6 ms·

Scary Hasty

80 points by GavinAnderegg 3y ago

wscourge 3y ago
[flagged]
- tumult 3y ago
  I haven't heard anything about the updates causing performance problems, but maybe you read something I didn't?
- silentsanctuary 3y ago
  If pre-M3 updates were intended to slow down M2s, it would be a big and unwelcome surprise to the community, and a huge scandal. Generally it isn't assumed to be the case. This also didn't really happen with iPhones. What happened was this: - Some iPhones started to develop a problem where sometimes, but at quite noticeable moments, the phone would unexpectedly power cycle, interrupting what you were doing. - Apple tracked this down to a problem in the battery used by those phones. Those batteries, once aged, became unable to meet the maximum power draw of the phone, resulting in the phone losing power when it tried. (This is why the reboots were so noticeable - they happened when you were doing something that required you to push your phone). - (The controversial part) Apple issued a firmware update that mitigated the issue by throttling the max power draw to something the battery would reliably output, but did so without acknowledging the issue or notifying the user. - People discovered what was happening (as Apple devices receive a lot of scrutiny in general), and a large media storm played out. - Apple issued a new firmware update that, this time, told you when your battery was degraded, that the maximum performance of your iPhone was reduced, and you needed to replace the battery to restore the original performance. - Since then, Apple have added more statistics to tell you about your battery health in general.
  - lubujackson 3y ago
    These are all reasonable mitigation steps. The issue for me is that this major flaw wasn't noticed during construction - or if it was, passed the bar of "we only care about the first 2 years of use". Say what you will about Microsoft, but the reason MS software grew so much bloat in its OSes was the impossible backwards compatibility required for each new version. It would have been much, much easier to force upgrades along the way but they made backwards-compatibility an unshakeable requirement at the time. I think Apple doesn't maliciously force users to upgrade, it simple doesn't put any focus on long term support for its older products. That's always been in the DNA of the company and its products and a major reason for many of their sales.
  - luuurker 3y ago
    Regarding the iPhone, Apple's behaviour wasn't that nice: - The throttling slowed down some devices so much that it made the phone laggy. There was no way to disable the feature. - If you asked for help in their stores they wouldn't tell you that you needed a new battery and why don't you just buy a new phone btw? - Apple only added a setting disable the behaviour and started offering cheaper battery replacements after being sued. It's a useful feature, but without a way to disable it, they essentially forced those most affected to pay them for a new phone. That's when I stopped buying iPhones.
- justusthane 3y ago
  No, that did not happen with iPhones. Apple throttled the CPU once the battery health dropped below a certain threshold to prevent unexpected shutdowns caused by drawing too much current from an old battery. In my view, the only thing they’re responsible for in that occasion is poor communication.
- dimask 3y ago
  If anything, with sonoma it seems that performance has overall increased, so I really doubt it.
aidos 3y ago
I’m going to put whatever did I or didn’t happen here aside and marvel for a moment at how complicated it must be to coordinate the logistics behind managing release schedules of both hardware and software and preinstalling OSs on all these machines.
GavinAnderegg 3y ago
Apple's hardware -- especially the M-series processors -- has been excellent lately. On the software side, it feels to me like there's been a large falloff in quality. This story is a good example of that, and I'd really love if we could get a release of macOS that focuses on bug fixes.
- avidphantasm 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - helf 3y ago
    Ferengi.. lol that made me chuckle.
  - karmakaze 3y ago
    Had to look that one up: "Craig Federighi"
  - thowaway91234 3y ago
    > Craig Ferengi is too busy massaging his own ears FTFY
- microtonal 3y ago
  I have seen this kind of comment on the web since I switched to macOS in 2007. There were some very bad years, when Apple apparently thought that iPad was the future of computing. But the all the Apple Silicon releases have been rock-solid for me. Seems like there were some missteps with introducing the M3, but macOS on existing hardware has been pretty good for me. (Before someone starts about Snow Leopard, the early Snow Leopard releases were also pretty buggy, only near the end of the release cycle did it get good.)
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Rock-solid is a little far-- I've not been free of weirdness on M1 Max. But overall I agree-- things feel like they've been better than the vast majority of my tenure on MacOS ("X", all the way back to the original "Mac OS X Server" in 1999). I don't update to new major releases immediately if I can help it, though.
troupo 3y ago
There's a tweet exemplifies the state of Apple software, and Apple's attention to it: https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1707684940337283563 https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1707684940337283563
dcow 3y ago
Did it annoy anybody else that during the whole event they compared M3 to M1 as if M2 didn't exist? Guess they didn't think 5-10% improvement would market well? But does anybody in their target audience even care or do they just buy the new hardware anyway?
- dave4420 3y ago
  Means their target audience includes people who own M1 Macs, but doesn’t include people who own M2 macs? (Although I don’t think most M1 owners will be interested in upgrading yet. Maybe they should just compare to Intel chips.)
  - macintux 3y ago
    Especially since the M2 generation was very recent. Not much of a time gap.
- Schiendelman 3y ago
  If anything this is recognition that they know their customers don’t feel the need to upgrade every year! It’s refreshing.
raspasov 3y ago
Maybe I’ve been lucky but I haven’t noticed a deterioration of software quality in MacOS. Things have been stable, perhaps even improved overall. Also the UI overall is extremely snappy, but likely that’s because of the M-series architectures. I recall 10 years ago (circa 2012) I’d purchase a brand new MacBook Pro and things would have a small but frequent lag in many UI across the OS. And no, not only during initial sync. It would be a normal part of the “experience”. Haven’t noticed any such thing especially with M-series in recent years.
- msoad 3y ago
  Same! I don't get why there are so many complains about macOS? It works very well for me; as a programmer or as a simple media consumer user. In fact I switched to Safari for web browsing a few years ago and have not looked back. I use Chrome only for debugging web apps.
  - sneak 3y ago
    It’s because macOS used to be made with an inordinate (and I cannot emphasize this enough) amount of care for the user experience for the sake of the user experience. Now that Apple has an existential crisis for growth and has become a services company, almost all Apple effort in software is aimed at maximizing recurring revenue and subscriptions. The UX for fitness, iCloud, IAPs, Apple TV, Arcade, Apple Pay, etc is top notch, because it makes them more money on an ongoing basis. The Finder, not so much. Also, a lot of the people who used to care deeply on a philosophical level about the UX of a computer for its own sake have either retired or moved on to other companies. Apple is not the same culture as it was fifteen years ago. A lot of younger people that work there don’t understand the Apple-ness of the Jobs era, and the products speak more to DJI than vegan counterculture hippies. There is also obviously a lot of product-manager-career-driven-design going on, same as any other hip modern tech company in no danger of going out of business (cf Slack, Dropbox, etc). Apple was, in many ways, an outgrowth of the obsessive nature of Jobs. He’s gone and it is perfectly natural that Apple would regress toward the mean of any well funded hip tech company.
    - 3y ago

Scary Hasty

80 points by GavinAnderegg 3y ago

wscourge 3y ago

[flagged]

tumult 3y ago
I haven't heard anything about the updates causing performance problems, but maybe you read something I didn't?
silentsanctuary 3y ago
If pre-M3 updates were intended to slow down M2s, it would be a big and unwelcome surprise to the community, and a huge scandal. Generally it isn't assumed to be the case. This also didn't really happen with iPhones. What happened was this: - Some iPhones started to develop a problem where sometimes, but at quite noticeable moments, the phone would unexpectedly power cycle, interrupting what you were doing. - Apple tracked this down to a problem in the battery used by those phones. Those batteries, once aged, became unable to meet the maximum power draw of the phone, resulting in the phone losing power when it tried. (This is why the reboots were so noticeable - they happened when you were doing something that required you to push your phone). - (The controversial part) Apple issued a firmware update that mitigated the issue by throttling the max power draw to something the battery would reliably output, but did so without acknowledging the issue or notifying the user. - People discovered what was happening (as Apple devices receive a lot of scrutiny in general), and a large media storm played out. - Apple issued a new firmware update that, this time, told you when your battery was degraded, that the maximum performance of your iPhone was reduced, and you needed to replace the battery to restore the original performance. - Since then, Apple have added more statistics to tell you about your battery health in general.
- lubujackson 3y ago
  These are all reasonable mitigation steps. The issue for me is that this major flaw wasn't noticed during construction - or if it was, passed the bar of "we only care about the first 2 years of use". Say what you will about Microsoft, but the reason MS software grew so much bloat in its OSes was the impossible backwards compatibility required for each new version. It would have been much, much easier to force upgrades along the way but they made backwards-compatibility an unshakeable requirement at the time. I think Apple doesn't maliciously force users to upgrade, it simple doesn't put any focus on long term support for its older products. That's always been in the DNA of the company and its products and a major reason for many of their sales.
- luuurker 3y ago
  Regarding the iPhone, Apple's behaviour wasn't that nice: - The throttling slowed down some devices so much that it made the phone laggy. There was no way to disable the feature. - If you asked for help in their stores they wouldn't tell you that you needed a new battery and why don't you just buy a new phone btw? - Apple only added a setting disable the behaviour and started offering cheaper battery replacements after being sued. It's a useful feature, but without a way to disable it, they essentially forced those most affected to pay them for a new phone. That's when I stopped buying iPhones.
justusthane 3y ago
No, that did not happen with iPhones. Apple throttled the CPU once the battery health dropped below a certain threshold to prevent unexpected shutdowns caused by drawing too much current from an old battery. In my view, the only thing they’re responsible for in that occasion is poor communication.
dimask 3y ago
If anything, with sonoma it seems that performance has overall increased, so I really doubt it.

aidos 3y ago

I’m going to put whatever did I or didn’t happen here aside and marvel for a moment at how complicated it must be to coordinate the logistics behind managing release schedules of both hardware and software and preinstalling OSs on all these machines.

GavinAnderegg 3y ago

Apple's hardware -- especially the M-series processors -- has been excellent lately. On the software side, it feels to me like there's been a large falloff in quality. This story is a good example of that, and I'd really love if we could get a release of macOS that focuses on bug fixes.

avidphantasm 3y ago
[flagged]
- helf 3y ago
  Ferengi.. lol that made me chuckle.
- karmakaze 3y ago
  Had to look that one up: "Craig Federighi"
- thowaway91234 3y ago
  > Craig Ferengi is too busy massaging his own ears FTFY
microtonal 3y ago
I have seen this kind of comment on the web since I switched to macOS in 2007. There were some very bad years, when Apple apparently thought that iPad was the future of computing. But the all the Apple Silicon releases have been rock-solid for me. Seems like there were some missteps with introducing the M3, but macOS on existing hardware has been pretty good for me. (Before someone starts about Snow Leopard, the early Snow Leopard releases were also pretty buggy, only near the end of the release cycle did it get good.)
- mlyle 3y ago
  Rock-solid is a little far-- I've not been free of weirdness on M1 Max. But overall I agree-- things feel like they've been better than the vast majority of my tenure on MacOS ("X", all the way back to the original "Mac OS X Server" in 1999). I don't update to new major releases immediately if I can help it, though.

troupo 3y ago

There's a tweet exemplifies the state of Apple software, and Apple's attention to it: https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1707684940337283563 https://twitter.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1707684940337283563

dcow 3y ago

Did it annoy anybody else that during the whole event they compared M3 to M1 as if M2 didn't exist? Guess they didn't think 5-10% improvement would market well? But does anybody in their target audience even care or do they just buy the new hardware anyway?

dave4420 3y ago
Means their target audience includes people who own M1 Macs, but doesn’t include people who own M2 macs? (Although I don’t think most M1 owners will be interested in upgrading yet. Maybe they should just compare to Intel chips.)
- macintux 3y ago
  Especially since the M2 generation was very recent. Not much of a time gap.
Schiendelman 3y ago
If anything this is recognition that they know their customers don’t feel the need to upgrade every year! It’s refreshing.

raspasov 3y ago

Maybe I’ve been lucky but I haven’t noticed a deterioration of software quality in MacOS. Things have been stable, perhaps even improved overall. Also the UI overall is extremely snappy, but likely that’s because of the M-series architectures. I recall 10 years ago (circa 2012) I’d purchase a brand new MacBook Pro and things would have a small but frequent lag in many UI across the OS. And no, not only during initial sync. It would be a normal part of the “experience”. Haven’t noticed any such thing especially with M-series in recent years.

msoad 3y ago
Same! I don't get why there are so many complains about macOS? It works very well for me; as a programmer or as a simple media consumer user. In fact I switched to Safari for web browsing a few years ago and have not looked back. I use Chrome only for debugging web apps.
- sneak 3y ago
  It’s because macOS used to be made with an inordinate (and I cannot emphasize this enough) amount of care for the user experience for the sake of the user experience. Now that Apple has an existential crisis for growth and has become a services company, almost all Apple effort in software is aimed at maximizing recurring revenue and subscriptions. The UX for fitness, iCloud, IAPs, Apple TV, Arcade, Apple Pay, etc is top notch, because it makes them more money on an ongoing basis. The Finder, not so much. Also, a lot of the people who used to care deeply on a philosophical level about the UX of a computer for its own sake have either retired or moved on to other companies. Apple is not the same culture as it was fifteen years ago. A lot of younger people that work there don’t understand the Apple-ness of the Jobs era, and the products speak more to DJI than vegan counterculture hippies. There is also obviously a lot of product-manager-career-driven-design going on, same as any other hip modern tech company in no danger of going out of business (cf Slack, Dropbox, etc). Apple was, in many ways, an outgrowth of the obsessive nature of Jobs. He’s gone and it is perfectly natural that Apple would regress toward the mean of any well funded hip tech company.
  - 3y ago