11 ms·

Apple ignores bug report

318 points by phoboslab 14y ago

mootothemax 14y ago
Whilst I think Apple took too long to look at this bug, the instructions in the given test case are, for me at least, ambiguous: 1. Hold one finger down in the blue area above OK, that's easy enough :) 2. Touch straight down with another finger - don't move your fingers on the surface And here's where the confusion lies; I thought you wanted the tester to slide their finger down the screen or something like that. From the video it appears that you want to ensure that they "hold another finger on the blue area" or something like that. Now, I confess that I don't own an iPhone, so couldn't test whether that made much of a difference, but that could be one reason why they rejected your test case. If in doubt blame incompetence, not malice :)
- ktizo 14y ago
  I thought you wanted the tester to slide their finger down the screen or something like that So how does that level up with the instruction : don't move your fingers on the surface ? Please never try using any industrial machinery.
  - i_cannot_hack 14y ago
    I was also confused by the instruction. The wording "straight down" is generally used in the context of positioning on the screen, and not used to describe the action of placing your fingers on the screen. Since it never specifies where one should put the second finger, "straight down" is naturally interpreted as a position, not an action. Might be we are all just stupid, but the best instructions are those that even stupid people can understand. If your natural response to ambiguous instructions are "you're just too stupid", please stay away from designing any instructions for industrial machinery.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      It isn't ambiguous in the slightest as it tells you not to move your fingers on the screen, so the only reasonable conclusion from this is that the direction down is from above the screen onto the surface, not laterally across the surface. And this instruction is part of the same statement, not divorced from it, so the context is perfectly clear unless you don't bother finish reading the sentence before deciding what it means. Also, I was not meaning that the person reading was stupid, but that they were careless in their reading of the instruction, which is the sort of thing that can lead you to counting in base nine for the rest of your life, if applied to anything big and heavy that spins.
      - ta12121 14y ago
        To me, a speaker of U.S. English, "straight down" implies movement, making the instructions confusing. A non-motive indication of position would be "straight below".
        ktizo 14y ago
        Of course it implies movement. You have to move your finger to touch the screen. If it said straight down and had no qualifier, then it would be confusing as then down could have two common meanings. However it does have a qualifier within the same statement that makes it extremely clear that the motion described is not a motion across the screen.
        ta12121 14y ago
        Humans don't parse language the way computers do. When they see a phrase commonly associated with movement the concept of movement will enter their minds, even if a precise analysis of the sentence does not indicate movement.
        ktizo 14y ago
        I am dumbfounded. Do you live in flatland? Take me to the roundest polygon you know, they might get this. Analysis of the sentence does indicate movement, and that is because there is movement. This is because your finger needs to move down to touch the screen. There are more than two dimensions of motion when describing fingers. And this does not change just because a screen is involved.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  The way that they handled it suggested that they knew what they were doing, and recognized it as an actual bug.
- phoboslab 14y ago
  I'm not a native speaker, so these instructions may very well be ambiguous. Any suggestions on how to clarify it? Back then, I built the test case and asked on twitter if anybody else could confirm the bug. I got several answers (e.g. one from mrdoob within the minute: https://twitter.com/mrdoob/statuses/6896165488427008 https://twitter.com/mrdoob/statuses/6896165488427008 ) so I thought the instructions were fine.
  - ta12121 14y ago
    1. Touch the screen in the blue area with one finger and hold the finger there. 2. Use another finger to touch the screen somewhere below the first finger. 3. Lift your second finger and repeat step 2.
    - rdl 14y ago
      You may want to say "touch (but do not drag)"
  - mjschultz 14y ago
    1. Press and hold a finger in the blue area (do not move this finger) 2. Tap a second finger somewhere else in the same blue area (again, do not move your finger only tap) 3. Observe the orange bar. It should become green when both finger are touching the screen. Response time should be near instantaneous. It is not. Additionally, about 1 out of 3 touches results in an inconsistent state in which the bar remains green after both fingers are removed. I'd remove the "straight down" part altogether.
  - mcgwiz 14y ago
    Use the widest established terms possible: "tap", and "tap and hold". 1. Observe that the feedback bar above the blue area is orange. 2. Tap and hold the blue area. 3. While still holding, tap and hold a different part of the blue area with a second finger. 4. Observe that the feedback bar is now green. 5. While still holding with the first finger, stop holding with the second finger. 6. Observe that the feedback bar is now orange. 7. While still holding with the first finger, again tap and hold a different part of the blue area with the second finger. 8. It is expected that the feedback bar be green at this point. However observe the feedback bar actually remains orange.
- breakall 14y ago
  Put it another way -- he wants to run and jump at the same time! You know, the way you would in Super Mario on the original NES and every platform game since.
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  If I recall correctly, the ocarina app suffered from this same issue. If he offset-aligns the contact areas, he should be able to get around the issue.
- pvidler 14y ago
  Just tried his test case and at first I couldn't reproduce it at all. On my iPhone 4S, you have to do the second finger tapping quite quickly for it to go wrong -- just touching it the way he does in the video is not triggering it for me.
alttab 14y ago
You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? Get out of town! I don't believe it. Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. Right now, when one pissed off developer leaves or goes bankrupt because their app was yanked from the store or wasn't approved for some BS reason, 50 developers replace him.
- technoslut 14y ago
  >You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? GET OUT OF TOWN! I don't believe it. This isn't something that is exclusive to Apple though this has always been an issue with them even regarding security issues with OS X. >Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. They develop for iOS because that is where the money is though this isn't the issue. It isn't as if the Android browser doesn't have its fair share of bugs. >Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. You're right. Apple puts the interests of their customers first (not trying to be smug here). The developers come second. The only time you do hear complaints that go unanswered for devs it is usually only answered when there's a public (consumer) interest regarding it. A good example of this is Phil Schiller replying to customer's email about the Rogue Amoeba situation. I'm certainly not defending Apple but this is a problem that has existed for as long as I've been interested in tech.
  - duiker101 14y ago
    Wrong, Apple puts money before everything. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287
    - technoslut 14y ago
      I did click on the link and did read the article though it lacked virtually any detail. Of course Apple cares about money but they make their money by customers buying their hardware. They put their customers first because that is where they make their money. As a counterpoint, Apple refuses to pay employees on commission because Jobs didn't want them upselling to consumers because there is a less chance of them being a returning customer. It's the goal of every business to make money. It's how you go about it that tells the story.
richardv 14y ago
I have so much sympathy for you. (Along with anyone else that tries to produce anything that runs on any iOS device and it's walled garden.) It's easy to see that when building a platformer game, unimpeded multitouch functionality is pretty essential. Have you been able to identify other games that have the same problem? I would of thought that this would be resolved so much sooner than 2 years. It's a core part of multitouch functionality. At least you still have your app available on iOS!.. It is total BS how developers are treated. Apple has built up a product which sells hundreds of millions of units per year, largely in part due to the developers who have invested time in their ecosystem, but it's total shit how they return no investment back to the people who have supported this system. (Yes, developers are largely to thank. Look at how RIM and MS are failing, because they don't control nor have the content). Everyone deserves better.
- crag 14y ago
  I agree. But, the only reason anyone writes for iOS is money. It's one of the best selling phones on the market. And iPhone uses tend to buy a lot of apps. There's a long list of developers who made fortunes on that platform. So if you don't want to write for it, then don't. The only force that can change Apple's behavior is the consumer. Apple doesn't care about anything else. And they never will. So stop complaining. Write your app. And hope it's a hit. Then you can sell it and buy a house on the beach.
barrynolan 14y ago
An example in how to title a blog
quonn 14y ago
I have filed dozens of OS X and iOS bugs over the years. Almost all of them were closed with the claim that Apple already knew about that bug. However many of them were really subtle and it was unlikely that anybody else had already reported them, especially if a developer preview introducing the bug had just been released. Furthermore some of them are not fixed even now, years after the first report. My experience is that Apple will almost never admit they don't know about a bug. The only exception are security bugs where one actually gets real feedback.
- bazzargh 14y ago
  I've only filed a couple (against Quartz), and had a similar experience. They'd maybe ask for a reduced test case, then nothing happens for 3 months; the latest patch of the OS comes out and the next day the bug is closed. I don't mind if they fix the bugs, but the stony silence is a bit frustrating. One that never got fixed was crashers in Console. That's been going on for years now.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  My experience is that Apple isn't that bad. I have filed several bugs with Apple over the years, and IMO their response is pretty good compared to other vendors, particularly given that I have no paid support relationship with them. The bugs ranged from AD integration issues to PDF rendering problems, to an ActiveSync issue specific to our unusual configuration. I do have an expensive support relationship with Microsoft, and I've gotten similar results for the same types of problems. We log bug reports, and the serious ones with business impact get fixed. UI glitches or corner-case Outlook problems get fixed more slowly, or only via custom hotfix. Serious bugs get fixed more quickly, and typically get rolled into a future patch. In the past, I've had similar or even worse results from other large companies like IBM, Oracle, Informix and Sun. Software has bugs, and low-priority bugs persist for a long time, for reasons that may be good or bad. In any case, posting expletive-laden rants railing against a vendor is unprofessional and unlikely to garner a positive reaction.
- saurik 14y ago
  Thers are tons of people using this platform, and many of them are doing very obscure things with it. Meanwhile, that same bug tracking system is used by Apple's Q/A and the very engineers working on the code in the first place. You might thing the bug is something only you would find, but with this many people staring at it, someone else probably came across it. As many ways as I feel Apple is slightly disingenuous, I really can't imagine they have a policy of making up bug numbers in Radar so they can mark things as duplicates.
kalleboo 14y ago
Going to a WWDC lab is basically the only way to guarantee an acknowledgement of a bug from Apple. Too bad it costs thousands of dollars and you have a 2 hour window in which to seize your chance.
epo 14y ago
Perhaps they did use your page and perhaps it worked for them? Or perhaps your whiny tone made them disregard you as a serious witness, and so perhaps the problem is you. As other commenters point out you can't write clear instructions, what confidence should we have in your ability to write correct code?
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Almost anyone can reproduce this bug on that webpage. If they can't reproduce the issue, then they should get better support people.
- phoboslab 14y ago
  I filed all the bug reports in a professional manner, without insults or swearing. I have a lot of respect for the engineers working at Apple, I just hate their company politics. The blog post on the other hand was written in that manner to get public attention - which seems to have worked. The code for the test case is about 20 lines of JavaScript. You don't have to trust me to write correct code, you can easily check it yourself.
  - salgernon 14y ago
    The corporate overlords are not screening your bugs, the engineers are. Your mention that your bug got closed as a dup? And that the dup was closed as not being reproducible? It seems likely that either it wasn't really a dup or that the second bug didnt have steps that allowed it to be reproduced. In your case, I would think re submitting your as a new bug, referencing the other two, would probably bring some traction. Openradar is also an option for making your reports more public, and possibly getting more traction.
  - saurik 14y ago
    I believe you can also get public attention without resorting to such tactics. As much as I agree with your underlying position, I am sufficiently turned off by your tone and presentation that I, for example, would not go out of my way to ask anyone I might know at Apple what was up with the bug, or (of it were something I felt I could control) fix it myself. Your audience should not be people who will be riled up by vitriol: it should be other professional developers, and a larger internal-to-Apple community. I wouldn't be surprised if other people at Apple now just feel insulted, and the people working on this problem likewise demoralized; all with the result that you are even /less/ likely to see a bug fixed in this project in a short period of time (and even if someone does "react" to this one, to be slightly more hostile and slightly less forgiving of your future bug reports, even of they are posed in a "professional manner", as they now "know better").
TwistedWeasel 14y ago
So he let this bug sit in his game for two years without thinking of a work around himself? The situation where any platform owner has a bug that impacts your software you should try as best you can to work around it because you never know if and when it will get fixed.
- Kiro 14y ago
  What game? I think you missed the point of his blog post.
  - mmuro 14y ago
    No he didn't. Read the post. This was the first sentence: "Almost two years ago I noticed a strange multitouch problem in Mobile Safari with one of my games." He should have learned to adapt instead of wait for a change that obviously wasn't going to happen.
    - jerf 14y ago
      So, tell me something: How do you adapt to not receiving an event? The only choice is to do something completely different, but I can't think of anything that doesn't profoundly change the nature of the game (continuously jump makes a completely different game, use upward motion to jump will have a lot of false positives) and is basically an admission that a game that involves two buttons like this is simply impossible. And that's an unreasonable outcome. (The continuously jumping game has interesting potential, but it is a different game. Plus I've think I've seen it way back in the day and it's very visually tiring.)
  - uxp 14y ago
    Reading through your comment history makes you appear to be a rather unfriendly commenter. We like to maintain civil discussions here on HN, so please try to contribute accordingly. The entire article revolves around a bug that came about from an HTML5 game the author was working on. > Almost two years ago I noticed a strange multitouch problem in Mobile Safari with one of my games. TwistedWeasel has a valid point. OS X and iOS are not open source projects one can fork and submit patches to. Neither is Windows or Windows Mobile for that matter. If someone finds a bug, submitting a testcase and doing a lot of legwork is probably appreciated, but none of that will guarantee the bug will get fixed. Finding a workaround is a much better short term solution for the developer because they can continue on developing the way they need to and not have to wait for the black box of Apple's Radar to return a positive result. On some occasions, the developer might be able to search into WebKit to see if the problem is there, and submitting a bug report to that project might return more valid feedback. Significant portions of both OS X and iOS are available in source code form. Is this ideal? No. Is it how it works? Yes. Can an everyday non-Apple engineer do anything about it? Not really.
tdskate 14y ago
I hope they never fucking fix it. What a douche.
TwistedWeasel 14y ago
FTA: "On the iPhone, you're as locked in with HTML5 as you were with Flash everywhere else before" In what way has Flash ever been the only way to display web content? This statement is absurd.
- Kiro 14y ago
  And again you fail to see the point of the blog post.
- betterth 14y ago
  Flash was the standard. Sure, you could use something else, but that something else most likely worked for less viewers. And the plugin-gap is real -- asking users to install a plugin causes some users to skip and move on. To ignore the previous ubiquity of Flash is absurd.
  - franzus 14y ago
    Well, but that's not a lock in. It's just the incompetence of Adobe's competition to make an alternative.
- phoboslab 14y ago
  There's no other vendor than Apple providing access to HTML5 content on iOS. Apple forbids it. Similarly, there's not other vendor than Adobe providing access to Flash.
- lmm 14y ago
  The point is: the reason Flash was bad was that the only way to display Flash content was with Adobe's (buggy) implementation. HTML5 on the iPhone is just as bad: the only way to display HTML5 content is with Apple's (buggy) implementation.
  - TwistedWeasel 14y ago
    That makes sense to me, as I read the article it sounded like he was saying that outside iOS he was locked in to Flash in the same way as he is locked in to HTML5 on iOS. The iOS restriction is very real and enforced, there is nothing forcing people to use Flash for any popular platform. However if you put it in terms of "if I want to use Flash, I'm forced into Adobe's implementation" then I can see that argument.
jamesflorentino 14y ago
I think I was more interested in the iOS game demo in the video than the rant post itself. That was smooth as butter.
timkeller 14y ago
Apple are way more focussed on UIKit and the rest of the iOS frameworks, than they are in fixing a minor Mobile Safari glitch. Two years spent building a work-around would be a far better use of OP's time.
andrewfelix 14y ago
There are more accurate ways of registering the second touch. Have you tried using 'event.targetTouches'?
- phoboslab 14y ago
  The touchstart event isn't fired. There's no 'event' object to access.
napierzaza 14y ago
This is Hacker News link bait.
commanda 14y ago
HTML5 is definitely not the only way to write a game for iOS. It seems glaringly obvious, but the OP could perhaps try writing their game as a native app.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  That's what Apple wants to push developers towards. Regardless of Jobs' anti-Flash post, HTML5 is simply not a priority for Apple. If this bug was in the actual native API, it would've got fixed in the next minor patch.
- noonat 14y ago
  That would be a bit counter-intuitive, as OP's product is an SDK for HTML5 game development on iOS.
pjmlp 14y ago
Native applications is the way to go.
zoop 14y ago
Being critical is great. Creating workarounds is even better. Being entitled is not so great. If you want to talk about how Apple is terrible to developers, fine, talk about the App store double-standards and the developer agreement. But this is hardly an exceptional case of a company being 'anti-developer'. I can't tell you how many bugs I've filed from OS X, chrome, to various python libraries well the response is pretty much "welp its broke" (if that). If you depend on some sort of functionality that you're not getting, it's time to move on or create your own. The tone of this post reminds me of 'why I'm not developing for twitter' post ... where the take away for that was be weary of developing on platforms you don't control. I would assume that most of us have learned that the hard way with esoteric libraries with ghost-maintainers. Myself, I'm becoming weary of turning every inconvenience into some sort of political issue. This is _hacker_ news. Can we get back to making clever and disruptive solutions please?
- phoboslab 14y ago
  I built a lot of workarounds to make my game engine ( http://impactjs.com/ http://impactjs.com/ ) work on iOS, Android and other browsers. But I couldn't find a viable workaround for this multitouch bug. The touchstart/move/end events are the only way to detect multiple touches in Mobile Safari - and they don't work as they should. This bug is affecting many HTML5 games and as long as I'm not allowed to install another browser (engine) on iOS, I will keep complaining.
  - genwin 14y ago
    I think it's great that you're complaining in the way you are. It'll be interesting to see whether Apple responds. MS-Word has retained some of its obvious bugs since 1995.
- drzaiusapelord 14y ago
  >Can we get back to making clever and disruptive solutions please? So wait, when MS was abusing its IE product then HN is justified in angry anti-MS rants, but when Apple purposely keeps html5 gimped on iOS and refuses any other browser on iOS suddenly you're all about tolerance and double-standards. This a very legitimate issue. Apple can't applaud HTML5 in public and piss on it in private. Yes, its a threat to your app ecosystem. Accept it, fix the bugs, and allow other browsers. This is HN worthy, if not extraordinarily HN worthy.
J3L2404 14y ago
A comment from the blog sums it up nicely and keeps the reddit-esque tone: "boo fucking hoo. I guess their fucking priorities don't line the FUCK up with yours. "
Fliko 14y ago
Don't worry man, I have this Nexus One phone where the touchscreen registers touch on the side of the phone, and the advertised multitouch doesn't even work, never mind not receiving updates for the rest of my life (my hardware bugs cost me over $600!!). Your game has no chance to work on my phone, why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post. All systems are plagued with bugs, and a lot of them get neglected forever. Instead of aggressively attacking a company (Apple hateboy?), expecting them to fix something after some f-bombs were dropped, why not write a meaningful blog post.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  > why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post. Because you haven't written it yet?
  - shinratdr 14y ago
    Why should he have to? Plenty of Android devs owned Nexus Ones. It was the Android dev phone for a pretty important year. Yet we heard little griping at Google from devs over the fact that they cheaped out on the hardware for their flagship device. Moreover there are countless ignored bugs in Android, many of the most starred issues have been there for two years or more. This griping about Apple is ridiculous. They're a massive faceless software & hardware vendor, big surprise a low-priority bug (never once seen someone who isn't a dev or similar play an HTML5 game in my life) slipped through the cracks. This isn't new, nor is it unique to Apple, so it would be nice if we could can the melodrama and focus on the issue.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      Except in Android's, and especially the Nexus series of phones case, any random can do whatever fixes to the core code they wish - that's not something you can do in Apple land. I'd be shocked to learn that third party patches don't exist for at least some of the rough edges.
- wavephorm 14y ago
  Because it used to work and Apple broke it (possibly on purpose) and refuses to fix it. That's not the same as it never working in the first place.
vosper 14y ago
With all that swearing you could be forgiven for thinking Apple had been caught skinning kittens for iPhone parts. Save the hyperbole, please.
- cobrausn 14y ago
  Two year wait and 40 hours of developer time spent on a simple bug is worth a bit of swearing.
  - john_flintstone 14y ago
    So let him swear at his wife. Or at Apple. Why should we have to read it?
    - tjoff 14y ago
      Because we upvoted it.
    - cobrausn 14y ago
      It's not like the title didn't give away the fact that the rant would be full of swearing. Also, you didn't have to read it.
      - vosper 14y ago
        My problem with the level of vitriol is that it doesn't leave much room for when things are truly bad - this has caused an inconvenience and lost time to him personally, but it's not like he's really suffered, like so many people do on a daily basis around the world. I'd love to see this passion directed at (for example) issues of social justice.
        ricardobeat 14y ago
        I think you're underestimating the importance of this bug. For the developer of a HTML5 game platform this is a huge roadblock - it can totally ruin gameplay, prevents the use of more complex controls and ultimately hinders adoption.
nixle 14y ago
There is no need to get emotional. It won't help anything and it just clutters the issue. Just mind you language and stick to the facts, we are all grownups here.
- ahoge 14y ago
  This was 100% deliberate. It's just some spin. The post gets more attention this way, which makes it more likely that the underlying problem will be fixed somewhat sooner. Besides, with a headline like this it will also get automatic upvotes by everyone who dislikes Apple.
jonhendry 14y ago
I've only filed a couple of radars, but actually received pretty good response. However, they weren't api-related. One was about an issue I was having running the Britannica encyclopedia. I don't recall what it was, but Apple even called me about it. One was about a bug in Lion, where if you pick a large desktop image, and tile it, it gets all corrupted and there are artifacts in the desktop image that respond to movement of windows above the desktop. The corruption of the image looks like what happens when CIAffineClamp is applied to an image: a row of pixels at some place in the image is repeated out to the edge of the screen. The response was that it was fixed in a point release, but the fix was to disable the Tile option for large images. Except if you have it set to alternate images periodically, with the Tile option selected, a large image can still be tiled and displayed incorrectly.
ottoflux 14y ago
1) Yes, Apple is closed and lame. This isn't new. 2) I almost fell over laughing when you mentioned a whole "40" hours. I think if I went through that whole process with Apple, I'd be happy if I got it out of the way in 40 hours. Apple "used to" (as in, they cast a damn good image of) following Dieter Rams type of design philosophy, but that's long gone in the freak show app-orgy that exists within iOS now. It's a mess, it's terribly disorganized, it's not "less, but better" it's "more, and worse". Personally, I'm surprised that they let iOS get this stale. But apparently as long as the penumbra of Steve's[RIP] reality distortion field exists, they will blindly march on. What Apple needs is a new visionary. Not someone to try to emulate Steve Jobs. And they need to open the hell out of their products. If you believe your hardware and OS are best, then open the hardware to letting people install Android on it if they don't agree, and write a version of iOS to run on other hardware. It's not going to happen (and I hope they prove me wrong). Apple is designed as a coupled HW-SW ship, and I don't see them changing course any time soon. My advice: Pay attention to your perspective bed partners before you commit and get into bed with them.
- astrodust 14y ago
  It's not like Android isn't without it's infuriating problems. Worse, most people are running several versions behind and the uptake on new ones is slowing, so some problems may never be fixed.
  - drzaiusapelord 14y ago
    My phone has ICS and honestly I'm not getting a lot out of it. I could be back on 2.3 or 2.2 and not even notice. I think Android versions don't really have much for the end user unless he or she needs a specialized application that makes use of the newer APIs. I'd rather go with something thats open-ish and stale than this controlled freakshow that is the iOS ecosystem.
    - astrodust 14y ago
      Android in its present form is an uncontrolled freakshow. To test an Android app properly requires at least a dozen devices if not more, and even then you're only scratching the surface. You need a veritable museum at hand to be sure you've got it right. What Apple's doing right is introducing new features and then aggressively pushing these down to the devices. iOS 5 is by far the majority of devices now, and very few are on anything under 4. Android on the other hand seems perpetually stuck in 2.3 land. As you point out there's not much in the way of advantages if none of the apps are dependent on features introduced in 4.0. This further stalls the upgrade cycle. To succeed Google is going to have to take a more active role and ensure that there's fewer conflicting interpretations of their standard, well-defined reference devices, and more urgency to get users to upgrade.
trotsky 14y ago
Is there any evidence that Apple wants game developers targeting mobile Safari? It's a classic platform tactic to abuse APIs you don't want used (HTML5) to drive people to the one you do want used (ObjC). Between platform lock in and 30 cents on the dollar it's clear Apple wants developers making native apps.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Letting an obscurant input handling bug fester so that they can drive people to a 41% margin product instead of a 40% margin product? Doubtful.
- wavephorm 14y ago
  Between introducing multi-touch errors, and hobbling the HTML5 Audio API, there is no way to build an engaging game for mobile Safari. Apple has sabotaged their web platform with expert precision.
- thechut 14y ago
  I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app that is sold. Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best experience to consumers. And you can be damn sure that they don't give a shit about developers, especially if they aren't making native iOS apps which aren't being sold in the app store.
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  - nickheer 14y ago
    > I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app that is sold. > Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best experience to consumers. I disagree here, mainly because the amount of money Apple makes from the App Store is tiny, relative to their overall revenues. This year at WWDC, Tim Cook announced that Apple had paid $5 billion to developers on the App Store, which translates into a little over $7.1 billion in apps sold, or $2.1 billion in revenue for Apple since 2008. That's about $130 million per quarter, against revenue of between $7 billion and $30 billion per quarter. That's without considering hosting costs and credit card fees. $130 million is certainly no small change. But for Apple, in the big scope, it isn't printing money for them.
drucken 14y ago
I think the author is overlooking the likelihood this is deliberate behaviour for various touch UX and lock-in reasons. Though, I am impressed by the combination of vitriolic text and cool, crystal-clear and calm bug explanation in the video. :)
Iv 14y ago
What the fuck, developer ? how could you not know that iOS is a closed garden ? Stop being complicit of this dangerous ecosystem. I understand that a lot of people have spent a decade or more in a very good relationship with Apple, swimming in wonderful hardware, nice frameworks and a helpful and friendly community, but it is finished now. This is not the Apple of today anymore.
- ahoge 14y ago
  Don't put spaces in front of question marks. If you're French, okay, you're forgiven. However, a regular space is still completely wrong and it will totally break word-wrapping.
  - Iv 14y ago
    Sorry, French here indeed. It is strange. I have made that mistake for several years when writing in English fora but recently, in the space of two months, I got several people making me noticed this. I am trying to lose this habit in English but why is it that this mistake is now fought more thoroughly? Has there been a particular event raising the awareness of this?
    - ahoge 14y ago
      >Has there been a particular event raising the awareness of this? Not that I know of. You probably just started hanging out with people who tend to complain about this kind of thing. I, for one, complain about this stuff because it's a defect I have to fix if I happen to see it in someone's copy. It also might be a frequency illusion [1]. [1] The illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly appears "everywhere" with improbable frequency. Sometimes called "The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon".
glenntzke 14y ago
You fortunately now have the option of running Chrome on iOS. I'd like to see the side-by-side comparison for compatibility issues.
- phoboslab 14y ago
  Chrome uses Mobile Safari's "WebView" internally. It's the same browser engine - Apple doesn't allow other browser engines on iOS. So the bug is present in Chrome as well.
john_flintstone 14y ago
Who else is affected by this bug. And by who else, I don't mean this one guy's customers / users. If the answer is no one else, or if no one else has reported it, then it's probably so far down the list as to be inconsequential. Which probably means the new guy on work experience gets to deal with it. Not all bugs are fixed. There's only so many hours in the day, and some bugs are simply not worth fixing.
- icambron 14y ago
  It's true that Apple might decide the bug isn't worth fixing, but then they should say that explicitly, so that devs don't have to file the bug a zillion times and wonder where it is on Apple's priority list. The issue here is really the lack of transparency. Bug reports shouldn't go into a black hole. It's also not clear to me why you think no one else is affected by this bug. How many duplicates from other reporters have been closed? We have no way to know. Presumably others, though-- not every instance of an issue results in a front-page HN article.
ademuk 14y ago
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was intentional in order prevent devs creating HTML5 games on par with those of the AppStore.
- wavephorm 14y ago
  It absolutely is intentional. And with that same intention Apple forbids other companies from writing web browsers that fix these and other issues with mobile Safari. Auto-playing audio and video in the browser is also forbidden, which prevents any sort of online music, or video app from being created, among other things. So games, music, and video apps in mobile Safari are all hopelessly hobbled, and if you build a browser that fixes these issues you'll be banned. Happy developing!
  - sedev 14y ago
    "Auto-playing audio and video in the browser is also forbidden, which prevents any sort of online music, or video app from being created, among other things." It also prevents MySpace. I consider that a Good Thing overall - I remember the period of the web where it was trivial to auto-play video and audio, and I remember that the consumer reaction to that was deeply hostile. HTML5 music/video apps certainly are an interesting thought, but you must consider what happens when you let random or malicious developers do those things too!
    - wavephorm 14y ago
      What are you talking about? How exactly is it malicious to build a game or build a music web app? On desktops with Flash or the HTML5 Audio/Video API you can already do these things. I don't see anyone complaining that things like Youtube and Grooveshark are malicious, so why should iOS be sabotaged? Non-Apple devices like Android, and Playbook work just fine. You can build music, and video, and game web applications on those devices without these limitations, and it is not a problem. Apple simply wants a hobbled platform, to force all content through the iTunes store instead of over the internet.
      - 14y ago
melvinmt 14y ago
Could the issue be that you use an onClick event that has a well-known 400ms delay instead of a touchstart/touchmove event?
- lukifer 14y ago
  I'm quite sure that this developer knows the difference. :) Still, this does smell like it's a "feature", where the event is thrown away in an effort to prevent accidental touches or such. I imagine the bug is being ignored because of the difficulty of fixing it without removing the feature in question. Alas, I suspect that Apple's secrecy harms their process as well as ours: they probably live in such a bubble that they don't see these bugs as being problems. And I really wish Android was a better HTML5 alternative, but it's been problematic as well, as evidenced by Sencha's HTML5 Scorecards (we'll see with Chrome on Jelly Bean).
chmars 14y ago
I haven't reported bugs to Apple due to such problems, there's simply no incentive. Apple as a quality company has of course always been focused on hardware and third-party developers have traditionally provided high-quality apps.
johnohara 14y ago
phoboslab: I filed all the bug reports in a professional manner, without insults or swearing. I have a lot of respect for the engineers working at Apple, ... Why are we excluded?
brm 14y ago
I can't help but read this and feel that your life priorities and response levels to problems are out of whack
septerr 14y ago
To tell you the truth, I couldn't really see the bug in the video. It's probably just me. Since the bar every time eventually turned green in the video, I couldn't see the case when it does not turn green. Nor could I see the bug in the video game. I am sure folks at Apple or regular game players will be able to tell.
donniezazen 14y ago
I didn't know that Apple bug tracker is private. They are more secretive than CIA and FBI together.
VeryVito 14y ago
Just playing devil's debugger here: Are you SURE the bug is with Safari, and not related to something else in your code? In BioLab Disaster, for example, while it's true I can't RUN and press the JUMP button multiple times, I can definitely RUN and press the FIRE button multiple times. Why would the FIRE button be immune to a bug in the browser? Any chance this is a timing issue in your own code, rather than a bug in the browser?
deleted 14y ago
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SigmundA 14y ago
Reviewing the test case code the basic bug seem to be that sometimes a touchend event won't fire when a secondary finger is lifted. You can make your code much more reliable by handling all touch events and looking that the touches or targetTouches respectively instead of incremental a total touch counter on each start and decrementing on each end. This causes even the slightest movement to trigger a touchmove event which and the entire current touch state is in touches within all the events. So changing your test like so gets close and you can at least see the use more clearly: var i = 0; var numTouches = 0; var out = document.getElementById('out'); var indicator = document.getElementById('indicator'); function handleTouch( ev ) { ev.preventDefault(); i++; numTouches = ev.touches.length; out.value += i + ': ' + ev.type + ', ' + numTouches + '\n'; indicator.style.backgroundColor = (numTouches == 2) ? '#8e6' : '#fb7'; out.scrollTop = out.scrollHeight; } var ta = document.getElementById('ta'); ta.addEventListener('touchstart', handleTouch, false); ta.addEventListener('touchend', handleTouch, false); ta.addEventListener('touchmove', handleTouch, false); ta.addEventListener('touchcancel', handleTouch, false);
NinjaWarior 14y ago
This is not a only blocking problem for HTML5 gaming. Chrome Canvas latency problem, Firefox canvas performance bug, HTML5 "poor" Audio, HTML5 "poor" video, Canvas "poor" API, SVG never works correctly, underestimated fragmentation cost, poor programming language (why the hell did they abandon ECMAScript 4?), when the hell can we use WebGL? etc... People was complaining Flash was vendor lock-in. So kicked out Flash and now we are prisoners of fucking browsers. Kicked out poor Adobe, and Apple, Google and MS rules! Yay! Do you enjoy this? I think plug-ins were clever, liberal and democratic software designing. We were able to choice the best technology we want to use (including Java Applet, Unity Web Player, Silverlight and even Shockwave). We were even able to develop our plug-ins freely. We had a freedom of programming language other than fucking JavaScript. I feel people's enthusiasm for HTML5 is completely wrong. At least they should stop saying "HTML5 is a cool technology" "HTML5 is an open technology". COMPLETELY WRONG.

318 points by phoboslab 14y ago

Whilst I think Apple took too long to look at this bug, the instructions in the given test case are, for me at least, ambiguous: 1. Hold one finger down in the blue area above OK, that's easy enough :) 2. Touch straight down with another finger - don't move your fingers on the surface And here's where the confusion lies; I thought you wanted the tester to slide their finger down the screen or something like that. From the video it appears that you want to ensure that they "hold another finger on the blue area" or something like that. Now, I confess that I don't own an iPhone, so couldn't test whether that made much of a difference, but that could be one reason why they rejected your test case. If in doubt blame incompetence, not malice :)

ktizo 14y ago
I thought you wanted the tester to slide their finger down the screen or something like that So how does that level up with the instruction : don't move your fingers on the surface ? Please never try using any industrial machinery.
- i_cannot_hack 14y ago
  I was also confused by the instruction. The wording "straight down" is generally used in the context of positioning on the screen, and not used to describe the action of placing your fingers on the screen. Since it never specifies where one should put the second finger, "straight down" is naturally interpreted as a position, not an action. Might be we are all just stupid, but the best instructions are those that even stupid people can understand. If your natural response to ambiguous instructions are "you're just too stupid", please stay away from designing any instructions for industrial machinery.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    It isn't ambiguous in the slightest as it tells you not to move your fingers on the screen, so the only reasonable conclusion from this is that the direction down is from above the screen onto the surface, not laterally across the surface. And this instruction is part of the same statement, not divorced from it, so the context is perfectly clear unless you don't bother finish reading the sentence before deciding what it means. Also, I was not meaning that the person reading was stupid, but that they were careless in their reading of the instruction, which is the sort of thing that can lead you to counting in base nine for the rest of your life, if applied to anything big and heavy that spins.
    - ta12121 14y ago
      To me, a speaker of U.S. English, "straight down" implies movement, making the instructions confusing. A non-motive indication of position would be "straight below".
      - ktizo 14y ago
        Of course it implies movement. You have to move your finger to touch the screen. If it said straight down and had no qualifier, then it would be confusing as then down could have two common meanings. However it does have a qualifier within the same statement that makes it extremely clear that the motion described is not a motion across the screen.
        ta12121 14y ago
        Humans don't parse language the way computers do. When they see a phrase commonly associated with movement the concept of movement will enter their minds, even if a precise analysis of the sentence does not indicate movement.
        ktizo 14y ago
        I am dumbfounded. Do you live in flatland? Take me to the roundest polygon you know, they might get this. Analysis of the sentence does indicate movement, and that is because there is movement. This is because your finger needs to move down to touch the screen. There are more than two dimensions of motion when describing fingers. And this does not change just because a screen is involved.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
s_henry_paulson 14y ago
The way that they handled it suggested that they knew what they were doing, and recognized it as an actual bug.
phoboslab 14y ago
I'm not a native speaker, so these instructions may very well be ambiguous. Any suggestions on how to clarify it? Back then, I built the test case and asked on twitter if anybody else could confirm the bug. I got several answers (e.g. one from mrdoob within the minute: https://twitter.com/mrdoob/statuses/6896165488427008 https://twitter.com/mrdoob/statuses/6896165488427008 ) so I thought the instructions were fine.
- ta12121 14y ago
  1. Touch the screen in the blue area with one finger and hold the finger there. 2. Use another finger to touch the screen somewhere below the first finger. 3. Lift your second finger and repeat step 2.
  - rdl 14y ago
    You may want to say "touch (but do not drag)"
- mjschultz 14y ago
  1. Press and hold a finger in the blue area (do not move this finger) 2. Tap a second finger somewhere else in the same blue area (again, do not move your finger only tap) 3. Observe the orange bar. It should become green when both finger are touching the screen. Response time should be near instantaneous. It is not. Additionally, about 1 out of 3 touches results in an inconsistent state in which the bar remains green after both fingers are removed. I'd remove the "straight down" part altogether.
- mcgwiz 14y ago
  Use the widest established terms possible: "tap", and "tap and hold". 1. Observe that the feedback bar above the blue area is orange. 2. Tap and hold the blue area. 3. While still holding, tap and hold a different part of the blue area with a second finger. 4. Observe that the feedback bar is now green. 5. While still holding with the first finger, stop holding with the second finger. 6. Observe that the feedback bar is now orange. 7. While still holding with the first finger, again tap and hold a different part of the blue area with the second finger. 8. It is expected that the feedback bar be green at this point. However observe the feedback bar actually remains orange.
breakall 14y ago
Put it another way -- he wants to run and jump at the same time! You know, the way you would in Super Mario on the original NES and every platform game since.
dclowd9901 14y ago
If I recall correctly, the ocarina app suffered from this same issue. If he offset-aligns the contact areas, he should be able to get around the issue.
pvidler 14y ago
Just tried his test case and at first I couldn't reproduce it at all. On my iPhone 4S, you have to do the second finger tapping quite quickly for it to go wrong -- just touching it the way he does in the video is not triggering it for me.

alttab 14y ago

You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? Get out of town! I don't believe it. Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. Right now, when one pissed off developer leaves or goes bankrupt because their app was yanked from the store or wasn't approved for some BS reason, 50 developers replace him.

technoslut 14y ago
>You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? GET OUT OF TOWN! I don't believe it. This isn't something that is exclusive to Apple though this has always been an issue with them even regarding security issues with OS X. >Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. They develop for iOS because that is where the money is though this isn't the issue. It isn't as if the Android browser doesn't have its fair share of bugs. >Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. You're right. Apple puts the interests of their customers first (not trying to be smug here). The developers come second. The only time you do hear complaints that go unanswered for devs it is usually only answered when there's a public (consumer) interest regarding it. A good example of this is Phil Schiller replying to customer's email about the Rogue Amoeba situation. I'm certainly not defending Apple but this is a problem that has existed for as long as I've been interested in tech.
- duiker101 14y ago
  Wrong, Apple puts money before everything. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287
  - technoslut 14y ago
    I did click on the link and did read the article though it lacked virtually any detail. Of course Apple cares about money but they make their money by customers buying their hardware. They put their customers first because that is where they make their money. As a counterpoint, Apple refuses to pay employees on commission because Jobs didn't want them upselling to consumers because there is a less chance of them being a returning customer. It's the goal of every business to make money. It's how you go about it that tells the story.

richardv 14y ago

I have so much sympathy for you. (Along with anyone else that tries to produce anything that runs on any iOS device and it's walled garden.) It's easy to see that when building a platformer game, unimpeded multitouch functionality is pretty essential. Have you been able to identify other games that have the same problem? I would of thought that this would be resolved so much sooner than 2 years. It's a core part of multitouch functionality. At least you still have your app available on iOS!.. It is total BS how developers are treated. Apple has built up a product which sells hundreds of millions of units per year, largely in part due to the developers who have invested time in their ecosystem, but it's total shit how they return no investment back to the people who have supported this system. (Yes, developers are largely to thank. Look at how RIM and MS are failing, because they don't control nor have the content). Everyone deserves better.

crag 14y ago
I agree. But, the only reason anyone writes for iOS is money. It's one of the best selling phones on the market. And iPhone uses tend to buy a lot of apps. There's a long list of developers who made fortunes on that platform. So if you don't want to write for it, then don't. The only force that can change Apple's behavior is the consumer. Apple doesn't care about anything else. And they never will. So stop complaining. Write your app. And hope it's a hit. Then you can sell it and buy a house on the beach.

barrynolan 14y ago

An example in how to title a blog

quonn 14y ago

I have filed dozens of OS X and iOS bugs over the years. Almost all of them were closed with the claim that Apple already knew about that bug. However many of them were really subtle and it was unlikely that anybody else had already reported them, especially if a developer preview introducing the bug had just been released. Furthermore some of them are not fixed even now, years after the first report. My experience is that Apple will almost never admit they don't know about a bug. The only exception are security bugs where one actually gets real feedback.

bazzargh 14y ago
I've only filed a couple (against Quartz), and had a similar experience. They'd maybe ask for a reduced test case, then nothing happens for 3 months; the latest patch of the OS comes out and the next day the bug is closed. I don't mind if they fix the bugs, but the stony silence is a bit frustrating. One that never got fixed was crashers in Console. That's been going on for years now.
Spooky23 14y ago
My experience is that Apple isn't that bad. I have filed several bugs with Apple over the years, and IMO their response is pretty good compared to other vendors, particularly given that I have no paid support relationship with them. The bugs ranged from AD integration issues to PDF rendering problems, to an ActiveSync issue specific to our unusual configuration. I do have an expensive support relationship with Microsoft, and I've gotten similar results for the same types of problems. We log bug reports, and the serious ones with business impact get fixed. UI glitches or corner-case Outlook problems get fixed more slowly, or only via custom hotfix. Serious bugs get fixed more quickly, and typically get rolled into a future patch. In the past, I've had similar or even worse results from other large companies like IBM, Oracle, Informix and Sun. Software has bugs, and low-priority bugs persist for a long time, for reasons that may be good or bad. In any case, posting expletive-laden rants railing against a vendor is unprofessional and unlikely to garner a positive reaction.
saurik 14y ago
Thers are tons of people using this platform, and many of them are doing very obscure things with it. Meanwhile, that same bug tracking system is used by Apple's Q/A and the very engineers working on the code in the first place. You might thing the bug is something only you would find, but with this many people staring at it, someone else probably came across it. As many ways as I feel Apple is slightly disingenuous, I really can't imagine they have a policy of making up bug numbers in Radar so they can mark things as duplicates.

kalleboo 14y ago

Going to a WWDC lab is basically the only way to guarantee an acknowledgement of a bug from Apple. Too bad it costs thousands of dollars and you have a 2 hour window in which to seize your chance.

epo 14y ago

Perhaps they did use your page and perhaps it worked for them? Or perhaps your whiny tone made them disregard you as a serious witness, and so perhaps the problem is you. As other commenters point out you can't write clear instructions, what confidence should we have in your ability to write correct code?

chris_wot 14y ago
Almost anyone can reproduce this bug on that webpage. If they can't reproduce the issue, then they should get better support people.
phoboslab 14y ago
I filed all the bug reports in a professional manner, without insults or swearing. I have a lot of respect for the engineers working at Apple, I just hate their company politics. The blog post on the other hand was written in that manner to get public attention - which seems to have worked. The code for the test case is about 20 lines of JavaScript. You don't have to trust me to write correct code, you can easily check it yourself.
- salgernon 14y ago
  The corporate overlords are not screening your bugs, the engineers are. Your mention that your bug got closed as a dup? And that the dup was closed as not being reproducible? It seems likely that either it wasn't really a dup or that the second bug didnt have steps that allowed it to be reproduced. In your case, I would think re submitting your as a new bug, referencing the other two, would probably bring some traction. Openradar is also an option for making your reports more public, and possibly getting more traction.
- saurik 14y ago
  I believe you can also get public attention without resorting to such tactics. As much as I agree with your underlying position, I am sufficiently turned off by your tone and presentation that I, for example, would not go out of my way to ask anyone I might know at Apple what was up with the bug, or (of it were something I felt I could control) fix it myself. Your audience should not be people who will be riled up by vitriol: it should be other professional developers, and a larger internal-to-Apple community. I wouldn't be surprised if other people at Apple now just feel insulted, and the people working on this problem likewise demoralized; all with the result that you are even /less/ likely to see a bug fixed in this project in a short period of time (and even if someone does "react" to this one, to be slightly more hostile and slightly less forgiving of your future bug reports, even of they are posed in a "professional manner", as they now "know better").

TwistedWeasel 14y ago

So he let this bug sit in his game for two years without thinking of a work around himself? The situation where any platform owner has a bug that impacts your software you should try as best you can to work around it because you never know if and when it will get fixed.

Kiro 14y ago
What game? I think you missed the point of his blog post.
- mmuro 14y ago
  No he didn't. Read the post. This was the first sentence: "Almost two years ago I noticed a strange multitouch problem in Mobile Safari with one of my games." He should have learned to adapt instead of wait for a change that obviously wasn't going to happen.
  - jerf 14y ago
    So, tell me something: How do you adapt to not receiving an event? The only choice is to do something completely different, but I can't think of anything that doesn't profoundly change the nature of the game (continuously jump makes a completely different game, use upward motion to jump will have a lot of false positives) and is basically an admission that a game that involves two buttons like this is simply impossible. And that's an unreasonable outcome. (The continuously jumping game has interesting potential, but it is a different game. Plus I've think I've seen it way back in the day and it's very visually tiring.)
- uxp 14y ago
  Reading through your comment history makes you appear to be a rather unfriendly commenter. We like to maintain civil discussions here on HN, so please try to contribute accordingly. The entire article revolves around a bug that came about from an HTML5 game the author was working on. > Almost two years ago I noticed a strange multitouch problem in Mobile Safari with one of my games. TwistedWeasel has a valid point. OS X and iOS are not open source projects one can fork and submit patches to. Neither is Windows or Windows Mobile for that matter. If someone finds a bug, submitting a testcase and doing a lot of legwork is probably appreciated, but none of that will guarantee the bug will get fixed. Finding a workaround is a much better short term solution for the developer because they can continue on developing the way they need to and not have to wait for the black box of Apple's Radar to return a positive result. On some occasions, the developer might be able to search into WebKit to see if the problem is there, and submitting a bug report to that project might return more valid feedback. Significant portions of both OS X and iOS are available in source code form. Is this ideal? No. Is it how it works? Yes. Can an everyday non-Apple engineer do anything about it? Not really.

tdskate 14y ago

I hope they never fucking fix it. What a douche.

TwistedWeasel 14y ago

FTA: "On the iPhone, you're as locked in with HTML5 as you were with Flash everywhere else before" In what way has Flash ever been the only way to display web content? This statement is absurd.

Kiro 14y ago
And again you fail to see the point of the blog post.
betterth 14y ago
Flash was the standard. Sure, you could use something else, but that something else most likely worked for less viewers. And the plugin-gap is real -- asking users to install a plugin causes some users to skip and move on. To ignore the previous ubiquity of Flash is absurd.
- franzus 14y ago
  Well, but that's not a lock in. It's just the incompetence of Adobe's competition to make an alternative.
phoboslab 14y ago
There's no other vendor than Apple providing access to HTML5 content on iOS. Apple forbids it. Similarly, there's not other vendor than Adobe providing access to Flash.
lmm 14y ago
The point is: the reason Flash was bad was that the only way to display Flash content was with Adobe's (buggy) implementation. HTML5 on the iPhone is just as bad: the only way to display HTML5 content is with Apple's (buggy) implementation.
- TwistedWeasel 14y ago
  That makes sense to me, as I read the article it sounded like he was saying that outside iOS he was locked in to Flash in the same way as he is locked in to HTML5 on iOS. The iOS restriction is very real and enforced, there is nothing forcing people to use Flash for any popular platform. However if you put it in terms of "if I want to use Flash, I'm forced into Adobe's implementation" then I can see that argument.

jamesflorentino 14y ago

I think I was more interested in the iOS game demo in the video than the rant post itself. That was smooth as butter.

timkeller 14y ago

Apple are way more focussed on UIKit and the rest of the iOS frameworks, than they are in fixing a minor Mobile Safari glitch. Two years spent building a work-around would be a far better use of OP's time.

andrewfelix 14y ago

There are more accurate ways of registering the second touch. Have you tried using 'event.targetTouches'?

phoboslab 14y ago
The touchstart event isn't fired. There's no 'event' object to access.

napierzaza 14y ago

This is Hacker News link bait.

commanda 14y ago

HTML5 is definitely not the only way to write a game for iOS. It seems glaringly obvious, but the OP could perhaps try writing their game as a native app.

recoiledsnake 14y ago
That's what Apple wants to push developers towards. Regardless of Jobs' anti-Flash post, HTML5 is simply not a priority for Apple. If this bug was in the actual native API, it would've got fixed in the next minor patch.
noonat 14y ago
That would be a bit counter-intuitive, as OP's product is an SDK for HTML5 game development on iOS.

pjmlp 14y ago

Native applications is the way to go.

zoop 14y ago

Being critical is great. Creating workarounds is even better. Being entitled is not so great. If you want to talk about how Apple is terrible to developers, fine, talk about the App store double-standards and the developer agreement. But this is hardly an exceptional case of a company being 'anti-developer'. I can't tell you how many bugs I've filed from OS X, chrome, to various python libraries well the response is pretty much "welp its broke" (if that). If you depend on some sort of functionality that you're not getting, it's time to move on or create your own. The tone of this post reminds me of 'why I'm not developing for twitter' post ... where the take away for that was be weary of developing on platforms you don't control. I would assume that most of us have learned that the hard way with esoteric libraries with ghost-maintainers. Myself, I'm becoming weary of turning every inconvenience into some sort of political issue. This is _hacker_ news. Can we get back to making clever and disruptive solutions please?

phoboslab 14y ago
I built a lot of workarounds to make my game engine ( http://impactjs.com/ http://impactjs.com/ ) work on iOS, Android and other browsers. But I couldn't find a viable workaround for this multitouch bug. The touchstart/move/end events are the only way to detect multiple touches in Mobile Safari - and they don't work as they should. This bug is affecting many HTML5 games and as long as I'm not allowed to install another browser (engine) on iOS, I will keep complaining.
- genwin 14y ago
  I think it's great that you're complaining in the way you are. It'll be interesting to see whether Apple responds. MS-Word has retained some of its obvious bugs since 1995.
drzaiusapelord 14y ago
>Can we get back to making clever and disruptive solutions please? So wait, when MS was abusing its IE product then HN is justified in angry anti-MS rants, but when Apple purposely keeps html5 gimped on iOS and refuses any other browser on iOS suddenly you're all about tolerance and double-standards. This a very legitimate issue. Apple can't applaud HTML5 in public and piss on it in private. Yes, its a threat to your app ecosystem. Accept it, fix the bugs, and allow other browsers. This is HN worthy, if not extraordinarily HN worthy.

J3L2404 14y ago

A comment from the blog sums it up nicely and keeps the reddit-esque tone: "boo fucking hoo. I guess their fucking priorities don't line the FUCK up with yours. "

Fliko 14y ago

Don't worry man, I have this Nexus One phone where the touchscreen registers touch on the side of the phone, and the advertised multitouch doesn't even work, never mind not receiving updates for the rest of my life (my hardware bugs cost me over $600!!). Your game has no chance to work on my phone, why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post. All systems are plagued with bugs, and a lot of them get neglected forever. Instead of aggressively attacking a company (Apple hateboy?), expecting them to fix something after some f-bombs were dropped, why not write a meaningful blog post.

Karunamon 14y ago
> why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post. Because you haven't written it yet?
- shinratdr 14y ago
  Why should he have to? Plenty of Android devs owned Nexus Ones. It was the Android dev phone for a pretty important year. Yet we heard little griping at Google from devs over the fact that they cheaped out on the hardware for their flagship device. Moreover there are countless ignored bugs in Android, many of the most starred issues have been there for two years or more. This griping about Apple is ridiculous. They're a massive faceless software & hardware vendor, big surprise a low-priority bug (never once seen someone who isn't a dev or similar play an HTML5 game in my life) slipped through the cracks. This isn't new, nor is it unique to Apple, so it would be nice if we could can the melodrama and focus on the issue.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    Except in Android's, and especially the Nexus series of phones case, any random can do whatever fixes to the core code they wish - that's not something you can do in Apple land. I'd be shocked to learn that third party patches don't exist for at least some of the rough edges.
wavephorm 14y ago
Because it used to work and Apple broke it (possibly on purpose) and refuses to fix it. That's not the same as it never working in the first place.

vosper 14y ago

With all that swearing you could be forgiven for thinking Apple had been caught skinning kittens for iPhone parts. Save the hyperbole, please.

cobrausn 14y ago
Two year wait and 40 hours of developer time spent on a simple bug is worth a bit of swearing.
- john_flintstone 14y ago
  So let him swear at his wife. Or at Apple. Why should we have to read it?
  - tjoff 14y ago
    Because we upvoted it.
  - cobrausn 14y ago
    It's not like the title didn't give away the fact that the rant would be full of swearing. Also, you didn't have to read it.
    - vosper 14y ago
      My problem with the level of vitriol is that it doesn't leave much room for when things are truly bad - this has caused an inconvenience and lost time to him personally, but it's not like he's really suffered, like so many people do on a daily basis around the world. I'd love to see this passion directed at (for example) issues of social justice.
      - ricardobeat 14y ago
        I think you're underestimating the importance of this bug. For the developer of a HTML5 game platform this is a huge roadblock - it can totally ruin gameplay, prevents the use of more complex controls and ultimately hinders adoption.

nixle 14y ago

There is no need to get emotional. It won't help anything and it just clutters the issue. Just mind you language and stick to the facts, we are all grownups here.

ahoge 14y ago
This was 100% deliberate. It's just some spin. The post gets more attention this way, which makes it more likely that the underlying problem will be fixed somewhat sooner. Besides, with a headline like this it will also get automatic upvotes by everyone who dislikes Apple.

jonhendry 14y ago

I've only filed a couple of radars, but actually received pretty good response. However, they weren't api-related. One was about an issue I was having running the Britannica encyclopedia. I don't recall what it was, but Apple even called me about it. One was about a bug in Lion, where if you pick a large desktop image, and tile it, it gets all corrupted and there are artifacts in the desktop image that respond to movement of windows above the desktop. The corruption of the image looks like what happens when CIAffineClamp is applied to an image: a row of pixels at some place in the image is repeated out to the edge of the screen. The response was that it was fixed in a point release, but the fix was to disable the Tile option for large images. Except if you have it set to alternate images periodically, with the Tile option selected, a large image can still be tiled and displayed incorrectly.

ottoflux 14y ago

1) Yes, Apple is closed and lame. This isn't new. 2) I almost fell over laughing when you mentioned a whole "40" hours. I think if I went through that whole process with Apple, I'd be happy if I got it out of the way in 40 hours. Apple "used to" (as in, they cast a damn good image of) following Dieter Rams type of design philosophy, but that's long gone in the freak show app-orgy that exists within iOS now. It's a mess, it's terribly disorganized, it's not "less, but better" it's "more, and worse". Personally, I'm surprised that they let iOS get this stale. But apparently as long as the penumbra of Steve's[RIP] reality distortion field exists, they will blindly march on. What Apple needs is a new visionary. Not someone to try to emulate Steve Jobs. And they need to open the hell out of their products. If you believe your hardware and OS are best, then open the hardware to letting people install Android on it if they don't agree, and write a version of iOS to run on other hardware. It's not going to happen (and I hope they prove me wrong). Apple is designed as a coupled HW-SW ship, and I don't see them changing course any time soon. My advice: Pay attention to your perspective bed partners before you commit and get into bed with them.

astrodust 14y ago
It's not like Android isn't without it's infuriating problems. Worse, most people are running several versions behind and the uptake on new ones is slowing, so some problems may never be fixed.
- drzaiusapelord 14y ago
  My phone has ICS and honestly I'm not getting a lot out of it. I could be back on 2.3 or 2.2 and not even notice. I think Android versions don't really have much for the end user unless he or she needs a specialized application that makes use of the newer APIs. I'd rather go with something thats open-ish and stale than this controlled freakshow that is the iOS ecosystem.
  - astrodust 14y ago
    Android in its present form is an uncontrolled freakshow. To test an Android app properly requires at least a dozen devices if not more, and even then you're only scratching the surface. You need a veritable museum at hand to be sure you've got it right. What Apple's doing right is introducing new features and then aggressively pushing these down to the devices. iOS 5 is by far the majority of devices now, and very few are on anything under 4. Android on the other hand seems perpetually stuck in 2.3 land. As you point out there's not much in the way of advantages if none of the apps are dependent on features introduced in 4.0. This further stalls the upgrade cycle. To succeed Google is going to have to take a more active role and ensure that there's fewer conflicting interpretations of their standard, well-defined reference devices, and more urgency to get users to upgrade.

trotsky 14y ago

Is there any evidence that Apple wants game developers targeting mobile Safari? It's a classic platform tactic to abuse APIs you don't want used (HTML5) to drive people to the one you do want used (ObjC). Between platform lock in and 30 cents on the dollar it's clear Apple wants developers making native apps.

jpxxx 14y ago
Letting an obscurant input handling bug fester so that they can drive people to a 41% margin product instead of a 40% margin product? Doubtful.
wavephorm 14y ago
Between introducing multi-touch errors, and hobbling the HTML5 Audio API, there is no way to build an engaging game for mobile Safari. Apple has sabotaged their web platform with expert precision.
thechut 14y ago
I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app that is sold. Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best experience to consumers. And you can be damn sure that they don't give a shit about developers, especially if they aren't making native iOS apps which aren't being sold in the app store.
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- nickheer 14y ago
  > I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app that is sold. > Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best experience to consumers. I disagree here, mainly because the amount of money Apple makes from the App Store is tiny, relative to their overall revenues. This year at WWDC, Tim Cook announced that Apple had paid $5 billion to developers on the App Store, which translates into a little over $7.1 billion in apps sold, or $2.1 billion in revenue for Apple since 2008. That's about $130 million per quarter, against revenue of between $7 billion and $30 billion per quarter. That's without considering hosting costs and credit card fees. $130 million is certainly no small change. But for Apple, in the big scope, it isn't printing money for them.

drucken 14y ago

I think the author is overlooking the likelihood this is deliberate behaviour for various touch UX and lock-in reasons. Though, I am impressed by the combination of vitriolic text and cool, crystal-clear and calm bug explanation in the video. :)

Iv 14y ago

What the fuck, developer ? how could you not know that iOS is a closed garden ? Stop being complicit of this dangerous ecosystem. I understand that a lot of people have spent a decade or more in a very good relationship with Apple, swimming in wonderful hardware, nice frameworks and a helpful and friendly community, but it is finished now. This is not the Apple of today anymore.

ahoge 14y ago
Don't put spaces in front of question marks. If you're French, okay, you're forgiven. However, a regular space is still completely wrong and it will totally break word-wrapping.
- Iv 14y ago
  Sorry, French here indeed. It is strange. I have made that mistake for several years when writing in English fora but recently, in the space of two months, I got several people making me noticed this. I am trying to lose this habit in English but why is it that this mistake is now fought more thoroughly? Has there been a particular event raising the awareness of this?
  - ahoge 14y ago
    >Has there been a particular event raising the awareness of this? Not that I know of. You probably just started hanging out with people who tend to complain about this kind of thing. I, for one, complain about this stuff because it's a defect I have to fix if I happen to see it in someone's copy. It also might be a frequency illusion [1]. [1] The illusion in which a word, a name or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly appears "everywhere" with improbable frequency. Sometimes called "The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon".

glenntzke 14y ago

You fortunately now have the option of running Chrome on iOS. I'd like to see the side-by-side comparison for compatibility issues.

phoboslab 14y ago
Chrome uses Mobile Safari's "WebView" internally. It's the same browser engine - Apple doesn't allow other browser engines on iOS. So the bug is present in Chrome as well.

john_flintstone 14y ago

Who else is affected by this bug. And by who else, I don't mean this one guy's customers / users. If the answer is no one else, or if no one else has reported it, then it's probably so far down the list as to be inconsequential. Which probably means the new guy on work experience gets to deal with it. Not all bugs are fixed. There's only so many hours in the day, and some bugs are simply not worth fixing.

icambron 14y ago
It's true that Apple might decide the bug isn't worth fixing, but then they should say that explicitly, so that devs don't have to file the bug a zillion times and wonder where it is on Apple's priority list. The issue here is really the lack of transparency. Bug reports shouldn't go into a black hole. It's also not clear to me why you think no one else is affected by this bug. How many duplicates from other reporters have been closed? We have no way to know. Presumably others, though-- not every instance of an issue results in a front-page HN article.

ademuk 14y ago

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was intentional in order prevent devs creating HTML5 games on par with those of the AppStore.

wavephorm 14y ago
It absolutely is intentional. And with that same intention Apple forbids other companies from writing web browsers that fix these and other issues with mobile Safari. Auto-playing audio and video in the browser is also forbidden, which prevents any sort of online music, or video app from being created, among other things. So games, music, and video apps in mobile Safari are all hopelessly hobbled, and if you build a browser that fixes these issues you'll be banned. Happy developing!
- sedev 14y ago
  "Auto-playing audio and video in the browser is also forbidden, which prevents any sort of online music, or video app from being created, among other things." It also prevents MySpace. I consider that a Good Thing overall - I remember the period of the web where it was trivial to auto-play video and audio, and I remember that the consumer reaction to that was deeply hostile. HTML5 music/video apps certainly are an interesting thought, but you must consider what happens when you let random or malicious developers do those things too!
  - wavephorm 14y ago
    What are you talking about? How exactly is it malicious to build a game or build a music web app? On desktops with Flash or the HTML5 Audio/Video API you can already do these things. I don't see anyone complaining that things like Youtube and Grooveshark are malicious, so why should iOS be sabotaged? Non-Apple devices like Android, and Playbook work just fine. You can build music, and video, and game web applications on those devices without these limitations, and it is not a problem. Apple simply wants a hobbled platform, to force all content through the iTunes store instead of over the internet.
    - 14y ago

melvinmt 14y ago

Could the issue be that you use an onClick event that has a well-known 400ms delay instead of a touchstart/touchmove event?

lukifer 14y ago
I'm quite sure that this developer knows the difference. :) Still, this does smell like it's a "feature", where the event is thrown away in an effort to prevent accidental touches or such. I imagine the bug is being ignored because of the difficulty of fixing it without removing the feature in question. Alas, I suspect that Apple's secrecy harms their process as well as ours: they probably live in such a bubble that they don't see these bugs as being problems. And I really wish Android was a better HTML5 alternative, but it's been problematic as well, as evidenced by Sencha's HTML5 Scorecards (we'll see with Chrome on Jelly Bean).

chmars 14y ago

I haven't reported bugs to Apple due to such problems, there's simply no incentive. Apple as a quality company has of course always been focused on hardware and third-party developers have traditionally provided high-quality apps.

johnohara 14y ago

phoboslab: I filed all the bug reports in a professional manner, without insults or swearing. I have a lot of respect for the engineers working at Apple, ... Why are we excluded?

brm 14y ago

I can't help but read this and feel that your life priorities and response levels to problems are out of whack

septerr 14y ago

To tell you the truth, I couldn't really see the bug in the video. It's probably just me. Since the bar every time eventually turned green in the video, I couldn't see the case when it does not turn green. Nor could I see the bug in the video game. I am sure folks at Apple or regular game players will be able to tell.

donniezazen 14y ago

I didn't know that Apple bug tracker is private. They are more secretive than CIA and FBI together.

VeryVito 14y ago

Just playing devil's debugger here: Are you SURE the bug is with Safari, and not related to something else in your code? In BioLab Disaster, for example, while it's true I can't RUN and press the JUMP button multiple times, I can definitely RUN and press the FIRE button multiple times. Why would the FIRE button be immune to a bug in the browser? Any chance this is a timing issue in your own code, rather than a bug in the browser?

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SigmundA 14y ago

Reviewing the test case code the basic bug seem to be that sometimes a touchend event won't fire when a secondary finger is lifted. You can make your code much more reliable by handling all touch events and looking that the touches or targetTouches respectively instead of incremental a total touch counter on each start and decrementing on each end. This causes even the slightest movement to trigger a touchmove event which and the entire current touch state is in touches within all the events. So changing your test like so gets close and you can at least see the use more clearly: var i = 0; var numTouches = 0; var out = document.getElementById('out'); var indicator = document.getElementById('indicator'); function handleTouch( ev ) { ev.preventDefault(); i++; numTouches = ev.touches.length; out.value += i + ': ' + ev.type + ', ' + numTouches + '\n'; indicator.style.backgroundColor = (numTouches == 2) ? '#8e6' : '#fb7'; out.scrollTop = out.scrollHeight; } var ta = document.getElementById('ta'); ta.addEventListener('touchstart', handleTouch, false); ta.addEventListener('touchend', handleTouch, false); ta.addEventListener('touchmove', handleTouch, false); ta.addEventListener('touchcancel', handleTouch, false);

NinjaWarior 14y ago

This is not a only blocking problem for HTML5 gaming. Chrome Canvas latency problem, Firefox canvas performance bug, HTML5 "poor" Audio, HTML5 "poor" video, Canvas "poor" API, SVG never works correctly, underestimated fragmentation cost, poor programming language (why the hell did they abandon ECMAScript 4?), when the hell can we use WebGL? etc... People was complaining Flash was vendor lock-in. So kicked out Flash and now we are prisoners of fucking browsers. Kicked out poor Adobe, and Apple, Google and MS rules! Yay! Do you enjoy this? I think plug-ins were clever, liberal and democratic software designing. We were able to choice the best technology we want to use (including Java Applet, Unity Web Player, Silverlight and even Shockwave). We were even able to develop our plug-ins freely. We had a freedom of programming language other than fucking JavaScript. I feel people's enthusiasm for HTML5 is completely wrong. At least they should stop saying "HTML5 is a cool technology" "HTML5 is an open technology". COMPLETELY WRONG.