Apple Investigating Apple Watch Series 8 and Ultra Microphone Issues

[Takeo]

This bug has not been fixed in just released public versions of iOS 18 and Watch OS 11. All of my bug reports apparently just go into a black hole.

 

[tobybrut]

This bug has not been fixed in just released public versions of iOS 18 and Watch OS 11. All of my bug reports apparently just go into a black hole.

As a retired software engineer, I can say it’s likely because the hole is really deep. No engineering company has the resources to tackle every bug report. I was working on a ten-person team for a Fortune 100 company everyone has heard of where there were at least 2,000 bugs outstanding at all times where half would never get fixed due to lack of priority or severity. That’s just the way of things. With an OS there are likely hundreds of thousands of bug reports, many of which may not see the light of day for years, if ever.

One bug report I submitted to Apple was three years ago where I reported the OS didn’t work right with my monitor whereas the prior version worked quite well. Many monitor resolutions were missing that existed before. It took more than two years and two major macOS versions for me to get a reply to it that it was finally fixed. I didn’t care at that point since I had moved onto a different monitor I liked better. I’ve submitted quite a few bugs and that was the only response I ever got to any of them. It’s also possible there are many duplicate bugs and they just close out those duplicates and never get back to the person who submitted them.

They see your bug reports. It may just take them until iOS 21 to get to them.

 

[Takeo]

As a retired software engineer, I can say it’s likely because the hole is really deep. No engineering company has the resources to tackle every bug report. I was working on a ten-person team for a Fortune 100 company everyone has heard of where there were at least 2,000 bugs outstanding at all times where half would never get fixed due to lack of priority or severity. That’s just the way of things. With an OS there are likely hundreds of thousands of bug reports, many of which may not see the light of day for years, if ever.

One bug report I submitted to Apple was three years ago where I reported the OS didn’t work right with my monitor whereas the prior version worked quite well. Many monitor resolutions were missing that existed before. It took more than two years and two major macOS versions for me to get a reply to it that it was finally fixed. I didn’t care at that point since I had moved onto a different monitor I liked better. I’ve submitted quite a few bugs and that was the only response I ever got to any of them. It’s also possible there are many duplicate bugs and they just close out those duplicates and never get back to the person who submitted them.

They see your bug reports. It may just take them until iOS 21 to get to them.

Oh yes I’m aware. Thanks. That’s why I encourage anyone else who has this issue to report it.

I wouldn’t think my scenario would be that unique though. I mean surely I’m not the only one using the large noise complication and also taking calls on my watch where I have to “press 1 to…”.

Oh well. My solution so far is just to never use the keypad during a call on my watch. I use my iPhone for any outgoing calls and I get a test callout from Search and Rescue every week which requires me to “press 1 to confirm receipt of message“ but now if I’m not near my phone when I get those… I just mute or hang up the call on my watch.

The weekly SAR call is actually how I finally figured out how to replicate the issue.
For the first 6+ months it was a mystery to me when and why it was happening. It felt random. I didn’t make the connection until I was on a vacation with my iPhone put away for 2 weeks (on a charger but untouched). I noticed that the complication was breaking a lot more than usual. This was because I was taking all calls on my watch. On the second Monday (SAR test call day) I noticed that immediately after the call the noise complication broke. And I finally put 2 and 2 together. I got someone to call me to test it (after restarting the watch to fix the complication) and… BINGO! EVERY TIME!

So at least if anyone ever does tackle that bug they will be able to replicate it. Replicating the issue is a big part of any bug so… I got them halfway there at least. If they ever tackle it.