7 ms·

Everything just doesn't work and nobody cares

42 points by firedev 14y ago

I am seriously tired. Nothing "just works", I have to always reboot, restart, replug, update, force-quit and make sure it didn't hang up while I wasn't looking.

josteink 14y ago
Why was this flagged?
codex 14y ago
This problems are no doubt real, but sometimes it helps to change one's perspective from one of constant negativity (which causes you to see more problems, and feel worse about them), to one of positivity and gratitude. Every day I'm amazed that computers, some of the most complex non-biological processes on this planet, work at all, or as well as they do. I'm thankful that so many wonders are available to me, like the Internet and mobile phones.
QuantumGood 14y ago
I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most anyone I know. When I share what I do with savvy folks who are having issues, I find that NONE of them do all of the things I consider essential, that can be done with little knowledge. My easy-to-do essentials, In order of priority, from years of experience are: • I restart Windows frequently, at least daily, and anytime things seem "off" (rarely). I of course also restart any application(s) that seem(s) to be working poorly. I rarely need to do either. • I use an online backup service that archives changes (dropbox) so I can restore old versions of files in case I screw something up (about once every other month). • If I have a problem that repeats, I restart Windows in safe mode, and then turn off, unplug the POWER cord, and then hold the power button in with the power cord UNPLUGGED (fixes some electrical static issues. Works on other appliances as well) • I hide all services under Msconfig > services tab to see what is starting up that I might not need, and then uncheck some or even click "Disable all." You can generally turn anything off here without causing noticeable issues. Turn stuff back on and restart if concerns. • If one browser gives me a problem I switch to another (I have four installed). • I upgrade or reinstall Windows at least every 4-5 years or so. • I auto-install software updates and use anti-virus software. These basic practices give me many almost entirely headache-free years. Of course, I'm also fairly savvy about not installing extras with software, and avoiding clicking suspicious links or giving information to suspect websites, but these practices rely much more on experience, and can't really be considered "easy-to-do" in the same way the others can. Also, I used to use Apple products. I had so many problems, and couldn't figure out best practices to avoid them, that I stopped using Apple. Of course, YMMV, all I'm saying is that I'm not qualified to speak to stabilizing Apple setups, but I would expect that there are best practices that make a difference.
- greenyoda 14y ago
  "I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most anyone I know." Same experience here, on both my home and work machines that currently run Windows 7. I've found Windows 7 to be remarkably stable, but I've also had good experiences with all the other NT-based operating systems I've used: NT 3.51 and 4.0, Windows 2000 and XP (never used Vista). But I usually don't restart Windows except to install Windows updates every couple of weeks. My work machine runs continuously (with lots of third-party services like Tomcat, Apache HTTP and VNC) and my home machine gets hibernated when I'm not using it.
Frozenlock 14y ago
At least my zoom button works...
- firedev 14y ago
  I remember in Lion I had to always re-enable Trackpad zoom in preferences because it wasn't working otherwise.
Expez 14y ago
Apple's walled-garden is becoming quite large and it might be the case that they don't have enough engineers to tend that garden at the moment. Apple is, however, not a hardware company, they're selling an entire ecosystem to their users. It is in their best interest to make sure the user's entire experience is pleasant, so you can feel confident that someone does care. I would suggest you leave for greener pastures, but Job's genius was such that you're probably not even considering that: it would mean giving up all the content and apps you've bought.
- firedev 14y ago
  I wish, but sorry, what pastures? Everything else is even worse. And I am a web-developer, not somebody who buys stuff because it looks nice.
- mberning 14y ago
  If the greeness of the pasture is defined by how well 'things just work' then there are no other greener pastures. You would be trading one set of bugaboos for another.
  - Expez 14y ago
    My Android devices 'just work'. I also advice novice users to buy Windows for their laptops, even though I, personally, prefer Linux. Windows gets a lot of crap from more advanced users, but it's amazing how everything 'just works' on that platform considering the huge amount of software and hardware that is supported. My mom bought herself an iPhone earlier this year and has been very happy with its usability, but I would never, ever, let her install anything but Windows on her laptop.
    - mberning 14y ago
      What kind of novice user buys a laptop and questions changing the OS, or even knows what an OS is, or that there is even an alternative? I think you claims are ... dubious. Novice users, like my grandmother, never ask me if they should install Windows. They just ask me to fix it after it breaks. And it breaks often. On the contrary, when I put something like an iPad in their hands I go a lot longer between support calls. That's my experience having dealt with more than a few 'novice users'.
prezjordan 14y ago
I've found that Chrome works especially poorly with a weak internet connection. When I'm tethering from my phone, Chrome sometimes cannot load webpages (I have to close tabs and reopen), whereas on Safari I don't experience this issue. Could be all my extensions though?
- firedev 14y ago
  Chrome was my weapon of choice but I am moved to a new house and this Error 324 issue started. Click reload and the very same page I was just looking at doesn't work anymore. It affects sites with CloudFlare as far as I could figure, but all other browsers are working fine.
  - TillE 14y ago
    > but I am moved to a new house and this Error 324 issue started How do other browsers behave? Sounds like an ISP problem rather than anything on your end.
    - firedev 14y ago
      Everything except Chrome works. I think it is also related to CloudFlare, but I am not alone in this world of pain: http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324 http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324
Karunamon 14y ago
Invariably it seems the majority of people who have these problems have done something to their computer. Either downloading an app they shouldn't have, or playing with settings they shouldn't have, or there's a hardware issues (power/memory problems will cause all manner of weird behavior) Something along those lines. The problems mentioned here are simply not shared by most users. Show of hands, how many Apple users here can't get Chrome to work reliably? How many iTunes users have had the app crash on them? I've been a fan of their products (software too) for at least a decade now, and the only crash issues I've ever had on iTunes were on Windows. (Apple's ported software is invariably crap) And I've got a library approaching 50k songs. I've never had a problem with Preview corrupting files. I've never had mail from the past appear on an iPhone. Either I am incredibly, incredibly lucky, or these problems are rare and don't affect that many people. And I am not that lucky.
- revelation 14y ago
  Thats a healthy dose of reality distortion. He lists specific flaws in specific applications.
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    I use Chrome every day on Linux, OSX, and Windows, and know for a fact that it doesn't get error 324 on every other page. I've had iTunes running for weeks without gobbling all of my memory. At some point he needs to face the facts that if he's the only person experiencing all these problems then the problem isn't the software, it's him.
    - firedev 14y ago
      I have ~40000 songs in iTunes, what about you? And Chrome was working fine until I moved to a new house. Regarding me being the only person with this – maybe you can tip the other guys in the right direction too? http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324 http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324
      - 14y ago
pjmlp 14y ago
This is why the computing industry should move away from this behaviour and into what is common in other industries, where if something is broken the seller is accountable for it.
- firedev 14y ago
  Apple doesn't even have an open bug-tracker. That alone could improve a lot. discussions.apple.com is full of issue-discussing threads with thousands of replies, but nobody gives a damn.
  - moakleaf 14y ago
    https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa It requires an Apple ID, but otherwise you are free to submit bugs... It isn't brilliant.
    - firedev 14y ago
      I know about the Radar, yes you can submit, but then what do you see? http://d.pr/i/8bto http://d.pr/i/8bto 0 problems! Great. I am talking about an Open bug tracker, not this.
      - moakleaf 14y ago
        You can still "track" the bugs you report, but "yes" they can stay open for years. However, if you don't report these bugs Apple will not see them. The forums are not really a convenient place to report software problems. I don't think their developers go there ofter. If you report a bug in Radar, it will be in Apple's bug-report system and some (poor) developer will have to deal with it eventually.
officemonkey 14y ago
We have a lot of the same problems in my home too. My wife's computer, iPhone, and iPad refuse to behave with her email. I'm using an old iMac as a media server, but every time I connect remotely using Team Viewer, it complains that I don't have a mouse attached. My new iPod touch still won't sync remotely. We were Apple fans "back in the day" (1990s) because it all "just works." The funny thing is my new Desktop/Gaming machine (running Windows 8) is more trouble-free than anything else I own. Apple should work harder on household integration. Otherwise they'll lose out to Almond, Roku, Kindle, and all the other boxes that "just work together."
- firedev 14y ago
  I think they need to stop adding new stuff and fix what's already released. Snow Leopard was the best version of OS X because they did exactly that. Bug fixing. No new stuff.
  - c3d 14y ago
    I agree completely. But also, they are not "adding new stuff" anymore. There's practically no new functionality in 10.7 or 10.8. Instead, they are rewriting existing functionality, often in a way that breaks because it fails to take into account all accumulated knowledge. Joel Spolsky wrote about that here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html. Restarting from scratch is the worst idea you can have. Here are things that were broken in OSX 10.7 or 10.8: Dual monitor support, resolution change, keyboard input, auto-correction, Save As, Suspend/Resume, Backups/Time Machine, Preview, Window manager (backing store), OpenGL (stereoscopy = kernel panic, very annoying for http://www.taodyne.com http://www.taodyne.com), Mail, Safari, RSS feeds, Windows networking. That's just off the top of my head, sure there are many others. But things are only marginally better in Linux or Windows land. On Linux, the user interface in Ubuntu is a mixed bag. At least, I get a sense of purpose and direction. And Windows 8 is like "What were they thinking" (although I met a few users who think it's a good ideas, so YMMV). And what about C++11, which added the kitchen sink but forgot introspection/reflection? What about Facebook which still has not found a business model, but keeps rewriting privacy rules? What about washing machines that break after 5.0001 years? BTW, stuff that is not the way it should be is the primary topic of my own blog, Grenouille Bouillie, https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com. Sorry for the shameless plug, but it's really a topic close to my heart.
jonemo 14y ago
I am surprised you are writing this about Apple (I rarely use Apple products and hence don't know much about their quality) but I wholeheartedly agree on that title of yours in general. I increasingly feel like all products I use are in beta. I used to blame manufacturers for this, but recently I have come to the conclusion that consumers are to blame. Nobody cares about longevity and build quality of products any more. Read some product reviews on Amazon and you'll notice most of them are written within days of purchasing the product. Go to Techcrunch and most of the product reviews there seem to be written before they used the damn thing. tl,dr: If we incentivize designers and manufacturers to neglect quality over specs, we get the crap we get these days.
- greenyoda 14y ago
  "Read some product reviews on Amazon and you'll notice most of them are written within days of purchasing the product." And it's really depressing to see just how many of these reviews say that the product stopped working within days of being purchased!
moakleaf 14y ago
Honestly, this is ridiculous. I have experienced none of these issues. I use Preview and Color Picker all the time. Both Chrome and Safari works always for me. My iPhone 4 did not have a home-button issue, so it is definitely not 100% bad. I don't need to restart iTunes all he time. I use Mail with 15 accounts and 50000 messages across multiple servers. No problems! None... Zero... It really just works for me. Xcode sucks, but is becoming a lot less sucky with every new release.
- firedev 14y ago
  I am a web-developer and I guess it is different with Xcode, but I would like to have my colors in HEX, like I had them before Lion came out. Amazed with your iPhone 4 experience, but where I live almost everybody I see has a "accessibility controls" on the screen because home button doesn't work. Regarding iTunes, my library might be too big, but each morning I see it used 5Gb of ram and after force-quitting it I have to wait for like 7 minutes while it is checking the library.
  - moakleaf 14y ago
    Color picker (at least the version I have in Lion) has a nice menu option (View -> Display Values -> as Hexidecimal).
  - moakleaf 14y ago
    Sorry, thought you meant "Color meter"
    - firedev 14y ago
      Yes I mean Digital Color Meter. You're right, I was unable to find this option. But since then I moved to a better solution anyway.
  - moakleaf 14y ago
    BTW. Why didn't you exchange your iPhone 4 if you home-button was faulty??? I had mine for 2 years (before I switched to iPhone 5), I didn't have any problems with it.
batterseapower 14y ago
As soon as I stopped building computers from off-the-shelf parts, stopped installing unpopular applications and plugins and stopped trying to use OSes like Linux with relatively few users the amount of my life I spent fixing weird computer problems fell from hours per week to almost zero. When I do encounter a problem, the answer is almost always available after 5 minutes on Google. Following the herd leads to an easy life. Go figure.
- regularfry 14y ago
  That's funny, I could have sworn that the article described someone who followed the herd and had everything go to crap.
  - deleted 14y ago
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  - spqr 14y ago
    The herd doesn't use OS X.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Yet OP couldn't use more popular software (Chrome, Flash, iOS, iTunes). Personally, the difference I see since I switched to Debian (six years ago) was that I had less problems than on Windows, and more importantly, that I could actually fix those problems instead of having to get used to them. My Windows 7 desktop, which I barely use compared to my Debian laptop & VPS, still wastes much more of my time with maintenance and random bugs.
- onli 14y ago
  Sure. Because it is so common to have unstable linux-software but the so highly popular Windows is so stable. I once had to start Windows in Rescue Mode and do some weird stuff there just to get Steam back running. It failed to start suddenly and seemingly without cause. For a while (some years ago) I couldn't boot Windows at all until I unplugged a dvd-drive (linux was running fine) - I still use that dvd-drive, windows starts with it again. I bought GTA 4 and couldn't play it because Games for Windows Live wasn't working (still doesn't, but i found the hidden offline-mode). Sometimes I can't delete files in Windows with no cause whatsoever. At the same time, I'm using a rock-stable Ubuntu LTS with a custom "desktop environment" on the same hardware and never had any real issues i still remember. Oh, thinking a bit longer about it, there were some issues when upgrading to this lts: plymouth didn't stop itself (i had to end it via the rc.local) and pulseaudio didnt work (switched to alsa). That's about it. Following the herd doesn't lead to an easy life, the herd willingly runs down a cliff.
jmduke 14y ago
Something ignored in this article (maybe it's covered elsewhere on the blog): iTunes Match is by far the biggest Apple crud that I've used. It simply does not work.
- firedev 14y ago
  I wish I could post anything about iTunes Match, but it's not for everybody: http://d.pr/i/6GYq http://d.pr/i/6GYq
- tobiasbischoff 14y ago
  Yes, featured from that era feel really rushed out, see iCloud.
Jormundir 14y ago
Completely Bulls*&t article. I was going to write a long explanation why, but this made up whining doesn't deserve it.
- firedev 14y ago
  Made up? Dude, I don't have any other computers at home except made by Apple, and I am web-developer, not an office manager. I know my stuff.
  - _Simon 14y ago
    I must have missed the part where you tried another browser... (EDIT: I did genuinely miss it! Still, there are at least 2 other browsers that, as a web developer, you should have installed.) I must ask, why are you still using the platform if it's so bad? Use something else, problem solved! No, it is that simple.
    - firedev 14y ago
      Everything else is even worse.
Jormundir 14y ago
Completely Bulls*&t article. I was going to write a long explanation why, but this made up whining doesn't deserve it.
deleted 14y ago
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mikecane 14y ago
Hey, this isn't just Apple. It's everywhere. Thinking of a doing a Kindle book? You poor frikkin naif. You just have no idea. http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/02/why-amazon-just-dont-play-fair-with-formatting/ http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/02/why-amazon-... And you can multiply that by just about every eBook app out there too.
- firedev 14y ago
  I was thinking about getting a Kindle, but then every book review on Amazon includes a complaint about book being unreadable on Kindle. And I was interested mainly in books about programming that include listings which get garbled. So I thought why bother... At least I can read PDF on iPad.
  - mikecane 14y ago
    Formatting problems are due to many things, most of which are the fault of Amazon itself. The Previewer sucks and all of their products render books differently.
  - cypher543 14y ago
    You can read PDFs on a Kindle, too. That's how I read all of my programming books.
    - firedev 14y ago
      But it has a smaller screen, so I am not bothering.
jwpe 14y ago
"Oh well, so after I got the iPhone 4 finally I could use the phone for a whole day, but the Home button... It's not working, and everybody who had an iPhone 4 had or having this problem. So basically speaking 100% of the iPhone 4 yield was defective." Too true. I bought a Nexus 4 because I had this problem, and the alternative was paying £100+ for Apple to fix my button. Surely the sole button on a device should work for the lifetime of the device?
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  My employer issued dozens of iPhone 4's to employees and not a single one had problems with the home button. I don't have a problem with people complaining about products, but it's silly to try to generalize it to "everyone has this problem" based on personal experience. Apple sold tens of millions of units of the iPhone 4 in dozens of countries.
  - firedev 14y ago
    Okay, maybe 90%, all my friends who had iPhone 4, and most of the people I see around with iPhone 4 have the problem. How can I tell? They have accessibility thing on the screen.
  - jwpe 14y ago
    You're completely right to say that we shouldn't generalize to every iPhone 4 based on personal experience. I was just confirming that my experience correlated with the description in the post. Obviously 'everybody who had an iPhone4 had or having this problem' is hyperbole, but it's probably evidence of a widespread issue if there are a large number of complaints about it.
firedev 14y ago
Oh by the way I forgot I had a similar post a while back http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158 http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158 It lists some other issues, many of them are fixed by now and yet I simply can't list every thing that doesn't work.
calinet6 14y ago
I've actually heard the same sort of story with my dad, about his Apple products. AppleTV updates and such breaking such-and-such feature that he really likes, just random changes here and there changing the way he likes to do things. Their quality control has become a little lax (they could improve consistency and testing surely), but I still think this kind of sob story is overblown. They're still better than about 90% of manufacturers out there in terms of usability and quality overall, and I think sometimes we get a little spoiled and forget that. For example, my D-Link Wi-Fi base station makes me cringe every time I have to go into its configuration menus. It's quite literally their top-of-the-line piece of hardware, but it looks like the configuration was designed by a teenager who just took an HTML class in 1998. On top of that, it drops the connection constantly and sometimes needs to be restarted just because it stops working entirely. This was a replacement for an Apple AirPort Extreme that my roommate took with him, and I thought "Oh this will be good enough, it's half the price," and surely I've spent more in time and frustration dealing with it than that money was worth to me. I completely took it for granted that the AirPort just worked, for 3 years straight, without me even having to think about it. Lesson be learned: Apple has us generally spoiled, so that we expect perfection. That's a tough spot to be in if anything goes wrong (and sometimes it does), but let's not forget how good we have it most of the time.
- firedev 14y ago
  Actually I use AirPort Express for a few years now, except running hot it is tip-top otherwise. D-Link Wi-Fi router I bought for my mom was loosing Wi-Fi point a couple times a day and needed a reboot to get back on track. Replaced it since.
wildchild 14y ago
And also File:/// still rocks. No one cares. Hate this.
- firedev 14y ago
  Interesting to mention that I don't have this problem. Chrome displays a listing of the root folder on my hard drive and Safari opens Finder.
gryzzly 14y ago
Gotta agree on this one. And true, this is not only Apple's problem. Others have it worse probably. They and all of us [software engineers] should strive for more quality rather than features.
tobiasbischoff 14y ago
I can totally feel the OP's pain. Safari fails to render 1 out of 10 Pages correctly. Thats an issue with the retina MacBook Pro, but it's there since the thing is on sale. Sometimes, out of nowhere, my TimeCapsule Backups take forever, although they are always around the same size. With some Access Points (non Apple), my MBP takes forever to log into their Wifi after wake from sleep. My MacMini Server fails to serve its Desktop via VNC when no display is attached, because they use GPU accel. to render the video and the GPU Drivers does not get loaded when no Display is attached. If got a freaking VGA-Display-Fake Dongle on my Server to solve this. iTunes, don't get me started. The last 10 movies i added to iTunes have the Cover Art Tab greyed out so that i cannot add Cover Art to them. God knows why. iCloud.. ICLOUD! And so on. And i'm a guy who takes its time to dig into things. I want to get my stuff solved, but sometimes you just can't.
- firedev 14y ago
  Oh right, so I am not imagining things. Or maybe you have "installed something you shouldn't have"? I had to buy a couple of new routers back then for my first-gen Macbook Air simply because it couldn't connect to a non-Apple Wi-Fi. There are more examples in this post: http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158 http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158
Surio 14y ago
Related and on-topic: Scott Hanselman wrote something similar a while back.... http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUpset.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUps... Makes for hilarious and introspective reading at the same time (if that can be done somehow!) P.S: Here's the old HN thread on this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549
- firedev 14y ago
  Exactly, I have linked to that post a while back as well.

42 points by firedev 14y ago

I am seriously tired. Nothing "just works", I have to always reboot, restart, replug, update, force-quit and make sure it didn't hang up while I wasn't looking.

josteink 14y ago

Why was this flagged?

codex 14y ago

This problems are no doubt real, but sometimes it helps to change one's perspective from one of constant negativity (which causes you to see more problems, and feel worse about them), to one of positivity and gratitude. Every day I'm amazed that computers, some of the most complex non-biological processes on this planet, work at all, or as well as they do. I'm thankful that so many wonders are available to me, like the Internet and mobile phones.

QuantumGood 14y ago

I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most anyone I know. When I share what I do with savvy folks who are having issues, I find that NONE of them do all of the things I consider essential, that can be done with little knowledge. My easy-to-do essentials, In order of priority, from years of experience are: • I restart Windows frequently, at least daily, and anytime things seem "off" (rarely). I of course also restart any application(s) that seem(s) to be working poorly. I rarely need to do either. • I use an online backup service that archives changes (dropbox) so I can restore old versions of files in case I screw something up (about once every other month). • If I have a problem that repeats, I restart Windows in safe mode, and then turn off, unplug the POWER cord, and then hold the power button in with the power cord UNPLUGGED (fixes some electrical static issues. Works on other appliances as well) • I hide all services under Msconfig > services tab to see what is starting up that I might not need, and then uncheck some or even click "Disable all." You can generally turn anything off here without causing noticeable issues. Turn stuff back on and restart if concerns. • If one browser gives me a problem I switch to another (I have four installed). • I upgrade or reinstall Windows at least every 4-5 years or so. • I auto-install software updates and use anti-virus software. These basic practices give me many almost entirely headache-free years. Of course, I'm also fairly savvy about not installing extras with software, and avoiding clicking suspicious links or giving information to suspect websites, but these practices rely much more on experience, and can't really be considered "easy-to-do" in the same way the others can. Also, I used to use Apple products. I had so many problems, and couldn't figure out best practices to avoid them, that I stopped using Apple. Of course, YMMV, all I'm saying is that I'm not qualified to speak to stabilizing Apple setups, but I would expect that there are best practices that make a difference.

greenyoda 14y ago
"I have several orders of magnitude fewer problems with Windows than most anyone I know." Same experience here, on both my home and work machines that currently run Windows 7. I've found Windows 7 to be remarkably stable, but I've also had good experiences with all the other NT-based operating systems I've used: NT 3.51 and 4.0, Windows 2000 and XP (never used Vista). But I usually don't restart Windows except to install Windows updates every couple of weeks. My work machine runs continuously (with lots of third-party services like Tomcat, Apache HTTP and VNC) and my home machine gets hibernated when I'm not using it.

Frozenlock 14y ago

At least my zoom button works...

firedev 14y ago
I remember in Lion I had to always re-enable Trackpad zoom in preferences because it wasn't working otherwise.

Expez 14y ago

Apple's walled-garden is becoming quite large and it might be the case that they don't have enough engineers to tend that garden at the moment. Apple is, however, not a hardware company, they're selling an entire ecosystem to their users. It is in their best interest to make sure the user's entire experience is pleasant, so you can feel confident that someone does care. I would suggest you leave for greener pastures, but Job's genius was such that you're probably not even considering that: it would mean giving up all the content and apps you've bought.

firedev 14y ago
I wish, but sorry, what pastures? Everything else is even worse. And I am a web-developer, not somebody who buys stuff because it looks nice.
mberning 14y ago
If the greeness of the pasture is defined by how well 'things just work' then there are no other greener pastures. You would be trading one set of bugaboos for another.
- Expez 14y ago
  My Android devices 'just work'. I also advice novice users to buy Windows for their laptops, even though I, personally, prefer Linux. Windows gets a lot of crap from more advanced users, but it's amazing how everything 'just works' on that platform considering the huge amount of software and hardware that is supported. My mom bought herself an iPhone earlier this year and has been very happy with its usability, but I would never, ever, let her install anything but Windows on her laptop.
  - mberning 14y ago
    What kind of novice user buys a laptop and questions changing the OS, or even knows what an OS is, or that there is even an alternative? I think you claims are ... dubious. Novice users, like my grandmother, never ask me if they should install Windows. They just ask me to fix it after it breaks. And it breaks often. On the contrary, when I put something like an iPad in their hands I go a lot longer between support calls. That's my experience having dealt with more than a few 'novice users'.

prezjordan 14y ago

I've found that Chrome works especially poorly with a weak internet connection. When I'm tethering from my phone, Chrome sometimes cannot load webpages (I have to close tabs and reopen), whereas on Safari I don't experience this issue. Could be all my extensions though?

firedev 14y ago
Chrome was my weapon of choice but I am moved to a new house and this Error 324 issue started. Click reload and the very same page I was just looking at doesn't work anymore. It affects sites with CloudFlare as far as I could figure, but all other browsers are working fine.
- TillE 14y ago
  > but I am moved to a new house and this Error 324 issue started How do other browsers behave? Sounds like an ISP problem rather than anything on your end.
  - firedev 14y ago
    Everything except Chrome works. I think it is also related to CloudFlare, but I am not alone in this world of pain: http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324 http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324

Karunamon 14y ago

Invariably it seems the majority of people who have these problems have done something to their computer. Either downloading an app they shouldn't have, or playing with settings they shouldn't have, or there's a hardware issues (power/memory problems will cause all manner of weird behavior) Something along those lines. The problems mentioned here are simply not shared by most users. Show of hands, how many Apple users here can't get Chrome to work reliably? How many iTunes users have had the app crash on them? I've been a fan of their products (software too) for at least a decade now, and the only crash issues I've ever had on iTunes were on Windows. (Apple's ported software is invariably crap) And I've got a library approaching 50k songs. I've never had a problem with Preview corrupting files. I've never had mail from the past appear on an iPhone. Either I am incredibly, incredibly lucky, or these problems are rare and don't affect that many people. And I am not that lucky.

revelation 14y ago
Thats a healthy dose of reality distortion. He lists specific flaws in specific applications.
- jlarocco 14y ago
  I use Chrome every day on Linux, OSX, and Windows, and know for a fact that it doesn't get error 324 on every other page. I've had iTunes running for weeks without gobbling all of my memory. At some point he needs to face the facts that if he's the only person experiencing all these problems then the problem isn't the software, it's him.
  - firedev 14y ago
    I have ~40000 songs in iTunes, what about you? And Chrome was working fine until I moved to a new house. Regarding me being the only person with this – maybe you can tip the other guys in the right direction too? http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324 http://google.com/search?q=chrome+error+324
    - 14y ago

pjmlp 14y ago

This is why the computing industry should move away from this behaviour and into what is common in other industries, where if something is broken the seller is accountable for it.

firedev 14y ago
Apple doesn't even have an open bug-tracker. That alone could improve a lot. discussions.apple.com is full of issue-discussing threads with thousands of replies, but nobody gives a damn.
- moakleaf 14y ago
  https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa It requires an Apple ID, but otherwise you are free to submit bugs... It isn't brilliant.
  - firedev 14y ago
    I know about the Radar, yes you can submit, but then what do you see? http://d.pr/i/8bto http://d.pr/i/8bto 0 problems! Great. I am talking about an Open bug tracker, not this.
    - moakleaf 14y ago
      You can still "track" the bugs you report, but "yes" they can stay open for years. However, if you don't report these bugs Apple will not see them. The forums are not really a convenient place to report software problems. I don't think their developers go there ofter. If you report a bug in Radar, it will be in Apple's bug-report system and some (poor) developer will have to deal with it eventually.

officemonkey 14y ago

We have a lot of the same problems in my home too. My wife's computer, iPhone, and iPad refuse to behave with her email. I'm using an old iMac as a media server, but every time I connect remotely using Team Viewer, it complains that I don't have a mouse attached. My new iPod touch still won't sync remotely. We were Apple fans "back in the day" (1990s) because it all "just works." The funny thing is my new Desktop/Gaming machine (running Windows 8) is more trouble-free than anything else I own. Apple should work harder on household integration. Otherwise they'll lose out to Almond, Roku, Kindle, and all the other boxes that "just work together."

firedev 14y ago
I think they need to stop adding new stuff and fix what's already released. Snow Leopard was the best version of OS X because they did exactly that. Bug fixing. No new stuff.
- c3d 14y ago
  I agree completely. But also, they are not "adding new stuff" anymore. There's practically no new functionality in 10.7 or 10.8. Instead, they are rewriting existing functionality, often in a way that breaks because it fails to take into account all accumulated knowledge. Joel Spolsky wrote about that here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html. Restarting from scratch is the worst idea you can have. Here are things that were broken in OSX 10.7 or 10.8: Dual monitor support, resolution change, keyboard input, auto-correction, Save As, Suspend/Resume, Backups/Time Machine, Preview, Window manager (backing store), OpenGL (stereoscopy = kernel panic, very annoying for http://www.taodyne.com http://www.taodyne.com), Mail, Safari, RSS feeds, Windows networking. That's just off the top of my head, sure there are many others. But things are only marginally better in Linux or Windows land. On Linux, the user interface in Ubuntu is a mixed bag. At least, I get a sense of purpose and direction. And Windows 8 is like "What were they thinking" (although I met a few users who think it's a good ideas, so YMMV). And what about C++11, which added the kitchen sink but forgot introspection/reflection? What about Facebook which still has not found a business model, but keeps rewriting privacy rules? What about washing machines that break after 5.0001 years? BTW, stuff that is not the way it should be is the primary topic of my own blog, Grenouille Bouillie, https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com. Sorry for the shameless plug, but it's really a topic close to my heart.

jonemo 14y ago

I am surprised you are writing this about Apple (I rarely use Apple products and hence don't know much about their quality) but I wholeheartedly agree on that title of yours in general. I increasingly feel like all products I use are in beta. I used to blame manufacturers for this, but recently I have come to the conclusion that consumers are to blame. Nobody cares about longevity and build quality of products any more. Read some product reviews on Amazon and you'll notice most of them are written within days of purchasing the product. Go to Techcrunch and most of the product reviews there seem to be written before they used the damn thing. tl,dr: If we incentivize designers and manufacturers to neglect quality over specs, we get the crap we get these days.

greenyoda 14y ago
"Read some product reviews on Amazon and you'll notice most of them are written within days of purchasing the product." And it's really depressing to see just how many of these reviews say that the product stopped working within days of being purchased!

moakleaf 14y ago

Honestly, this is ridiculous. I have experienced none of these issues. I use Preview and Color Picker all the time. Both Chrome and Safari works always for me. My iPhone 4 did not have a home-button issue, so it is definitely not 100% bad. I don't need to restart iTunes all he time. I use Mail with 15 accounts and 50000 messages across multiple servers. No problems! None... Zero... It really just works for me. Xcode sucks, but is becoming a lot less sucky with every new release.

firedev 14y ago
I am a web-developer and I guess it is different with Xcode, but I would like to have my colors in HEX, like I had them before Lion came out. Amazed with your iPhone 4 experience, but where I live almost everybody I see has a "accessibility controls" on the screen because home button doesn't work. Regarding iTunes, my library might be too big, but each morning I see it used 5Gb of ram and after force-quitting it I have to wait for like 7 minutes while it is checking the library.
- moakleaf 14y ago
  Color picker (at least the version I have in Lion) has a nice menu option (View -> Display Values -> as Hexidecimal).
- moakleaf 14y ago
  Sorry, thought you meant "Color meter"
  - firedev 14y ago
    Yes I mean Digital Color Meter. You're right, I was unable to find this option. But since then I moved to a better solution anyway.
- moakleaf 14y ago
  BTW. Why didn't you exchange your iPhone 4 if you home-button was faulty??? I had mine for 2 years (before I switched to iPhone 5), I didn't have any problems with it.

batterseapower 14y ago

As soon as I stopped building computers from off-the-shelf parts, stopped installing unpopular applications and plugins and stopped trying to use OSes like Linux with relatively few users the amount of my life I spent fixing weird computer problems fell from hours per week to almost zero. When I do encounter a problem, the answer is almost always available after 5 minutes on Google. Following the herd leads to an easy life. Go figure.

regularfry 14y ago
That's funny, I could have sworn that the article described someone who followed the herd and had everything go to crap.
- deleted 14y ago
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- spqr 14y ago
  The herd doesn't use OS X.
icebraining 14y ago
Yet OP couldn't use more popular software (Chrome, Flash, iOS, iTunes). Personally, the difference I see since I switched to Debian (six years ago) was that I had less problems than on Windows, and more importantly, that I could actually fix those problems instead of having to get used to them. My Windows 7 desktop, which I barely use compared to my Debian laptop & VPS, still wastes much more of my time with maintenance and random bugs.
onli 14y ago
Sure. Because it is so common to have unstable linux-software but the so highly popular Windows is so stable. I once had to start Windows in Rescue Mode and do some weird stuff there just to get Steam back running. It failed to start suddenly and seemingly without cause. For a while (some years ago) I couldn't boot Windows at all until I unplugged a dvd-drive (linux was running fine) - I still use that dvd-drive, windows starts with it again. I bought GTA 4 and couldn't play it because Games for Windows Live wasn't working (still doesn't, but i found the hidden offline-mode). Sometimes I can't delete files in Windows with no cause whatsoever. At the same time, I'm using a rock-stable Ubuntu LTS with a custom "desktop environment" on the same hardware and never had any real issues i still remember. Oh, thinking a bit longer about it, there were some issues when upgrading to this lts: plymouth didn't stop itself (i had to end it via the rc.local) and pulseaudio didnt work (switched to alsa). That's about it. Following the herd doesn't lead to an easy life, the herd willingly runs down a cliff.

jmduke 14y ago

Something ignored in this article (maybe it's covered elsewhere on the blog): iTunes Match is by far the biggest Apple crud that I've used. It simply does not work.

firedev 14y ago
I wish I could post anything about iTunes Match, but it's not for everybody: http://d.pr/i/6GYq http://d.pr/i/6GYq
tobiasbischoff 14y ago
Yes, featured from that era feel really rushed out, see iCloud.

Jormundir 14y ago

Completely Bulls*&t article. I was going to write a long explanation why, but this made up whining doesn't deserve it.

firedev 14y ago
Made up? Dude, I don't have any other computers at home except made by Apple, and I am web-developer, not an office manager. I know my stuff.
- _Simon 14y ago
  I must have missed the part where you tried another browser... (EDIT: I did genuinely miss it! Still, there are at least 2 other browsers that, as a web developer, you should have installed.) I must ask, why are you still using the platform if it's so bad? Use something else, problem solved! No, it is that simple.
  - firedev 14y ago
    Everything else is even worse.

Jormundir 14y ago

Completely Bulls*&t article. I was going to write a long explanation why, but this made up whining doesn't deserve it.

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mikecane 14y ago

Hey, this isn't just Apple. It's everywhere. Thinking of a doing a Kindle book? You poor frikkin naif. You just have no idea. http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/02/why-amazon-just-dont-play-fair-with-formatting/ http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/02/why-amazon-... And you can multiply that by just about every eBook app out there too.

firedev 14y ago
I was thinking about getting a Kindle, but then every book review on Amazon includes a complaint about book being unreadable on Kindle. And I was interested mainly in books about programming that include listings which get garbled. So I thought why bother... At least I can read PDF on iPad.
- mikecane 14y ago
  Formatting problems are due to many things, most of which are the fault of Amazon itself. The Previewer sucks and all of their products render books differently.
- cypher543 14y ago
  You can read PDFs on a Kindle, too. That's how I read all of my programming books.
  - firedev 14y ago
    But it has a smaller screen, so I am not bothering.

jwpe 14y ago

"Oh well, so after I got the iPhone 4 finally I could use the phone for a whole day, but the Home button... It's not working, and everybody who had an iPhone 4 had or having this problem. So basically speaking 100% of the iPhone 4 yield was defective." Too true. I bought a Nexus 4 because I had this problem, and the alternative was paying £100+ for Apple to fix my button. Surely the sole button on a device should work for the lifetime of the device?

snowwrestler 14y ago
My employer issued dozens of iPhone 4's to employees and not a single one had problems with the home button. I don't have a problem with people complaining about products, but it's silly to try to generalize it to "everyone has this problem" based on personal experience. Apple sold tens of millions of units of the iPhone 4 in dozens of countries.
- firedev 14y ago
  Okay, maybe 90%, all my friends who had iPhone 4, and most of the people I see around with iPhone 4 have the problem. How can I tell? They have accessibility thing on the screen.
- jwpe 14y ago
  You're completely right to say that we shouldn't generalize to every iPhone 4 based on personal experience. I was just confirming that my experience correlated with the description in the post. Obviously 'everybody who had an iPhone4 had or having this problem' is hyperbole, but it's probably evidence of a widespread issue if there are a large number of complaints about it.

firedev 14y ago

Oh by the way I forgot I had a similar post a while back http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158 http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158 It lists some other issues, many of them are fixed by now and yet I simply can't list every thing that doesn't work.

calinet6 14y ago

I've actually heard the same sort of story with my dad, about his Apple products. AppleTV updates and such breaking such-and-such feature that he really likes, just random changes here and there changing the way he likes to do things. Their quality control has become a little lax (they could improve consistency and testing surely), but I still think this kind of sob story is overblown. They're still better than about 90% of manufacturers out there in terms of usability and quality overall, and I think sometimes we get a little spoiled and forget that. For example, my D-Link Wi-Fi base station makes me cringe every time I have to go into its configuration menus. It's quite literally their top-of-the-line piece of hardware, but it looks like the configuration was designed by a teenager who just took an HTML class in 1998. On top of that, it drops the connection constantly and sometimes needs to be restarted just because it stops working entirely. This was a replacement for an Apple AirPort Extreme that my roommate took with him, and I thought "Oh this will be good enough, it's half the price," and surely I've spent more in time and frustration dealing with it than that money was worth to me. I completely took it for granted that the AirPort just worked, for 3 years straight, without me even having to think about it. Lesson be learned: Apple has us generally spoiled, so that we expect perfection. That's a tough spot to be in if anything goes wrong (and sometimes it does), but let's not forget how good we have it most of the time.

firedev 14y ago
Actually I use AirPort Express for a few years now, except running hot it is tip-top otherwise. D-Link Wi-Fi router I bought for my mom was loosing Wi-Fi point a couple times a day and needed a reboot to get back on track. Replaced it since.

wildchild 14y ago

And also File:/// still rocks. No one cares. Hate this.

firedev 14y ago
Interesting to mention that I don't have this problem. Chrome displays a listing of the root folder on my hard drive and Safari opens Finder.

gryzzly 14y ago

Gotta agree on this one. And true, this is not only Apple's problem. Others have it worse probably. They and all of us [software engineers] should strive for more quality rather than features.

tobiasbischoff 14y ago

I can totally feel the OP's pain. Safari fails to render 1 out of 10 Pages correctly. Thats an issue with the retina MacBook Pro, but it's there since the thing is on sale. Sometimes, out of nowhere, my TimeCapsule Backups take forever, although they are always around the same size. With some Access Points (non Apple), my MBP takes forever to log into their Wifi after wake from sleep. My MacMini Server fails to serve its Desktop via VNC when no display is attached, because they use GPU accel. to render the video and the GPU Drivers does not get loaded when no Display is attached. If got a freaking VGA-Display-Fake Dongle on my Server to solve this. iTunes, don't get me started. The last 10 movies i added to iTunes have the Cover Art Tab greyed out so that i cannot add Cover Art to them. God knows why. iCloud.. ICLOUD! And so on. And i'm a guy who takes its time to dig into things. I want to get my stuff solved, but sometimes you just can't.

firedev 14y ago
Oh right, so I am not imagining things. Or maybe you have "installed something you shouldn't have"? I had to buy a couple of new routers back then for my first-gen Macbook Air simply because it couldn't connect to a non-Apple Wi-Fi. There are more examples in this post: http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158 http://dear-apple.com/dear-apple-put-yourself-together-82158

Surio 14y ago

Related and on-topic: Scott Hanselman wrote something similar a while back.... http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUpset.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUps... Makes for hilarious and introspective reading at the same time (if that can be done somehow!) P.S: Here's the old HN thread on this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549

firedev 14y ago
Exactly, I have linked to that post a while back as well.