At a personal preference level. There’s no judgement either way, you do you and use whatever you like best.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        For my money, the thing that stops me from dailying a Mac again is the amount of trust Apple demands from you nowadays. Older Macs are really cozy, even up through Yosemite in my opinion. After a certain point though, you could feel the focus shift from onboard utility to metered service. iTunes became Apple Music, the black "AppleTV" logo popped up on my dock, and iCloud pitched a tent in my Settings menu to beg for change. None of this really appeals to me; it's engineered to make the common user happy for a nominal fee, but to everyone else it's just annoying. Little UX warts like that popped up all over MacOS, and it really started to evoke those "Windows 8 Armageddon" vibes I felt a while back. For Apple to correct course, they should ditch the ads and focus on superpowering MacOS and iOS. Right now it's hard for me to trust that Apple is giving me the best of all worlds.
CharlesW 3y ago
I'm not sure I understand this. Wouldn't developers who need code-level assistance (i.e. have more than simple "feedback") submit a Technical Support Incident (https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/ https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/)?
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Developers use feedback to file bugs. Why would they spend money to get help from Apple on how to do that?
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    "developers are a profit center" is your answer
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > Developers use feedback to file bugs. Yes, and they're specifically instructed to file TSIs if they need a workaround in the meantime. https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ Should developers not have to do both? Sure. Should they ignore Apple's instructions and still expect to get help? Not sure.
    - loumf 3y ago
      From experience, I have used a TSI when I need help with a bug in Apple's products. Every single time (about 5x) they "refunded" the TSI because it was an Apple bug. I have never had to pay for extra TSIs -- I use the ones that come with my developer account and (so far) they are always refunded. I don't know why people hoard them -- they are use it or lose it every year. I have also gone to a virtual dev lab during WWDC which was awesome. Lots of "free" help from an Apple engineer (basically 30 minute speed run of lot of questions about Apple Watch workout app development). I have mixed experience with Feedbacks. I have filed dozens that I actually care about and maybe 10% were a decent experience. The rest were essentially ignored.
    - latexr 3y ago
ladberg 3y ago
I sympathize: even filing radars internally at Apple gets much of the same treatment, albeit with the ability to see the state of the radar.
- changoplatanero 3y ago
  Yeah he's lamenting how poorly the external developers are being treated but seems like they are largely being treated the same as Apple treats its own employees
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    I found it sometimes frustrating as well. But my experience was that it depended on the engineer/team/screener the Radar went to. Obviously if it was a bug I found, I much preferred to talk to the engineer in person who maintained the code in question. There were plenty of teams that were very good about jumping on bug reports and getting right back to me. In fact, a decade or so ago at Apple this was more or less the rule. My sense though is that engineering became overwhelmed with bugs especially as Apple itself became as successful as it has become. "In the old days" a smaller team would have one of the engineers on the team screen Radars — maybe rotating to a new engineer every week or so. Engineers could quickly mark a bug as a duplicate of another (recognizing a familiar backtrace or symptoms) or might be able to guess at a diagnosis and send it straight to the engineer in charge of the (likely) relevant code. A few teams I worked on were very good about daily "BRB"s (bug review board meetings). With a number of engineers in attendance, again, bugs were quickly dispatched to the right component, assigned to right engineer. Again though, as Apple grew, I saw bug screeners on many teams more or less automatically flipping Radars back to the Originator if there was not a litany of documentation attached to the Radar. What build of the OS, what hardware, a full sample, system diagnosis.... It was frustrating when it was an obvious bug — maybe even a UI bug — that would take someone all of 30 seconds to repro. I somewhat sympathize though as traffic no doubt began to become a firehose of bug reports. It seemed backwards to me though to put such a burden on the person who is simply trying to report the bug, trying to help you improve the software. Often in screening Radars the description alone was enough for me to know exactly where in the code the problem was. I didn't mind my time being spent at least scanning the Radar title and description. If it was not clear to me at that point, sure, flip it back for more info. The seeming rise of "auto-reject" is what began to irk me.
pschuegr 3y ago
I'm in. Apple Feedback Assistant is absolutely useless.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  [pirate voice] all right, all right, you talkd me into it (parrot squawk)
rado 3y ago
The recent macOS dialog "Allow app to access folder [OK] [Cancel]" supports button cycling by Shift+Tab (previous), but not Tab (next). The Wi-Fi signal strength indication changes when clicking it. So yeah, at least they need to admit things are very bad over there.
- AnonC 3y ago
  Whenever I see or hear about keyboard shortcuts being weird or not working, for some reason I can only think of Catalyst or Electron, both bringing frustratingly poor user experiences. Apple’s own Catalyst based apps (Reminders, as an example) have been terrible over the last few years. I can’t imagine a macOS dialog being either one of these abominations though, which makes me wonder how the issue you describe was introduced.
  - rado 3y ago
    They still seem to have issues from the Carbon to Cocoa transition 20 years ago, like my favourite: apps don't remember their keyboard language.
  - dwaite 3y ago
    Apple's solution for missing Catalyst functionality has been to create analogous features or port existing API to iPad. That said - the long-term strategy doesn't appear to be Catalyst, but Swift UI.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  these arent the heavy HN apple blinders these threads usually get! but yea its pretty bad. i cant go 1 day without a blatant ui bug lightly using apple products at work
spacebacon 3y ago
My experience talking to brick walls has been more productive.
gumballindie 3y ago
Apple’s customer support as a whole is atrocious. Here in the uk their milton keynes apple store is essentially a cesspit of cockiness and upselling rudeness. Filed a complaint against an employee and have yet to receive any feedback two months later. The only apple product in my life is now an iphone, but that will be phased out too. Good riddance. Open source all the way.
speedyapoc 3y ago
I estimate that around 10% of my Feedback Assistant reports ever receive a reply or acknowledgement. These are for reproducible bugs in iOS, for which I've provided an isolated sample project with a 100% reproduction rate. It takes time to create a thoughtful and detailed bug report and the lack of replies are beyond frustrating. I'm glad to see this post and couldn't agree more.
- crimsontech 3y ago
  Fully agree. I work in security and sent Apple a bypass for child restriction policies on iOS, they told me to send it to feedback. Testing, reproducing, writing it up all takes time and effort. I didn’t want anything from them other than for it to be fixed, I have kids with iPhones. It’s no different than other companies though, I sent a remote code execution to Cisco and they just replied that they already knew about it but the product was approaching end of life so they wouldn’t fix it. I’ve stumbled across so many vulnerabilities over the years and I tend to just ignore them unless I’m being paid to find them. It’s not worth the frustration.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    To be fair, remote code execution and "I got around the child lock on this device" are somewhat different in severity.
    - ary 3y ago
      > remote code execution and "I got around the child lock on this device" are somewhat different in severity You’ll notice that the recipients of both reports responded similarly, with apathy. Perhaps that was the point of juxtaposing them?
  - juliob 3y ago
    > It’s no different than other companies though, I sent a remote code execution to Cisco and they just replied that they already knew about it but the product was approaching end of life so they wouldn’t fix it. Huh? That sounds very different from Apple. In that instance, the communication is professional, mature, and respectful of your time and effort.
walterbell 3y ago
What would happen if some Apple developers moved their collective feedback to a Github repo where their bug reports were licensed as CC-BY-4.0, i.e. a license that would allow Apple to migrate content from the public repo to their internal radar? This would allow developers to have a public database of de-duped and triaged bugs, and it would allow Apple to either respond publicly (same as Webkit?) or maintain status quo.
- latexr 3y ago
  Nothing would happen. Websites and GitHub repos for posting Apple bug reports publicly have existed for over a decade. https://openradar.appspot.com/ https://openradar.appspot.com/
  - pronoiac 3y ago
    I'm aware of an open collection of Apple Feedback Assistant reports on GitHub - https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues > Apple Feedback Assistant reports are not public. To help other developers discover existing reports, copy-paste your submitted Feedback Assistant report into a new issue. Make sure you include everything. > This is similar to Open Radar, but it's easier to fill out the report and GitHub has better search. Also, Open Radar doesn't yet support Feedback Assistant. > Instead of voting on issues opened here (which Apple won't see anyway), file a new Feedback Assistant report and copy-paste the contents of the report you found here and link to the original report. Apple encourages duplicates.
  - walterbell 3y ago
    > have existed for over a decade Please note: Reports posted here will not necessarily be seen by Apple. All problems should be submitted at bugreport.apple.com before they are posted here. Please only post information for Radars that you have filed yourself, and please do not include Apple confidential information in your posts. Thank you! Those look like a public mirror of some Radars filed at Apple, i.e. Apple already has that information. If enough developers stop submitting feedback (topic of this HN thread) and start posting bugs into a public repo FIRST, with a CC-BY-4.0 license allowing Apple to mirror the public bugs, then a boycott would have the positive side effect of showing-by-example how the feedback process could be improved. > nothing would happen As a counterpoint, there is a public Bugzilla for Webkit bugs, where the keyword "InRadar" indicates whether the bug has been mirrored to Apple's internal bug reporting system. If enough developers boycott Apple Feedback, could they use a Bugzilla instance for iOS and macOS bug reporting? If enough Apple users start referencing Bugzilla URLs for iOS/macOS production issues and purchasing decisions, could that influence Apple? https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&content=security&no_redirect=1&order=changeddate%20DESC%2Cpriority%2Cbug_severity&query_format=specific https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&cont...
plorkyeran 3y ago
Reporting bugs via feedback assistant is sometimes required when you've successfully found a developer inside Apple who has agreed to fix your bug and they just need the feedback number for internal work reporting purposes. Submitting unsolicited bug reports are just a pointless waste of time. I wouldn't say I'm specifically "boycotting" Feedback Assistant; I just stopped using it because it wasn't doing anything useful.
- neodypsis 3y ago
  How are you supposed to find a developer inside Apple to fix your issue?
  - s3p 3y ago
    Maybe HN or LinkedIn, lol
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    As with all modern tech support: complain loudly on Twitter/X and hope the issue gets enough traction that somebody notices.
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    It is possible to backchannel to them like any other company. It's just much less... publicly evident, if that makes sense? Also (IIRC) if you post on their dev forums and deal with e.g Quinn, they might ask you to file and provide a radar - but it's been a minute since I've interacted over there.
    - nicky0 3y ago
      That guy Quinn "The Eskimo" seems to have been almost singlehandedly manning the developer forums at Apple for over a decade. I hope Apple recognises how valuable he is.
      - xign 3y ago
        Yeah, he kind of seems like the only guy who cares as someone looking from the outside. There are a lot of technology details where you need to dig up some random Apple Developer forum post from him just because Apple sucks at documenting some of their technology.
AnonC 3y ago
Someone please set up a website that can compose an email to Craig Federighi with these issues and let developers email him directly. Apple may not act on or respond to this collective Feedback Assistant feedbacks, since the system may probably be broken to the extent that Apple’s teams don’t even see or get these feedback reports.
- guessmyname 3y ago
  > Someone please set up a website that can compose an email to […] We do not need a website for that. Simply send an email to Craig Federighi or even Tim Cook. You can find their email addresses here → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320383
- rado 3y ago
  Federighi replied with a suggestion to fix my issue. It didn't work, but it was cool anyway.
e28eta 3y ago
I hope something changes with the way apple manages bugs. It’s incredibly demoralizing to spend my time reproducing a bug, writing up the bug report I’d want to receive (including a minimal test case), and hearing nothing for years until it’s either closed or receiving a message asking me to do more work to determine if it’s still an issue. Are there companies that do this well, at a scale approaching Apple’s? I can think of lots of reasons why this is a “hard problem”, and how it’d be hard to staff. I also think they’re getting paid to solve this problem, and aren’t.
- astrange 3y ago
  There's a fundamental problem that the first step is you doing all that work. That means there's no way to tell you the work is wasted; you already did it. I generally think people should do /less/ work when reporting bugs because of this, but you should be careful and clear about what you do put in there.
  - e28eta 3y ago
    Some of that work does benefit me: better understanding of the bug, verification that it’s not something I’m doing wrong, maybe some ideas of a workaround. I’ve stopped doing the second phase: packaging it up and submitting it to apple, because that’s shown itself to be an entirely negative experience. If apple’s not going to spend the $$ on internal QA, and they’re not going to spend the $$ on developer relations, I’m not especially interested in donating my time to help them. I know I’ve seen a similar sentiment from other developers for years. I think low quality / low content bug reports are usually worse than none, because they decrease the signal to noise ratio of bugs. Maybe if there was a better channel of communication, and I knew it’d be more interactive it’d be different.
- baz00 3y ago
  I got so fed up of all the Apple bugs I sold all my Apple stuff and bought a PC. At least I'm greeted with new and interesting bugs no one is going to close.
vasdae 3y ago
I suppose Feedback Assistant is like Windows' Feedback Hub. Users fill it to the top with shit making it impossible for Apple or Microsoft to do anything useful with the feedback.
- s3p 3y ago
  Do users even use Feedback Assistant? I have yet to hear of anyone in my circle (friends, family, coworkers) submit a Feedback. None of them are developers or us the developer beta of iOS, so I have always surmised that to be why.
  - snazz 3y ago
    The app is installed but hidden by default unless you’re running a beta (and in my experience I’ve never gotten a reply to a report unless it’s on a beta). You can use the website or launch the native app with its URI scheme but approximately nobody does that unless they’re really frustrated with a bug and know Feedback Assistant exists.
Obscurity4340 3y ago
I like when HN holds the fire to these kinds of issues/companies. Its almost like us nerds have some kind of fancy communication system/technology or something [dunno shrug]
sccxy 3y ago
Also their feedback assistant is buggy as hell. If you managed to create draft in old version (before random code change). But it does not match with new version your feedback assistant crashes to blank screen. (JSON parse syntax error) That means it is impossible to file new bugs... 1 second web page works but after that it is blank screen and nothing to do.
mvdtnz 3y ago
It's not clear from reading this if "Apple developers" are developers who work for Apple, or developers who write software for Apple systems.
zakki 3y ago
Let’s see if there will be Bug as a Service. Pay for bug fix in addition of $99/year
wackget 3y ago
As a developer, I flatly refuse to engage with Apple in any way because of their $100 annual fee. I feel especially vindicated when stuff like this surfaces. Imagine being the richest company in the world and having the audacity to charge people for the privilege of being able to contribute to your platform. It is absolutely insane, and nothing will convince me otherwise.
- stockboss 3y ago
  while i agree with your sentiment, i think Apple would probably argue that they're actually charging for access to their distribution network.
  - type0 3y ago
    They are charging for the access to their "walled city/garden", they are promoting digital feudalism and the worst part is that other companies see them as exemplary for these terrible practices.
  - xign 3y ago
    Yes and no. If you are making a macOS app and want to distribute your own binary (meaning not via the App Store), you are basically doing everything yourself and not using Apple's network. You still have to get a developer account because that's how you 1) get a valid developer signature, and 2) get access to app notarization service. Both 1 and 2 are now mandatory unless you force your users to jump through a lot of security hoops to open your app. I maintain an open source macOS software and begrudgingly signed up for a developer account since I didn't want my users to have to suffer through the security settings screen. At least I got a donation program up a few years later so at least I'm not paying out of pocket anymore. Some of my peers/competitors (open source text editors) are still not signing their app (since they didn't feel like getting this sorted out) forcing users to have to go through the security settings which I think is a crappy situation.
- kaishin 3y ago
  One reason they are charging is to weed out bad actors or people not serious enough about publishing apps on their stores. That said they could do this as a one off like Google, and make it cheaper too.
saltypal 3y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947903 (I feel incredibly old right now.) Edited to add: Finally found the full form letter [1]. (I filed a copy back then and it still shows up languishing in Feedback Assistant even now!) [1]: https://gist.github.com/mysteriouspants/1989061 https://gist.github.com/mysteriouspants/1989061
crazygringo 3y ago
Boycotts/strikes* only work if most or nearly all people participate, because you'll only participate if you're pretty sure nearly everyone else is too. While if this blogpost merely gets 0.1% of developers to strike... Apple couldn't care less. I think this developer strike is a great idea, but launching it as a single person's call to action (Jeff Johnson's) is not generally going to be effective in changing behavior. What an organizer needs to do is to first personally contact somewhere between 50-200 other major, known, respected developers and get them to co-sign a joint letter which then gets published, so everyone can see this is a serious strike by people who know what they're doing -- not just one person's wish. It needs to get covered in all the major tech publications, so both Apple and all developers see it as well. And then the letter needes to not lay out a list of all of the complaints, but rather the specific, verifiable actions Apple needs to take in order to end the strike, so this isn't some open-ended thing. And they need to be realistic actions as well, not wishful thinking -- signs of progress with dates and milestones, not fix-all-the-things-immediately. If you're going to do a strike, you need to actually organize it. Writing a blog post that merely "encourage[s] all Apple developers to join me" is not the same as organizing. And generally speaking, writing a blog post claiming that you're striking isn't going to get anybody else to magically organize it for you. * As the author indicates lower in the article, it's more of a strike than a boycott since it's stopping providing free labor rather than stopping purchases, so I'll refer to it as a strike
- jshier 3y ago
  Fundamentally, such a strike assumes Apple cares about the free reports they get from their developers. I'm not sure that's true. And even if it is, it's not like they don't have enough other reports or features to work on, so the loss of all outside bug reporting probably wouldn't affect them at all.
  - jfim 3y ago
    There might even be a middle manager that gets to say "external bug reports are 30% down YoY, our quality efforts worked out."
- lapcat 3y ago
watersb 3y ago
I stopped filing Apple bugs ("rdar") ten years ago. It was pitching a lot of work into a hole: totally opaque.
AshleysBrain 3y ago
I previously blogged about how Apple treat web developers with negligence when it comes to Safari [1]. This makes it looks like Apple treat other developers with negligence as well, which is unsurprising, frankly. [1] https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-releases-development-1616 https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-rel...
- realusername 3y ago
  I solved this by basically treating the browser as legacy and "best effort", similarly as IE11 in its days. They have a very large number of basic features broken regularly, it's not only about cutting edge stuff. I suspect their testing practices are less than stellar.
  - AshleysBrain 3y ago
    Yep, we've ended up on the same idea - we make a best effort to keep it working and if we can't we advise to switch to another browser. But tough luck on iOS, as other browser engines are banned...
    - realusername 3y ago
      It's going to be controversial but iPhone users are going to have an inferior web experience no matter what, at some point we have to say it even if it's not popular. The core business of Apple is in the apps.
enginaar 3y ago
IMO it's optimistic to assume Apple can fix this
efitz 3y ago
I am sick of everybody asking for feedback everywhere, and nobody wants to spend any human effort looking at the feedback. And the worst of it is the "Do you love our app?" dark pattern.
unflxw 3y ago
Some minor product manager in Cupertino, two quarters from now: "As we can see in this graph, thanks to the improvements to Feedback Assistant over the past couple years, we've reduced our products' bug rate to nearly zero percent!"
stevedekorte 3y ago
I've run into many of the problems mentioned with Apple Feedback and gave up on using them many years ago. It's pretty disheartening when you spend a bunch of time getting an OS crashing bug to reproduce in a small amount of code to submit in a bug report for them to neither confirm that they can repeat it, or consider it worth fixing.

325 points by frizlab 3y ago

Wait, you can’t file feedback from the web anymore? That’s incredibly stupid. Their feedback app itself breaks half the time, so I guess they wouldn’t be getting my reports then even if they wanted them.

CharlesW 3y ago
https://www.apple.com/feedback/ https://www.apple.com/feedback/
- saagarjha 3y ago
  If reporting feedback using Feedback Assistant is akin to shouting into the void, using that site is like doing that but in the vacuum of space.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    I can't speak for its efficacy, just it's existence.
dwaite 3y ago
I'm not sure what that is about, https://feedbackassistant.apple.com https://feedbackassistant.apple.com

redleggedfrog 3y ago

Actions speak louder than words - Apple is letting it's developers know what it thinks of them. You're going to have to raise quite the ruckus to get them to change their behavior. There's really no impetus for them to change when they're sitting on a mountain of cash.

omnicognate 3y ago
I never thought I'd wistfully look back on Steve Ballmer yelling DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!! Apple seem to view external developers as a kind of infestation. The systems and processes they subject them to seem designed to actively discourage them.
- kyriakos 3y ago
  Stockholm syndrome with a hint of masochism. App developers seem to stick with apple regardless of what they are being subjected to.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    When the bank robbers share their loot with the hostages, Stockholm Syndrome can't be too surprising.
  - latexr 3y ago
    > App developers seem to stick with apple regardless of what they are being subjected to. Because the alternatives aren’t preferable. The indies who have been exclusively using and developing for Apple platforms for years know that Windows and Linux aren’t better¹, just a different set of annoying trade offs. Apple platforms aren’t perfect, but they are the least bad option in that context. They also used to be better in many regards, which makes the situation frustrating due to the wasted potential. ¹ At a personal preference level. There’s no judgement either way, you do you and use whatever you like best.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      For my money, the thing that stops me from dailying a Mac again is the amount of trust Apple demands from you nowadays. Older Macs are really cozy, even up through Yosemite in my opinion. After a certain point though, you could feel the focus shift from onboard utility to metered service. iTunes became Apple Music, the black "AppleTV" logo popped up on my dock, and iCloud pitched a tent in my Settings menu to beg for change. None of this really appeals to me; it's engineered to make the common user happy for a nominal fee, but to everyone else it's just annoying. Little UX warts like that popped up all over MacOS, and it really started to evoke those "Windows 8 Armageddon" vibes I felt a while back. For Apple to correct course, they should ditch the ads and focus on superpowering MacOS and iOS. Right now it's hard for me to trust that Apple is giving me the best of all worlds.

CharlesW 3y ago

I'm not sure I understand this. Wouldn't developers who need code-level assistance (i.e. have more than simple "feedback") submit a Technical Support Incident (https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/ https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/)?

saagarjha 3y ago
Developers use feedback to file bugs. Why would they spend money to get help from Apple on how to do that?
- mistrial9 3y ago
  "developers are a profit center" is your answer
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > Developers use feedback to file bugs. Yes, and they're specifically instructed to file TSIs if they need a workaround in the meantime. https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ Should developers not have to do both? Sure. Should they ignore Apple's instructions and still expect to get help? Not sure.
  - loumf 3y ago
    From experience, I have used a TSI when I need help with a bug in Apple's products. Every single time (about 5x) they "refunded" the TSI because it was an Apple bug. I have never had to pay for extra TSIs -- I use the ones that come with my developer account and (so far) they are always refunded. I don't know why people hoard them -- they are use it or lose it every year. I have also gone to a virtual dev lab during WWDC which was awesome. Lots of "free" help from an Apple engineer (basically 30 minute speed run of lot of questions about Apple Watch workout app development). I have mixed experience with Feedbacks. I have filed dozens that I actually care about and maybe 10% were a decent experience. The rest were essentially ignored.
  - latexr 3y ago

ladberg 3y ago

I sympathize: even filing radars internally at Apple gets much of the same treatment, albeit with the ability to see the state of the radar.

changoplatanero 3y ago
Yeah he's lamenting how poorly the external developers are being treated but seems like they are largely being treated the same as Apple treats its own employees
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I found it sometimes frustrating as well. But my experience was that it depended on the engineer/team/screener the Radar went to. Obviously if it was a bug I found, I much preferred to talk to the engineer in person who maintained the code in question. There were plenty of teams that were very good about jumping on bug reports and getting right back to me. In fact, a decade or so ago at Apple this was more or less the rule. My sense though is that engineering became overwhelmed with bugs especially as Apple itself became as successful as it has become. "In the old days" a smaller team would have one of the engineers on the team screen Radars — maybe rotating to a new engineer every week or so. Engineers could quickly mark a bug as a duplicate of another (recognizing a familiar backtrace or symptoms) or might be able to guess at a diagnosis and send it straight to the engineer in charge of the (likely) relevant code. A few teams I worked on were very good about daily "BRB"s (bug review board meetings). With a number of engineers in attendance, again, bugs were quickly dispatched to the right component, assigned to right engineer. Again though, as Apple grew, I saw bug screeners on many teams more or less automatically flipping Radars back to the Originator if there was not a litany of documentation attached to the Radar. What build of the OS, what hardware, a full sample, system diagnosis.... It was frustrating when it was an obvious bug — maybe even a UI bug — that would take someone all of 30 seconds to repro. I somewhat sympathize though as traffic no doubt began to become a firehose of bug reports. It seemed backwards to me though to put such a burden on the person who is simply trying to report the bug, trying to help you improve the software. Often in screening Radars the description alone was enough for me to know exactly where in the code the problem was. I didn't mind my time being spent at least scanning the Radar title and description. If it was not clear to me at that point, sure, flip it back for more info. The seeming rise of "auto-reject" is what began to irk me.

pschuegr 3y ago

I'm in. Apple Feedback Assistant is absolutely useless.

Obscurity4340 3y ago
[pirate voice] all right, all right, you talkd me into it (parrot squawk)

rado 3y ago

The recent macOS dialog "Allow app to access folder [OK] [Cancel]" supports button cycling by Shift+Tab (previous), but not Tab (next). The Wi-Fi signal strength indication changes when clicking it. So yeah, at least they need to admit things are very bad over there.

AnonC 3y ago
Whenever I see or hear about keyboard shortcuts being weird or not working, for some reason I can only think of Catalyst or Electron, both bringing frustratingly poor user experiences. Apple’s own Catalyst based apps (Reminders, as an example) have been terrible over the last few years. I can’t imagine a macOS dialog being either one of these abominations though, which makes me wonder how the issue you describe was introduced.
- rado 3y ago
  They still seem to have issues from the Carbon to Cocoa transition 20 years ago, like my favourite: apps don't remember their keyboard language.
- dwaite 3y ago
  Apple's solution for missing Catalyst functionality has been to create analogous features or port existing API to iPad. That said - the long-term strategy doesn't appear to be Catalyst, but Swift UI.
sitzkrieg 3y ago
these arent the heavy HN apple blinders these threads usually get! but yea its pretty bad. i cant go 1 day without a blatant ui bug lightly using apple products at work

spacebacon 3y ago

My experience talking to brick walls has been more productive.

gumballindie 3y ago

Apple’s customer support as a whole is atrocious. Here in the uk their milton keynes apple store is essentially a cesspit of cockiness and upselling rudeness. Filed a complaint against an employee and have yet to receive any feedback two months later. The only apple product in my life is now an iphone, but that will be phased out too. Good riddance. Open source all the way.

speedyapoc 3y ago

I estimate that around 10% of my Feedback Assistant reports ever receive a reply or acknowledgement. These are for reproducible bugs in iOS, for which I've provided an isolated sample project with a 100% reproduction rate. It takes time to create a thoughtful and detailed bug report and the lack of replies are beyond frustrating. I'm glad to see this post and couldn't agree more.

crimsontech 3y ago
Fully agree. I work in security and sent Apple a bypass for child restriction policies on iOS, they told me to send it to feedback. Testing, reproducing, writing it up all takes time and effort. I didn’t want anything from them other than for it to be fixed, I have kids with iPhones. It’s no different than other companies though, I sent a remote code execution to Cisco and they just replied that they already knew about it but the product was approaching end of life so they wouldn’t fix it. I’ve stumbled across so many vulnerabilities over the years and I tend to just ignore them unless I’m being paid to find them. It’s not worth the frustration.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  To be fair, remote code execution and "I got around the child lock on this device" are somewhat different in severity.
  - ary 3y ago
    > remote code execution and "I got around the child lock on this device" are somewhat different in severity You’ll notice that the recipients of both reports responded similarly, with apathy. Perhaps that was the point of juxtaposing them?
- juliob 3y ago
  > It’s no different than other companies though, I sent a remote code execution to Cisco and they just replied that they already knew about it but the product was approaching end of life so they wouldn’t fix it. Huh? That sounds very different from Apple. In that instance, the communication is professional, mature, and respectful of your time and effort.

walterbell 3y ago

What would happen if some Apple developers moved their collective feedback to a Github repo where their bug reports were licensed as CC-BY-4.0, i.e. a license that would allow Apple to migrate content from the public repo to their internal radar? This would allow developers to have a public database of de-duped and triaged bugs, and it would allow Apple to either respond publicly (same as Webkit?) or maintain status quo.

latexr 3y ago
Nothing would happen. Websites and GitHub repos for posting Apple bug reports publicly have existed for over a decade. https://openradar.appspot.com/ https://openradar.appspot.com/
- pronoiac 3y ago
  I'm aware of an open collection of Apple Feedback Assistant reports on GitHub - https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues https://github.com/feedback-assistant/reports/issues > Apple Feedback Assistant reports are not public. To help other developers discover existing reports, copy-paste your submitted Feedback Assistant report into a new issue. Make sure you include everything. > This is similar to Open Radar, but it's easier to fill out the report and GitHub has better search. Also, Open Radar doesn't yet support Feedback Assistant. > Instead of voting on issues opened here (which Apple won't see anyway), file a new Feedback Assistant report and copy-paste the contents of the report you found here and link to the original report. Apple encourages duplicates.
- walterbell 3y ago
  > have existed for over a decade Please note: Reports posted here will not necessarily be seen by Apple. All problems should be submitted at bugreport.apple.com before they are posted here. Please only post information for Radars that you have filed yourself, and please do not include Apple confidential information in your posts. Thank you! Those look like a public mirror of some Radars filed at Apple, i.e. Apple already has that information. If enough developers stop submitting feedback (topic of this HN thread) and start posting bugs into a public repo FIRST, with a CC-BY-4.0 license allowing Apple to mirror the public bugs, then a boycott would have the positive side effect of showing-by-example how the feedback process could be improved. > nothing would happen As a counterpoint, there is a public Bugzilla for Webkit bugs, where the keyword "InRadar" indicates whether the bug has been mirrored to Apple's internal bug reporting system. If enough developers boycott Apple Feedback, could they use a Bugzilla instance for iOS and macOS bug reporting? If enough Apple users start referencing Bugzilla URLs for iOS/macOS production issues and purchasing decisions, could that influence Apple? https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&content=security&no_redirect=1&order=changeddate%20DESC%2Cpriority%2Cbug_severity&query_format=specific https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&cont...

plorkyeran 3y ago

Reporting bugs via feedback assistant is sometimes required when you've successfully found a developer inside Apple who has agreed to fix your bug and they just need the feedback number for internal work reporting purposes. Submitting unsolicited bug reports are just a pointless waste of time. I wouldn't say I'm specifically "boycotting" Feedback Assistant; I just stopped using it because it wasn't doing anything useful.

neodypsis 3y ago
How are you supposed to find a developer inside Apple to fix your issue?
- s3p 3y ago
  Maybe HN or LinkedIn, lol
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  As with all modern tech support: complain loudly on Twitter/X and hope the issue gets enough traction that somebody notices.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  It is possible to backchannel to them like any other company. It's just much less... publicly evident, if that makes sense? Also (IIRC) if you post on their dev forums and deal with e.g Quinn, they might ask you to file and provide a radar - but it's been a minute since I've interacted over there.
  - nicky0 3y ago
    That guy Quinn "The Eskimo" seems to have been almost singlehandedly manning the developer forums at Apple for over a decade. I hope Apple recognises how valuable he is.
    - xign 3y ago
      Yeah, he kind of seems like the only guy who cares as someone looking from the outside. There are a lot of technology details where you need to dig up some random Apple Developer forum post from him just because Apple sucks at documenting some of their technology.

AnonC 3y ago

Someone please set up a website that can compose an email to Craig Federighi with these issues and let developers email him directly. Apple may not act on or respond to this collective Feedback Assistant feedbacks, since the system may probably be broken to the extent that Apple’s teams don’t even see or get these feedback reports.

guessmyname 3y ago
> Someone please set up a website that can compose an email to […] We do not need a website for that. Simply send an email to Craig Federighi or even Tim Cook. You can find their email addresses here → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320383
rado 3y ago
Federighi replied with a suggestion to fix my issue. It didn't work, but it was cool anyway.

e28eta 3y ago

I hope something changes with the way apple manages bugs. It’s incredibly demoralizing to spend my time reproducing a bug, writing up the bug report I’d want to receive (including a minimal test case), and hearing nothing for years until it’s either closed or receiving a message asking me to do more work to determine if it’s still an issue. Are there companies that do this well, at a scale approaching Apple’s? I can think of lots of reasons why this is a “hard problem”, and how it’d be hard to staff. I also think they’re getting paid to solve this problem, and aren’t.

astrange 3y ago
There's a fundamental problem that the first step is you doing all that work. That means there's no way to tell you the work is wasted; you already did it. I generally think people should do /less/ work when reporting bugs because of this, but you should be careful and clear about what you do put in there.
- e28eta 3y ago
  Some of that work does benefit me: better understanding of the bug, verification that it’s not something I’m doing wrong, maybe some ideas of a workaround. I’ve stopped doing the second phase: packaging it up and submitting it to apple, because that’s shown itself to be an entirely negative experience. If apple’s not going to spend the $$ on internal QA, and they’re not going to spend the $$ on developer relations, I’m not especially interested in donating my time to help them. I know I’ve seen a similar sentiment from other developers for years. I think low quality / low content bug reports are usually worse than none, because they decrease the signal to noise ratio of bugs. Maybe if there was a better channel of communication, and I knew it’d be more interactive it’d be different.
baz00 3y ago
I got so fed up of all the Apple bugs I sold all my Apple stuff and bought a PC. At least I'm greeted with new and interesting bugs no one is going to close.

vasdae 3y ago

I suppose Feedback Assistant is like Windows' Feedback Hub. Users fill it to the top with shit making it impossible for Apple or Microsoft to do anything useful with the feedback.

s3p 3y ago
Do users even use Feedback Assistant? I have yet to hear of anyone in my circle (friends, family, coworkers) submit a Feedback. None of them are developers or us the developer beta of iOS, so I have always surmised that to be why.
- snazz 3y ago
  The app is installed but hidden by default unless you’re running a beta (and in my experience I’ve never gotten a reply to a report unless it’s on a beta). You can use the website or launch the native app with its URI scheme but approximately nobody does that unless they’re really frustrated with a bug and know Feedback Assistant exists.

Obscurity4340 3y ago

I like when HN holds the fire to these kinds of issues/companies. Its almost like us nerds have some kind of fancy communication system/technology or something [dunno shrug]

sccxy 3y ago

Also their feedback assistant is buggy as hell. If you managed to create draft in old version (before random code change). But it does not match with new version your feedback assistant crashes to blank screen. (JSON parse syntax error) That means it is impossible to file new bugs... 1 second web page works but after that it is blank screen and nothing to do.

mvdtnz 3y ago

It's not clear from reading this if "Apple developers" are developers who work for Apple, or developers who write software for Apple systems.

zakki 3y ago

Let’s see if there will be Bug as a Service. Pay for bug fix in addition of $99/year

wackget 3y ago

As a developer, I flatly refuse to engage with Apple in any way because of their $100 annual fee. I feel especially vindicated when stuff like this surfaces. Imagine being the richest company in the world and having the audacity to charge people for the privilege of being able to contribute to your platform. It is absolutely insane, and nothing will convince me otherwise.

stockboss 3y ago
while i agree with your sentiment, i think Apple would probably argue that they're actually charging for access to their distribution network.
- type0 3y ago
  They are charging for the access to their "walled city/garden", they are promoting digital feudalism and the worst part is that other companies see them as exemplary for these terrible practices.
- xign 3y ago
  Yes and no. If you are making a macOS app and want to distribute your own binary (meaning not via the App Store), you are basically doing everything yourself and not using Apple's network. You still have to get a developer account because that's how you 1) get a valid developer signature, and 2) get access to app notarization service. Both 1 and 2 are now mandatory unless you force your users to jump through a lot of security hoops to open your app. I maintain an open source macOS software and begrudgingly signed up for a developer account since I didn't want my users to have to suffer through the security settings screen. At least I got a donation program up a few years later so at least I'm not paying out of pocket anymore. Some of my peers/competitors (open source text editors) are still not signing their app (since they didn't feel like getting this sorted out) forcing users to have to go through the security settings which I think is a crappy situation.
kaishin 3y ago
One reason they are charging is to weed out bad actors or people not serious enough about publishing apps on their stores. That said they could do this as a one off like Google, and make it cheaper too.

saltypal 3y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3947903 (I feel incredibly old right now.) Edited to add: Finally found the full form letter [1]. (I filed a copy back then and it still shows up languishing in Feedback Assistant even now!) [1]: https://gist.github.com/mysteriouspants/1989061 https://gist.github.com/mysteriouspants/1989061

crazygringo 3y ago

Boycotts/strikes* only work if most or nearly all people participate, because you'll only participate if you're pretty sure nearly everyone else is too. While if this blogpost merely gets 0.1% of developers to strike... Apple couldn't care less. I think this developer strike is a great idea, but launching it as a single person's call to action (Jeff Johnson's) is not generally going to be effective in changing behavior. What an organizer needs to do is to first personally contact somewhere between 50-200 other major, known, respected developers and get them to co-sign a joint letter which then gets published, so everyone can see this is a serious strike by people who know what they're doing -- not just one person's wish. It needs to get covered in all the major tech publications, so both Apple and all developers see it as well. And then the letter needes to not lay out a list of all of the complaints, but rather the specific, verifiable actions Apple needs to take in order to end the strike, so this isn't some open-ended thing. And they need to be realistic actions as well, not wishful thinking -- signs of progress with dates and milestones, not fix-all-the-things-immediately. If you're going to do a strike, you need to actually organize it. Writing a blog post that merely "encourage[s] all Apple developers to join me" is not the same as organizing. And generally speaking, writing a blog post claiming that you're striking isn't going to get anybody else to magically organize it for you. * As the author indicates lower in the article, it's more of a strike than a boycott since it's stopping providing free labor rather than stopping purchases, so I'll refer to it as a strike

jshier 3y ago
Fundamentally, such a strike assumes Apple cares about the free reports they get from their developers. I'm not sure that's true. And even if it is, it's not like they don't have enough other reports or features to work on, so the loss of all outside bug reporting probably wouldn't affect them at all.
- jfim 3y ago
  There might even be a middle manager that gets to say "external bug reports are 30% down YoY, our quality efforts worked out."
lapcat 3y ago

watersb 3y ago

I stopped filing Apple bugs ("rdar") ten years ago. It was pitching a lot of work into a hole: totally opaque.

AshleysBrain 3y ago

I previously blogged about how Apple treat web developers with negligence when it comes to Safari [1]. This makes it looks like Apple treat other developers with negligence as well, which is unsurprising, frankly. [1] https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-releases-development-1616 https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-rel...

realusername 3y ago
I solved this by basically treating the browser as legacy and "best effort", similarly as IE11 in its days. They have a very large number of basic features broken regularly, it's not only about cutting edge stuff. I suspect their testing practices are less than stellar.
- AshleysBrain 3y ago
  Yep, we've ended up on the same idea - we make a best effort to keep it working and if we can't we advise to switch to another browser. But tough luck on iOS, as other browser engines are banned...
  - realusername 3y ago
    It's going to be controversial but iPhone users are going to have an inferior web experience no matter what, at some point we have to say it even if it's not popular. The core business of Apple is in the apps.

enginaar 3y ago

IMO it's optimistic to assume Apple can fix this

efitz 3y ago

I am sick of everybody asking for feedback everywhere, and nobody wants to spend any human effort looking at the feedback. And the worst of it is the "Do you love our app?" dark pattern.

unflxw 3y ago

Some minor product manager in Cupertino, two quarters from now: "As we can see in this graph, thanks to the improvements to Feedback Assistant over the past couple years, we've reduced our products' bug rate to nearly zero percent!"

stevedekorte 3y ago

I've run into many of the problems mentioned with Apple Feedback and gave up on using them many years ago. It's pretty disheartening when you spend a bunch of time getting an OS crashing bug to reproduce in a small amount of code to submit in a bug report for them to neither confirm that they can repeat it, or consider it worth fixing.