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This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than "I perceive Apple's software quality to b

by owenwil 12y ago

This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than "I perceive Apple's software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience." This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it's just going everywhere. I don't think the software quality dropped, it's all about perception. Just a few years ago, everyone was moaning about software quality with Lion but nobody remembers that now, because bad headlines are easier to create than good ones. Yosemite has some bugs, yes, but so do almost every other major releases of Operating Systems. Apple does have some bugs to iron out, but in six month's time when they're fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. Perhaps a few happened around the same time, but that's no indication that things are getting worse. People just like to complain. Those who want to experience a lower "functional high ground" should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. They wouldn't have even noticed unless articles like this continued to circulate. People are just noisier these days.

nextstep 12y ago
I think you nailed it. To most people (i.e. the majority of the world who doesn't read tech regurgitation) there has been no dramatic shift in software quality from Apple. There have been some hiccups with cloud services or OS updates that affected a lot of people, but these got resolved and Apple still ranks very highly in customer satisfaction.
- yourad_io 12y ago
  > To most people there has been no dramatic shift in software quality from Apple. [...] Apple still ranks very highly in customer satisfaction. Source?
- danieldk 12y ago
  Apple still ranks very highly in customer satisfaction. But is dropping. In fact, Samsung has surpassed them in consumer satisfaction for smartphones: http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/samsung-surpasses-apple-in-consumer-satisfaction/ http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/samsung-surpasses-apple-in...
uptown 12y ago
Maybe. It's just odd to me that each new version of OSX seems to revisit basic problems like stable wifi. I would have assumed the way things like that were implemented wouldn't have changed much from version to version. And "Back to my Mac" seems to get screwed up with each major OSX update. Still no solution for that one.
- DigitalJack 12y ago
  I may just not use whatever it is that has bugs in OSX, but I've got a 2009 Mac Book Pro that I've been using since it was new, and I always upgrade the OS after a month or so from release. I've only ever noticed a bug in Lion or Mountain Lion (don't recall which) where time machine would get borked if I put the computer to sleep when it was in the middle of a backup. That was super annoying, but it was fixed eventually. I've never had any issues with wifi or graphics or whatever. I suspect these issues come about from hardware changes and the related drivers in the various models. Windows has the exact same problem, exacerbated by the freedom users have to mix and match hardware. My work computer running windows 7 would crash once or twice a week, always due to video driver (or the underlying hardware). While Apple's ecosystem is limited, they actually have a rather large diversity of hardware to support now, and I'm sure that is the source of many issues. Makes me afraid to upgrade actually since my computer works so well.
gress 12y ago
I think there is more surface area for people to notice bugs, and we're suing the systems far more so we feel problems more acutely. More importantly, even if it's true that there is a slight increase in bugs now that they've moved to an annual schedule, there is no logic to the idea that the should now just abandon the schedule and go slower. They are in a highly competitive situation. The solution is not to go slower, but rather to improve their processes and practices.
- JonathonW 12y ago
  Who are they competing against to go faster? In the desktop space, Microsoft's on (at least) a 2-year cadence, and that was in response to Apple speeding up their release cadence. Ubuntu's also on a two-year cadence (for LTS releases), but I'd be surprised if they're even on Apple's radar in any significant way. On mobile, Android's also slower than Apple. Android 4.x lasted three years before being replaced by Android 5 this fall; the releases in between were all primarily Snow Leopard-style performance and stability updates. If Apple's fast release cadence is having adverse consequences (which, FWIW, I'm not convinced that it is), there's no one to blame except Apple: they're the ones setting the expectation of rapid releases.
baddox 12y ago
I don't doubt that there is some bias toward remembering more recent complaints more. However, I don't know if you can pull the "it's anecdotal" card on something like this, because unlike most scientific studies (like on the effectiveness of a medical treatment), personal experience is a crucial part of the definition of "software quality." Also, I think it's reasonable to assume that most software, especially in unjailbroken iOS devices, is deterministic, and thus conclude that the experience of a bug is the result of a software problem. I'm a big iOS user, and I definitely share the experience of a steady decrease in software quality. I should add that while I use OS X and generally install the upgrades promptly, I spend the vast majority of my time in Emacs and Chrome, and thus probably don't really "use OS X" enough to notice any software quality issues. It seems fine to me.
- derefr 12y ago
  > I think it's reasonable to assume that most software, especially in unjailbroken iOS devices, is deterministic, and thus conclude that the experience of a bug is the result of a software problem One major factor people tend to forget is that software can end up executing different code paths on different hardware. In other words—software can be both bug-free on a recent Mac, and yet horribly bug-riddled on an older Mac. This produces a very divergent set of personal experiences where people tend to talk over one-another because everyone is seeing a different part of the elephant.
  - baddox 12y ago
    Absolutely so. That's why I was careful to limit my criticism to unjailbroken iOS devices, both because I have much more personal experience with them, and because the hardware and software combinations are much smaller than with OS X. But even in the example you provide, the experiences of the person with the old bug-riddled Mac are completely valid, and point to real software quality issues (assuming the new OS X version is officially supported on the hardware). The bug-free experience of another person with a recent Mac does not cancel out or in any way diminish of the person experiencing bugs.
    - 12y ago
IBM 12y ago
I agree. People said Snow Leopard was the last good OS X update but I couldn't tell a difference between that and any of the subsequent updates. The 'Apple software quality is declining' meme only seems to be coming from the Apple developer bubble.
- sjwright 12y ago
  The latter point releases of Snow Leopard represented a point in OS X history when there was great stability in user expectations of the Mac operating system. It wasn't perfect, but most things worked perfectly. Performance was excellent. System stability was high, too. The problem with Lion is that it started dicking around with previously stable user expectations -- a perfect example being the skeu Address Book that had inferior usability. Mountain Lion improved things a bit. Mavericks improved things further, and represents another high point in OS X history. Yosemite once again dicks around with previously stable user expectations -- a perfect example being the new aesthetic which looks crisp in retina but looks fussy and unfinished in low resolution. Spotlight is no longer a drop down menu for no reason. Time Machine no longer spins. The green buttons now do different things. It's even more difficult to enable TRIM on third party SSDs.
  - abrowne 12y ago
    > Time Machine no longer spins. This started with 10.9 (or 10.8?) FWIW.
mhuffman 12y ago
I disagree, you did not see the same amount of complaints with snow lion. Observational and anecdotal experiences are still experiences and are evidence that something is going on. If you owned a restaurant and suddenly your customers started complaining after you changed your recipes, would you still think it is nothing to worry about? And just because Ubuntu sucks worse than OSX, does not mean that OSX is not starting to suck.
- pdabbadabba 12y ago
  > snow lion ...Snow Leopard? The problem with your response is that I don't know that anyone has ever actually provided reliable evidence that the number of complaints has gone up. GP's view, which I share, is that people always complain about new releases, forgetting that the previous release had its problems as well. As GP said, bad headlines are easier to make than good ones. Simply reiterating that you think the previous release had fewer problems, and that there are anecdotes out there about problems in the current release, is hardly a refutation of this. This is entirely consistent with GP's view. I for one have experienced no significant change in reliability on the road from Snow Leopard to Yosemite (for what that's worth).
  - toyg 12y ago
    > people always complain about new releases, forgetting that the previous release had its problems as well It might be true, but this attitude makes it very hard for developers not to discount all complaints, including ones grounded in reality. Just because people are paranoid about new releases being crap, it doesn't mean that they are not crap. Personally, I've experienced a number of really bad bugs in Yosemite. One of the most annoying is four-finger swipes to bring up launchpad: the "blur" animation starts and then just hangs midway, leaving a half-transparent launchpad that works with keyboard controls but not mouse-clicks. Or the infamous "backbreak", where you do two-finger swipes to go back in a browser window and somehow it fails mid-way, leaving an unusable browser page and breaking all two-finger gestures until you close that window (not tab, the whole window). And of course the awful dark corners on the volume icon once you disable transparencies, something you have to do to maintain a decent framerate on a two-year MBP-retina that was perfectly capable to handle all this up to and including Mavericks. And let's not even talk about the wifi dns bug, which I've lost any hope to see permanently fixed in my lifetime. These are bad because they affect very visible UI elements used hundreds or thousands of time per day; the sort of thing that used to be rock-solid and did not significantly change in new releases. I would understand if a newish feature like Finder tabs had a few bugs, but not trackpad gestures that have been there, working fine, for years.
deleted 12y ago
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- adriand 12y ago
  There a super annoying issue with iMessages on Yosemite where the first time you click on the iMessages window, it doesn't gain focus properly (and you can't start typing a message), and the second time you click on it, the entire window changes position by the delta between the top-left corner and the spot where you click the second time. It makes the whole experience of using iMessages very aggravating. The whole "use OS X for all messages including SMS" thing is one of their key marketing messages, and it's broken on my Macbook and on my iMac. I logged a bug for it and was told it was a duplicate of another one already in the queue, which was well over a month ago. It seems like something that should be relatively easy to fix. That it hasn't been tells me that there is likely a very large list of bugs in a similar category (or worse), so they just haven't gotten to this one yet.
  - redditmigrant 12y ago
    This doesnt even begin to address the countless ways in which messages on the laptop falls out of sync with the messages on my iphone sitting next to the laptop. Im not even talking about 2 second delays, Im talking about 10-15 minutes of the laptop not getting the message. Similar annoyances exist with receiving calls on the laptop. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt. The troubling thing for me is that these arent some esoteric features, these are the features that they choose to highlight so I presume a higher bar for them.
king_magic 12y ago
You don't think Apple's software quality has dropped? Guess you havn't had a hanging Safari or Chrome tab take down the entire OS. Yosemite is riddled with blantently broken issues like this. I'd love to enumerate them for you, but frankly, Apple should be doing that with a flood of automatic updates. Of which I've seen 1 since installing Yosemite. As an everyday user, there has been a massive drop in quality. Far, far worse than previous OS X upgrades. This is just not a case of people wanting to complain for the sake of complaining. I've been saying it for weeks now: Yosemite is Apple's Windows Vista.
- engi_nerd 12y ago
  My Yosemite seems to be taken down the most by a hung iBooks. And iOS8 made my 3rd generation iPad almost unusable. Just another bit of anecdata.
  - rkeniger 12y ago
    upvote for "anecdata"
- revscat 12y ago
  I have not seen any of the issues with Safari or Chrome that you are reporting. The opposite, in fact: Safari this is so much faster than Chrome under Yosemite that it has become my primary browser. I'm a developer, by the way, and have both browsers open most of every working day. If anything, I have seen an increase in quality with Yosemite.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >You don't think Apple's software quality has dropped? Guess you havn't had a hanging Safari or Chrome tab take down the entire OS. No, I haven't.
  - king_magic 12y ago
    Well, good for you. But remember - there were plenty of people who had absolutely no problems with Vista. And plenty who did. Were those unhappy Vista users all imagining it?
bushido 12y ago
> This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than "I perceive Apple's software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience." This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it's just going everywhere. You quoted the unreliability of anecdotal experience and then went ahead and added your own anecdotal immediately in the next paragraph: I don't think the software quality dropped > Those who want to experience a lower "functional high ground" should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. I am sure most would agree with you that OS X at it worst is way ahead of Ubuntu, except that's not really the benchmark the users who are going around in circles are using, it quite evident in almost each one of these anecdotal commentary that an older version of OS X is the Benchmark I think the real complaint people have is that a lot of these people switched to Apple for superior well tested hardware and software, thus avoiding problems that they would not need to wait six months to be fixed. The key take away I think is NOT that recently OS X has some bugs, rather that the seemingly increasing in occurrence of bugs that more advanced users are experiencing is perceived as a sign on discarding their Test Everything Well Before Shipping culture that important to these people. > To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy. ----- I am unsure if your comment was designed to substantiate your thought that "This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion", if it was, at that you succeeded.
- boynamedsue 12y ago
  FWIW I think writing server components are far, far better on Ubuntu Desktop than OS X. Package management is amazing and it matches my Ubuntu server deployments for production.
- heyts 12y ago
  I agree with you on many points and it seems obvious that apple is spread too thin these days and tries to do too much. I dont think this statement is true however: > The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy. Historically the core market of Apple Computer has been graphic-designers, journalists and the education market. Developers have only been on the platform post OS X because of unix.
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ksk 12y ago
>This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it's just going everywhere. Well, you're attacking others' opinions for being opinions, and not facts, but your claims are nothing more than opinions too. Sorry, I don't know what your point is? Just to add my own anecdote, my dad recently asked that his macbook air be reformatted to make it 'fast' again. Meanwhile, the '08 PC that I'm using now is running Win8.1 like a champ. > Yosemite has some bugs, yes, but so do almost every other major releases of Operating Systems. Heh, so Apple is just .. like everyone else? No need to hold Apple to a higher standard if that is the case. The entire point of people complaining is that Apple shouldn't be shipping buggy products like the competition. >Apple does have some bugs to iron out, but in six month's time when they're fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. Well, why would Apple fix the bugs if nobody complained? They wouldn't even know about them. Of course that is presuming they fix the bugs they know about. >To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. So why are the everyday users complaining? Some of the bugs that I've personally come across. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6601963?tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6601963?tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6604139 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6604139 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577 http://rustyshelf.org/2014/10/01/it-just-works/ http://rustyshelf.org/2014/10/01/it-just-works/ -- Oh.. And http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/01/it-just-works http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/01/it-just-works Ok, maybe Gruber is not your everyday user... :)
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Heh, so Apple is just .. like everyone else? No need to hold Apple to a higher standard if that is the case. The entire point of people complaining is that Apple shouldn't be shipping buggy products like the competition. So, they would use magical unicorn dust to remove all bugs? Of course they'll gonna have bugs on OS X, every OS has bugs. If Apple was held on a higher standard wasn't because OS X didn't have bugs, but because it had better usability, nicer design (where it matters), and a UNIX core to boot. >So why are the everyday users complaining? Because they were always complaining. I remember simila discussions after every OS version. Wi-fi and graphics card issues in particular (like the ones you linked to) have been with us since 10.0. For graphic cards issues it's usually the driver (so Nvidia/ATI, not Apple), and models get updated, so it's not like some core OS X kernel component that can be fixed and stay fixed. And for Wi-fi there are also tons of Wi-fi routers, repeaters, setups etc, there will always be some incompatibilities. I had my fair share of such in Windows and Linux too.
maguay 12y ago
The problem I've seen is that it's not just geeks this time. Sitting around a New Year's party with mostly non-geeks, everyone was discussing how they were hesitant to install new versions of iOS now thanks to bugs et al (both existent ones and media trumped-up stuff). That's both a direct and a perception problem that Apple has got to fix, stat. The only good thing for Apple is, the same discussions included frustrations over both Android and Windows 8. Maybe the thing is that now, everyone's an early-adopter geek.
- rtpg 12y ago
  Thing is nobody complains about Android updates breaking everything (though there are a lot of complaints about updates not happening), because the upgrades are usually well tested (despite having many more hardware platforms). Win8 there was Metro, but I really didn't hear much about Windows being broken. iOS and OS X have stability issues, ones that other systems seem to deal with more gracefully now.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    How many Android users ever get updates, though? Win8 there was Metro, but I really didn't hear much about Windows being broken. Huh? People screamed bloody murder about Metro. Arguably, it played a large part in the downfall of Steve Ballmer.
    - danieldk 12y ago
      How many Android users ever get updates, though? All the time, a lot of functionality is updated through Google Play services, and many of the apps are updated outside the OS. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/android-2-3-gingerbread-four-years-later-the-os-just-wont-die/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/android-2-3-gingerbre...
  - hokkos 12y ago
    No complains about android ? Lollipop is the worst Android update ever, there is a bug where the system process take up RAM until the phone can barely use one app without killing the last one and slow everything. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79729 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79729
chromejs10 12y ago
I agree 100%. Marco just posts random complaints these days. There are no specific examples of what is actually broken. An OS is about as big of a project as you can get. What evidence is there that Mac OS X is any more broken than any other widely used operating system?
aik 12y ago
Alternatively, perhaps people are responding because they are having (or have had) similar experiences. Personally I have been very frustrated with iOS in the past year or two due to crashes and other bugs. Granted, a good number have been resolved in recent patches, but I'm still getting way more crashes than I used to several years ago (weekly+), and shaking off the previously frustrations and regaining trust is a time-consuming process. Perhaps it's also lack of QC for new releases. When iOS 7 and 8 were released, pretty much everyone I knew were experiencing frequent crashes and other issues. As someone else pointed out, there is more surface area for bugs to occur. Hopefully QC will step it up.
vacri 12y ago
You're annoyed that 'no-one remembers Lion', because people either upgraded from it or stuck with Snow Leopard to avoid it? It's a bit disingenuous to complain that no-one remembers the issues with an OS that folks aren't really using anymore and has been out of support for several months now. No-one in the Ubuntu world much remembers Ubuntu 11.04 either - so what? Does that mean that the currently-used operating systems shouldn't have their flaws discussed?
krschultz 12y ago
Ubuntu should not be the bar. Maybe Windows - but Windows has a significantly more difficult task. Apple controls all of the hardware & software. I would expect significantly fewer bugs than the other platforms. This is also not just about Yosemite. The fact that the iOS update rates are significantly lower this year is a sign users were not happy with the previous update.
tolmasky 12y ago
> Apple does have some bugs to iron out, but in six month's time when they're fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. That's the whole point: we'll start complaining about something else because in 6 months when the bugs are theoretically fixed we'll have another OS X release waiting for us right around corner (approx 4 months away) which will put us right back at square one! Tiger's lifespan was from November 2005 through October 2007. So, if we accept the premise that all the OSes were equally buggy and it also took Tiger 6 months to get the bugs worked out, then you still had another 18 months of a stable OS. This reasonably allows customers to decide whether to be early adopters or waiters: its perfectly fine to hold off those 6 initial months since you then still get 3/4 of the products lifespan with some assurance that its stable. That's just not the case anymore, if you wait those 6 months then now you've got another release right around the corner, you're perpetually in upgrade mode. Not to mention that most the bugs will probably ship in the major release anyways since (non-security) bug fix release have more or less merged with the new features that introduce new bugs release.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  My MacBook Air is running 10.8 Mountain Lion. I regularly receive security updates (including the pushed NTP fix), as well as application updates like Safari and iTunes, and 3rd party updates for apps like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office for Mac, Evernote, DropBox, Coda, etc. I don't know what the "official" lifespan of 10.8 is, but it has every appearance of being fully supported by Apple today. And yes, it is very stable.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    I wonder why it is not documented, but at this point they tend to support the current release and previous two releases.
  - reberhardt 12y ago
    I loved Mountain Lion and also found it to be very stable. I stayed on it as long as I could, but the new versions of several of the apps I use required Mavericks, and after holding out for a while I upgraded. Mavericks was when I started noticing issues... Graphics driver issues, trackpad gestures randomly not working for periods of time, WindowServer crashing when opening the notification center (wat?), so on and so forth. Mac OS is still my favorite, but I've gotten an irking feeling that in the interest of capturing the mainstream market and making things look pretty and full of features, Apple has skimped on stability and quality. Just my two cents
ibejoeb 12y ago
I haven't had significant problem with OS X. iOS is trickier. For a more concrete criticism of functional software, thoughtfulness of design, and reliability, though, I submit Apple ID, iTunes, App Store, etc. This has been the buggiest and most opaque set of services I've dealt with recently. I have 3 different accounts now, each connected to developer credentials and app store purchases. 1 original account seems to have turned into 3 by way of failed sign-ins via iTunes and multiple failed password reset attempts. Each of these has 3 or 4 nonsense trivia questions associated with it. I have a folder in KeePass dedicated to managing this stuff. I have a spreadsheet that attempts to map these things to purchases. I can't automatically install updates because App Store downloads have associated themselves with different accounts. I've given up in a way. I have years-old versions of software that I don't update just due to the complexity of signing in. I don't know how people deal with it.
protomyth 12y ago
Since Apple's bug database is private, what would be an objective criteria that you would accept? For my own part, I have more bugs reported on 10.9 and 10.10 then any other releases. My everyday users hate iOS 8 and 10.10 due to network, Finder, and file share issues.
JoshuaDavid 12y ago
> Those who want to experience a lower "functional high ground" should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. I did exactly that (12.04 LTS), and am not going back. Configuring some things (I'm looking at you, Silverlight) is a pain, but most stuff is pretty painless. OS X looks much shinier, granted, but in terms of usability I prefer Ubuntu.
rdtsc 12y ago
> They wouldn't have even noticed unless articles like this continued to circulate. We should clearly find a way to squash and punish the infidels from voicing their opinion. I feel there is a bit of dissonance here between: > should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. > People just like to complain. I've used Ubuntu for some time. Now on 14.10. Can you point out how ahead OS X is? Not saying it isn't. Just there is nothing I lack or wish I had in Ubuntu 14.10 that I don't already have. I like the interface. The ecosystem of packages. All hardware I want to work works. Also I paid $0 for the OS, (But donated to it before, you can too here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute if you feel like it is lacking major functionality)
- SkyMarshal 12y ago
  I used Ubuntu exclusively from 2009 till Feb 2014, at which point I joined a startup, got a MBPr 15", and have been using it exclusively since. And I agree, OS X offers a few marginal benefits, and some drawbacks, but it's not much further ahead. OS X advantages: - Entertainment: OS X has better entertainment options and ecosystem, iTunes mainly, though Amazon MP3, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix are negating this as advantage. - 3rd party desktop apps: I find little gems in both OS X's app store and in Ubuntu's "store" and repo's, but the best on OS X are generally better than the best on Ubuntu. Notepads like Quiver which integrate Markdown and LaTeX, Slack's only native app (or native-wrapped web app) is on OS X, Kindle native app for OS X, etc. That said, Ubuntu's good enough that I wouldn't miss OS X in this respect. - Overall better for lay people and non-techies. Gestures, etc. Still complex though, just as difficult as Windows for non-techies to learn. For example, I'd love to recommend to my almost 70yr old parents they switch from Windows to Mac, but the learning curve now is too steep. This is one of the disadvantages of adding lots of features to an OS - higher learning curve. OS X disadvantages - Stability:Price ratio: OS X is significantly worse. About the same stability as desktop linux but at a much higher price. I can crash both OS's by abusing memory (eg, too many apps open + too many browser tabs). A free OS I can forgive, an expensive one tailored to a single custom hardware configuration I can't. - Lock in: little things like having to take your Mac to a service center to replace the battery, or the inability to copy your entire home partition over to a new computer, etc. - FOSS: personal preference, like knowing my computer has the many eyeballs effect. - Overall better for power users. Tiling window managers, ability to keybind everything to Vim keybinds (file manager, all browsers, even Emacs), means you can easily dispense with mice and gestures altogether and use a much faster and more powerful interface.
gurkendoktor 12y ago
One difference between 10.7 and 10.10 is that 10.7 cost money and 10.6 kept working as before. It was considered perfectly normal to stay on the old system and be productive. (The Windows world is still "sane" in that way.) Now Apple and the internet army of Early Adopters have united and it works like that- 1. iOS 8 is released and you have to update (if you want to receive security updates) 2. If you accidentally enable iCloud Drive or use a new version of iWork, you need the Yosemite Developer Preview (or wait for 10.10.0) 3. Now you are using iOS 8.0 and 10.0.0 and live through six terrible months. It's a lot harder to be a "slow adopter" nowadays, especially if you live deep in the Apple ecosystem (iCloud, iWork).

by owenwil 12y ago

nextstep 12y ago

I think you nailed it. To most people (i.e. the majority of the world who doesn't read tech regurgitation) there has been no dramatic shift in software quality from Apple. There have been some hiccups with cloud services or OS updates that affected a lot of people, but these got resolved and Apple still ranks very highly in customer satisfaction.

yourad_io 12y ago
> To most people there has been no dramatic shift in software quality from Apple. [...] Apple still ranks very highly in customer satisfaction. Source?
danieldk 12y ago
Apple still ranks very highly in customer satisfaction. But is dropping. In fact, Samsung has surpassed them in consumer satisfaction for smartphones: http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/samsung-surpasses-apple-in-consumer-satisfaction/ http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/samsung-surpasses-apple-in...

uptown 12y ago

Maybe. It's just odd to me that each new version of OSX seems to revisit basic problems like stable wifi. I would have assumed the way things like that were implemented wouldn't have changed much from version to version. And "Back to my Mac" seems to get screwed up with each major OSX update. Still no solution for that one.

DigitalJack 12y ago
I may just not use whatever it is that has bugs in OSX, but I've got a 2009 Mac Book Pro that I've been using since it was new, and I always upgrade the OS after a month or so from release. I've only ever noticed a bug in Lion or Mountain Lion (don't recall which) where time machine would get borked if I put the computer to sleep when it was in the middle of a backup. That was super annoying, but it was fixed eventually. I've never had any issues with wifi or graphics or whatever. I suspect these issues come about from hardware changes and the related drivers in the various models. Windows has the exact same problem, exacerbated by the freedom users have to mix and match hardware. My work computer running windows 7 would crash once or twice a week, always due to video driver (or the underlying hardware). While Apple's ecosystem is limited, they actually have a rather large diversity of hardware to support now, and I'm sure that is the source of many issues. Makes me afraid to upgrade actually since my computer works so well.

gress 12y ago

I think there is more surface area for people to notice bugs, and we're suing the systems far more so we feel problems more acutely. More importantly, even if it's true that there is a slight increase in bugs now that they've moved to an annual schedule, there is no logic to the idea that the should now just abandon the schedule and go slower. They are in a highly competitive situation. The solution is not to go slower, but rather to improve their processes and practices.

JonathonW 12y ago
Who are they competing against to go faster? In the desktop space, Microsoft's on (at least) a 2-year cadence, and that was in response to Apple speeding up their release cadence. Ubuntu's also on a two-year cadence (for LTS releases), but I'd be surprised if they're even on Apple's radar in any significant way. On mobile, Android's also slower than Apple. Android 4.x lasted three years before being replaced by Android 5 this fall; the releases in between were all primarily Snow Leopard-style performance and stability updates. If Apple's fast release cadence is having adverse consequences (which, FWIW, I'm not convinced that it is), there's no one to blame except Apple: they're the ones setting the expectation of rapid releases.

baddox 12y ago

I don't doubt that there is some bias toward remembering more recent complaints more. However, I don't know if you can pull the "it's anecdotal" card on something like this, because unlike most scientific studies (like on the effectiveness of a medical treatment), personal experience is a crucial part of the definition of "software quality." Also, I think it's reasonable to assume that most software, especially in unjailbroken iOS devices, is deterministic, and thus conclude that the experience of a bug is the result of a software problem. I'm a big iOS user, and I definitely share the experience of a steady decrease in software quality. I should add that while I use OS X and generally install the upgrades promptly, I spend the vast majority of my time in Emacs and Chrome, and thus probably don't really "use OS X" enough to notice any software quality issues. It seems fine to me.

derefr 12y ago
> I think it's reasonable to assume that most software, especially in unjailbroken iOS devices, is deterministic, and thus conclude that the experience of a bug is the result of a software problem One major factor people tend to forget is that software can end up executing different code paths on different hardware. In other words—software can be both bug-free on a recent Mac, and yet horribly bug-riddled on an older Mac. This produces a very divergent set of personal experiences where people tend to talk over one-another because everyone is seeing a different part of the elephant.
- baddox 12y ago
  Absolutely so. That's why I was careful to limit my criticism to unjailbroken iOS devices, both because I have much more personal experience with them, and because the hardware and software combinations are much smaller than with OS X. But even in the example you provide, the experiences of the person with the old bug-riddled Mac are completely valid, and point to real software quality issues (assuming the new OS X version is officially supported on the hardware). The bug-free experience of another person with a recent Mac does not cancel out or in any way diminish of the person experiencing bugs.
  - 12y ago

IBM 12y ago

I agree. People said Snow Leopard was the last good OS X update but I couldn't tell a difference between that and any of the subsequent updates. The 'Apple software quality is declining' meme only seems to be coming from the Apple developer bubble.

sjwright 12y ago
The latter point releases of Snow Leopard represented a point in OS X history when there was great stability in user expectations of the Mac operating system. It wasn't perfect, but most things worked perfectly. Performance was excellent. System stability was high, too. The problem with Lion is that it started dicking around with previously stable user expectations -- a perfect example being the skeu Address Book that had inferior usability. Mountain Lion improved things a bit. Mavericks improved things further, and represents another high point in OS X history. Yosemite once again dicks around with previously stable user expectations -- a perfect example being the new aesthetic which looks crisp in retina but looks fussy and unfinished in low resolution. Spotlight is no longer a drop down menu for no reason. Time Machine no longer spins. The green buttons now do different things. It's even more difficult to enable TRIM on third party SSDs.
- abrowne 12y ago
  > Time Machine no longer spins. This started with 10.9 (or 10.8?) FWIW.

mhuffman 12y ago

I disagree, you did not see the same amount of complaints with snow lion. Observational and anecdotal experiences are still experiences and are evidence that something is going on. If you owned a restaurant and suddenly your customers started complaining after you changed your recipes, would you still think it is nothing to worry about? And just because Ubuntu sucks worse than OSX, does not mean that OSX is not starting to suck.

pdabbadabba 12y ago
> snow lion ...Snow Leopard? The problem with your response is that I don't know that anyone has ever actually provided reliable evidence that the number of complaints has gone up. GP's view, which I share, is that people always complain about new releases, forgetting that the previous release had its problems as well. As GP said, bad headlines are easier to make than good ones. Simply reiterating that you think the previous release had fewer problems, and that there are anecdotes out there about problems in the current release, is hardly a refutation of this. This is entirely consistent with GP's view. I for one have experienced no significant change in reliability on the road from Snow Leopard to Yosemite (for what that's worth).
- toyg 12y ago
  > people always complain about new releases, forgetting that the previous release had its problems as well It might be true, but this attitude makes it very hard for developers not to discount all complaints, including ones grounded in reality. Just because people are paranoid about new releases being crap, it doesn't mean that they are not crap. Personally, I've experienced a number of really bad bugs in Yosemite. One of the most annoying is four-finger swipes to bring up launchpad: the "blur" animation starts and then just hangs midway, leaving a half-transparent launchpad that works with keyboard controls but not mouse-clicks. Or the infamous "backbreak", where you do two-finger swipes to go back in a browser window and somehow it fails mid-way, leaving an unusable browser page and breaking all two-finger gestures until you close that window (not tab, the whole window). And of course the awful dark corners on the volume icon once you disable transparencies, something you have to do to maintain a decent framerate on a two-year MBP-retina that was perfectly capable to handle all this up to and including Mavericks. And let's not even talk about the wifi dns bug, which I've lost any hope to see permanently fixed in my lifetime. These are bad because they affect very visible UI elements used hundreds or thousands of time per day; the sort of thing that used to be rock-solid and did not significantly change in new releases. I would understand if a newish feature like Finder tabs had a few bugs, but not trackpad gestures that have been there, working fine, for years.

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adriand 12y ago
There a super annoying issue with iMessages on Yosemite where the first time you click on the iMessages window, it doesn't gain focus properly (and you can't start typing a message), and the second time you click on it, the entire window changes position by the delta between the top-left corner and the spot where you click the second time. It makes the whole experience of using iMessages very aggravating. The whole "use OS X for all messages including SMS" thing is one of their key marketing messages, and it's broken on my Macbook and on my iMac. I logged a bug for it and was told it was a duplicate of another one already in the queue, which was well over a month ago. It seems like something that should be relatively easy to fix. That it hasn't been tells me that there is likely a very large list of bugs in a similar category (or worse), so they just haven't gotten to this one yet.
- redditmigrant 12y ago
  This doesnt even begin to address the countless ways in which messages on the laptop falls out of sync with the messages on my iphone sitting next to the laptop. Im not even talking about 2 second delays, Im talking about 10-15 minutes of the laptop not getting the message. Similar annoyances exist with receiving calls on the laptop. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt. The troubling thing for me is that these arent some esoteric features, these are the features that they choose to highlight so I presume a higher bar for them.

king_magic 12y ago

You don't think Apple's software quality has dropped? Guess you havn't had a hanging Safari or Chrome tab take down the entire OS. Yosemite is riddled with blantently broken issues like this. I'd love to enumerate them for you, but frankly, Apple should be doing that with a flood of automatic updates. Of which I've seen 1 since installing Yosemite. As an everyday user, there has been a massive drop in quality. Far, far worse than previous OS X upgrades. This is just not a case of people wanting to complain for the sake of complaining. I've been saying it for weeks now: Yosemite is Apple's Windows Vista.

engi_nerd 12y ago
My Yosemite seems to be taken down the most by a hung iBooks. And iOS8 made my 3rd generation iPad almost unusable. Just another bit of anecdata.
- rkeniger 12y ago
  upvote for "anecdata"
revscat 12y ago
I have not seen any of the issues with Safari or Chrome that you are reporting. The opposite, in fact: Safari this is so much faster than Chrome under Yosemite that it has become my primary browser. I'm a developer, by the way, and have both browsers open most of every working day. If anything, I have seen an increase in quality with Yosemite.
coldtea 12y ago
>You don't think Apple's software quality has dropped? Guess you havn't had a hanging Safari or Chrome tab take down the entire OS. No, I haven't.
- king_magic 12y ago
  Well, good for you. But remember - there were plenty of people who had absolutely no problems with Vista. And plenty who did. Were those unhappy Vista users all imagining it?

bushido 12y ago

> This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion other than "I perceive Apple's software quality to be worse based on my own anecdotal experience." This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it's just going everywhere. You quoted the unreliability of anecdotal experience and then went ahead and added your own anecdotal immediately in the next paragraph: I don't think the software quality dropped > Those who want to experience a lower "functional high ground" should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. I am sure most would agree with you that OS X at it worst is way ahead of Ubuntu, except that's not really the benchmark the users who are going around in circles are using, it quite evident in almost each one of these anecdotal commentary that an older version of OS X is the Benchmark I think the real complaint people have is that a lot of these people switched to Apple for superior well tested hardware and software, thus avoiding problems that they would not need to wait six months to be fixed. The key take away I think is NOT that recently OS X has some bugs, rather that the seemingly increasing in occurrence of bugs that more advanced users are experiencing is perceived as a sign on discarding their Test Everything Well Before Shipping culture that important to these people. > To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy. ----- I am unsure if your comment was designed to substantiate your thought that "This discussion is just going around in circles with nobody adding real useful commentary to the discussion", if it was, at that you succeeded.

boynamedsue 12y ago
FWIW I think writing server components are far, far better on Ubuntu Desktop than OS X. Package management is amazing and it matches my Ubuntu server deployments for production.
heyts 12y ago
I agree with you on many points and it seems obvious that apple is spread too thin these days and tries to do too much. I dont think this statement is true however: > The core market for Apple until quite recently was not the everyday user but developers, designers and the more tech savvy. Historically the core market of Apple Computer has been graphic-designers, journalists and the education market. Developers have only been on the platform post OS X because of unix.

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ksk 12y ago

>This opinion is being perpetuated by a few people and it's just going everywhere. Well, you're attacking others' opinions for being opinions, and not facts, but your claims are nothing more than opinions too. Sorry, I don't know what your point is? Just to add my own anecdote, my dad recently asked that his macbook air be reformatted to make it 'fast' again. Meanwhile, the '08 PC that I'm using now is running Win8.1 like a champ. > Yosemite has some bugs, yes, but so do almost every other major releases of Operating Systems. Heh, so Apple is just .. like everyone else? No need to hold Apple to a higher standard if that is the case. The entire point of people complaining is that Apple shouldn't be shipping buggy products like the competition. >Apple does have some bugs to iron out, but in six month's time when they're fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. Well, why would Apple fix the bugs if nobody complained? They wouldn't even know about them. Of course that is presuming they fix the bugs they know about. >To the everyday user, there is no drop in software quality. So why are the everyday users complaining? Some of the bugs that I've personally come across. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6601963?tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6601963?tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6604139 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6604139 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577 http://rustyshelf.org/2014/10/01/it-just-works/ http://rustyshelf.org/2014/10/01/it-just-works/ -- Oh.. And http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/01/it-just-works http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/01/it-just-works Ok, maybe Gruber is not your everyday user... :)

coldtea 12y ago
>Heh, so Apple is just .. like everyone else? No need to hold Apple to a higher standard if that is the case. The entire point of people complaining is that Apple shouldn't be shipping buggy products like the competition. So, they would use magical unicorn dust to remove all bugs? Of course they'll gonna have bugs on OS X, every OS has bugs. If Apple was held on a higher standard wasn't because OS X didn't have bugs, but because it had better usability, nicer design (where it matters), and a UNIX core to boot. >So why are the everyday users complaining? Because they were always complaining. I remember simila discussions after every OS version. Wi-fi and graphics card issues in particular (like the ones you linked to) have been with us since 10.0. For graphic cards issues it's usually the driver (so Nvidia/ATI, not Apple), and models get updated, so it's not like some core OS X kernel component that can be fixed and stay fixed. And for Wi-fi there are also tons of Wi-fi routers, repeaters, setups etc, there will always be some incompatibilities. I had my fair share of such in Windows and Linux too.

maguay 12y ago

The problem I've seen is that it's not just geeks this time. Sitting around a New Year's party with mostly non-geeks, everyone was discussing how they were hesitant to install new versions of iOS now thanks to bugs et al (both existent ones and media trumped-up stuff). That's both a direct and a perception problem that Apple has got to fix, stat. The only good thing for Apple is, the same discussions included frustrations over both Android and Windows 8. Maybe the thing is that now, everyone's an early-adopter geek.

rtpg 12y ago
Thing is nobody complains about Android updates breaking everything (though there are a lot of complaints about updates not happening), because the upgrades are usually well tested (despite having many more hardware platforms). Win8 there was Metro, but I really didn't hear much about Windows being broken. iOS and OS X have stability issues, ones that other systems seem to deal with more gracefully now.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  How many Android users ever get updates, though? Win8 there was Metro, but I really didn't hear much about Windows being broken. Huh? People screamed bloody murder about Metro. Arguably, it played a large part in the downfall of Steve Ballmer.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    How many Android users ever get updates, though? All the time, a lot of functionality is updated through Google Play services, and many of the apps are updated outside the OS. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/android-2-3-gingerbread-four-years-later-the-os-just-wont-die/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/android-2-3-gingerbre...
- hokkos 12y ago
  No complains about android ? Lollipop is the worst Android update ever, there is a bug where the system process take up RAM until the phone can barely use one app without killing the last one and slow everything. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79729 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79729

chromejs10 12y ago

I agree 100%. Marco just posts random complaints these days. There are no specific examples of what is actually broken. An OS is about as big of a project as you can get. What evidence is there that Mac OS X is any more broken than any other widely used operating system?

aik 12y ago

Alternatively, perhaps people are responding because they are having (or have had) similar experiences. Personally I have been very frustrated with iOS in the past year or two due to crashes and other bugs. Granted, a good number have been resolved in recent patches, but I'm still getting way more crashes than I used to several years ago (weekly+), and shaking off the previously frustrations and regaining trust is a time-consuming process. Perhaps it's also lack of QC for new releases. When iOS 7 and 8 were released, pretty much everyone I knew were experiencing frequent crashes and other issues. As someone else pointed out, there is more surface area for bugs to occur. Hopefully QC will step it up.

vacri 12y ago

You're annoyed that 'no-one remembers Lion', because people either upgraded from it or stuck with Snow Leopard to avoid it? It's a bit disingenuous to complain that no-one remembers the issues with an OS that folks aren't really using anymore and has been out of support for several months now. No-one in the Ubuntu world much remembers Ubuntu 11.04 either - so what? Does that mean that the currently-used operating systems shouldn't have their flaws discussed?

krschultz 12y ago

Ubuntu should not be the bar. Maybe Windows - but Windows has a significantly more difficult task. Apple controls all of the hardware & software. I would expect significantly fewer bugs than the other platforms. This is also not just about Yosemite. The fact that the iOS update rates are significantly lower this year is a sign users were not happy with the previous update.

tolmasky 12y ago

> Apple does have some bugs to iron out, but in six month's time when they're fixed, everyone will forget and start complaining about something else. That's the whole point: we'll start complaining about something else because in 6 months when the bugs are theoretically fixed we'll have another OS X release waiting for us right around corner (approx 4 months away) which will put us right back at square one! Tiger's lifespan was from November 2005 through October 2007. So, if we accept the premise that all the OSes were equally buggy and it also took Tiger 6 months to get the bugs worked out, then you still had another 18 months of a stable OS. This reasonably allows customers to decide whether to be early adopters or waiters: its perfectly fine to hold off those 6 initial months since you then still get 3/4 of the products lifespan with some assurance that its stable. That's just not the case anymore, if you wait those 6 months then now you've got another release right around the corner, you're perpetually in upgrade mode. Not to mention that most the bugs will probably ship in the major release anyways since (non-security) bug fix release have more or less merged with the new features that introduce new bugs release.

snowwrestler 12y ago
My MacBook Air is running 10.8 Mountain Lion. I regularly receive security updates (including the pushed NTP fix), as well as application updates like Safari and iTunes, and 3rd party updates for apps like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office for Mac, Evernote, DropBox, Coda, etc. I don't know what the "official" lifespan of 10.8 is, but it has every appearance of being fully supported by Apple today. And yes, it is very stable.
- yuhong 12y ago
  I wonder why it is not documented, but at this point they tend to support the current release and previous two releases.
- reberhardt 12y ago
  I loved Mountain Lion and also found it to be very stable. I stayed on it as long as I could, but the new versions of several of the apps I use required Mavericks, and after holding out for a while I upgraded. Mavericks was when I started noticing issues... Graphics driver issues, trackpad gestures randomly not working for periods of time, WindowServer crashing when opening the notification center (wat?), so on and so forth. Mac OS is still my favorite, but I've gotten an irking feeling that in the interest of capturing the mainstream market and making things look pretty and full of features, Apple has skimped on stability and quality. Just my two cents

ibejoeb 12y ago

I haven't had significant problem with OS X. iOS is trickier. For a more concrete criticism of functional software, thoughtfulness of design, and reliability, though, I submit Apple ID, iTunes, App Store, etc. This has been the buggiest and most opaque set of services I've dealt with recently. I have 3 different accounts now, each connected to developer credentials and app store purchases. 1 original account seems to have turned into 3 by way of failed sign-ins via iTunes and multiple failed password reset attempts. Each of these has 3 or 4 nonsense trivia questions associated with it. I have a folder in KeePass dedicated to managing this stuff. I have a spreadsheet that attempts to map these things to purchases. I can't automatically install updates because App Store downloads have associated themselves with different accounts. I've given up in a way. I have years-old versions of software that I don't update just due to the complexity of signing in. I don't know how people deal with it.

protomyth 12y ago

Since Apple's bug database is private, what would be an objective criteria that you would accept? For my own part, I have more bugs reported on 10.9 and 10.10 then any other releases. My everyday users hate iOS 8 and 10.10 due to network, Finder, and file share issues.

JoshuaDavid 12y ago

> Those who want to experience a lower "functional high ground" should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. I did exactly that (12.04 LTS), and am not going back. Configuring some things (I'm looking at you, Silverlight) is a pain, but most stuff is pretty painless. OS X looks much shinier, granted, but in terms of usability I prefer Ubuntu.

rdtsc 12y ago

> They wouldn't have even noticed unless articles like this continued to circulate. We should clearly find a way to squash and punish the infidels from voicing their opinion. I feel there is a bit of dissonance here between: > should switch to Ubuntu and discover how much further ahead OS X is. > People just like to complain. I've used Ubuntu for some time. Now on 14.10. Can you point out how ahead OS X is? Not saying it isn't. Just there is nothing I lack or wish I had in Ubuntu 14.10 that I don't already have. I like the interface. The ecosystem of packages. All hardware I want to work works. Also I paid $0 for the OS, (But donated to it before, you can too here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute if you feel like it is lacking major functionality)

SkyMarshal 12y ago
I used Ubuntu exclusively from 2009 till Feb 2014, at which point I joined a startup, got a MBPr 15", and have been using it exclusively since. And I agree, OS X offers a few marginal benefits, and some drawbacks, but it's not much further ahead. OS X advantages: - Entertainment: OS X has better entertainment options and ecosystem, iTunes mainly, though Amazon MP3, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix are negating this as advantage. - 3rd party desktop apps: I find little gems in both OS X's app store and in Ubuntu's "store" and repo's, but the best on OS X are generally better than the best on Ubuntu. Notepads like Quiver which integrate Markdown and LaTeX, Slack's only native app (or native-wrapped web app) is on OS X, Kindle native app for OS X, etc. That said, Ubuntu's good enough that I wouldn't miss OS X in this respect. - Overall better for lay people and non-techies. Gestures, etc. Still complex though, just as difficult as Windows for non-techies to learn. For example, I'd love to recommend to my almost 70yr old parents they switch from Windows to Mac, but the learning curve now is too steep. This is one of the disadvantages of adding lots of features to an OS - higher learning curve. OS X disadvantages - Stability:Price ratio: OS X is significantly worse. About the same stability as desktop linux but at a much higher price. I can crash both OS's by abusing memory (eg, too many apps open + too many browser tabs). A free OS I can forgive, an expensive one tailored to a single custom hardware configuration I can't. - Lock in: little things like having to take your Mac to a service center to replace the battery, or the inability to copy your entire home partition over to a new computer, etc. - FOSS: personal preference, like knowing my computer has the many eyeballs effect. - Overall better for power users. Tiling window managers, ability to keybind everything to Vim keybinds (file manager, all browsers, even Emacs), means you can easily dispense with mice and gestures altogether and use a much faster and more powerful interface.

gurkendoktor 12y ago

One difference between 10.7 and 10.10 is that 10.7 cost money and 10.6 kept working as before. It was considered perfectly normal to stay on the old system and be productive. (The Windows world is still "sane" in that way.) Now Apple and the internet army of Early Adopters have united and it works like that- 1. iOS 8 is released and you have to update (if you want to receive security updates) 2. If you accidentally enable iCloud Drive or use a new version of iWork, you need the Yosemite Developer Preview (or wait for 10.10.0) 3. Now you are using iOS 8.0 and 10.0.0 and live through six terrible months. It's a lot harder to be a "slow adopter" nowadays, especially if you live deep in the Apple ecosystem (iCloud, iWork).