It's equally frustrating to be a software developer and have a problem magically vanish when a user restarts their computer. I hate it probably more than the u

It's equally frustrating to be a software developer and have a problem magically vanish when a user restarts their computer. I hate it probably more than the user. Once their problem is gone they usually no longer want to talk on the phone to try to reproduce the glitch. If we can't get it to re-occur then it's extremely difficult to fix. Our machines have layer upon layer of firmware and software. Users are allowed to install and configure whatever they want. It's all expected to run perfectly and, for the most part, things do run pretty well these days. Features are constantly being added. Everything is changing all the time. Unexpected combinations of things still happen and with complex software there are just cases that slip through the QA cracks. Though I do get annoyed when something crashes, it has to be a bit of a two-way street sometimes. Both sides fail at this. Not all users are good at reproducing bugs and sometimes they are downright dishonest about what they are doing (out of embarrassment, or attempt to "skip ahead" in the diagnosis and other reasons I'm sure). But in the case of big companies like Apple and Microsoft as a user I do feel like they don't provide a way for a knowledgeable user to provide them reproducible errors either. Well, they have their bug report mechanisms but it feels like yelling into the grand canyon when I do submit bugs.