All they're interested in is saving money by bug testing with real users. They don't *really* want feedback or interaction, Apple have never played that game unless they're forced to.
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Craig Federighi Admits Apple's Beta Programs Don’t Provide the Interaction and Influence Many Users Desire
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Logs are always slow to read / analyze and what is crazy, not always shows a root of a problem.
Generic logs of crashes gives parts of info about environment, settings set in different main places but not the full view.
Summary and steps to reproduction helps a lot the developers, debuggers or testers to find what is a cause of such situation.
Sometimes simple crash is buffor overload, other process taking a part of memory somehow, HW error, result of multiple errors or without steps to reproduction a top of the glacier in the sea which is hidden till ship is sink.
100% this. It's just not worth the time and effort to use their crummy radar system to report bugs because they just ship them anyway. Modern day Apple is like the Google of yesterday; Ship more shiny new things to keep the masses happy and ignore the festering software that exists already. Fixing bugs isn't sexy, it doesn't get PR and that's all Apple seems to care about.
Apple needs to start something like Microsoft had in the mid-1990's = ClubWin! (Craig, call me, I’ll run it for you!). I was one of the main posters back then. Microsoft even paid for my flight to Redmond for the Windows 95 launch party. Then around 1999/2000, they kind of let that group slide into oblivion...I popped up a few years later and installed the RC of Vista on my high-powered Pentium 4, home built desktop and it slowed it down to a crawl...that's when I bought a Mac Pro in 2006 and was so impressed that I invested all of my savings into AAPL and never looked back! 😜. Funny story, I also attended the Windows 98 launch party on the pier in San Francisco. I turned up dressed very similar to all the Microsoft employees. At one point, I stepped off the bleachers where all the beta testers were told to sit and moved closer and started taking pictures of Bill Gates when he arrived. He turned towards me, paused, and seriously gave me the biggest stink eye I have ever received in my life (I think he thought I was a MSFT employee taking flash pictures of him with my crappy whatever 1990’s cheap film camera I was using)! Here’s me photo-bombing him at that event. Good times!
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I have no idea what is a cause of this Bug - and I guess every possible combination was not tested because it should just work… but not 
It’s an example of top-of-glacial Bug Of course reported today.
It’s an example of top-of-glacial Bug
Of course reported today.
Of course it doesn't: Feedback Assistant app suks badly!!! It's bugged, incredibly difficult to find the field regarding the issue you want to report, and there is no damn search option!
If I were Apple, I'd invest a lot into making a stable, functional, smooth platform for bugs/suggestions reports.
As it is, Feedback Assistant is a joke.
If I were Apple, I'd invest a lot into making a stable, functional, smooth platform for bugs/suggestions reports.
As it is, Feedback Assistant is a joke.
This was the way that Microsoft Office for Mac support and feedback operated for a long time as well. That was actually worse. I can’t tell you the number of times I posted to their online report form and bitterly, bitterly complained. A few times, I actually got a reply from a Microsoft Office for Mac rep who was sympathetic to my plight. That was about a decade ago. Not sure how they’ve changed since then, although I do know that they’ve improved beyond the standard “fill out and submit a form that sends your feedback to the ether.”
It’s always nice when an actual human takes over your case and gives you any indication at all that they have listened and are doing something, even if in the end they never decide to take action on it.
Nearly all feedback provided via Feedback Assistant doesn’t even seem to be read by Apple. I think they are too smothered in bug and complaint reports and requests. Customer service is not what it used to be at Apple, now that they are an iPhone sales-driven trillion-dollar global entity that has to suck it up to the public and governments across the board. The only thing I still appreciate about them is that you can at least set up a free in-person appointment with a real person who might have some understanding and sympathy for your problem, if you happen to live anywhere near an Apple Store. Even if they can’t solve your problem, at least it brings perspective to the matter.
Good point, but how would you know that they are actually listening? Even a very short note of acknowledgement, a sentence or two would be enough to make customers feel that they are being listened to.
We all get it. Apple is busy. Apple’s devs are busy. Apple has a lot on their plate. Right, we know. We sympathize.
The thing is, we are also all human beings who pay good money and invest our time in their hardware and software. We are their customers. Without us, their business crumbles and the big Apple falls. Every successful customer service system needs to take this into consideration. Apple is dealing with flesh and blood, real people who have feelings and devote their time to offering feedback. It’s not always whining and complaining. There are often very real issues that customers face, which have a significant impact on how they use their devices and even on how those devices impact their lives.
When Apple or any other tech giant decides that their customers do not always need to be heard, that is the beginning of the end for them. Apple started out and rose to power as a very human, personable company. That is not what they are now.
I've been an Apple beta-tester for over a decade - I started out eager to get a whole bunch of macOS stuff fixed and as the year went by I became disillusioned and eventually formed 2 conclusions:
1. For all the work I did finding bugs and reporting them, Apple typically never responds and rarely actually fixes the bugs.
2. Apple have been releasing utter garbage code and just flinging it at the beta-testers to deal with.
Apple needs to *dramatically* up it's game in the software QC department. If you produce junk code you'll get an overwhelming number of bugs and not be able to do a good job dealing with and solving them.
1. For all the work I did finding bugs and reporting them, Apple typically never responds and rarely actually fixes the bugs.
2. Apple have been releasing utter garbage code and just flinging it at the beta-testers to deal with.
Apple needs to *dramatically* up it's game in the software QC department. If you produce junk code you'll get an overwhelming number of bugs and not be able to do a good job dealing with and solving them.
There can be slight change. It is first time weeks ago when I got first feedback request from Apple to text to speech engine misery. I got two request before but they were both concerning Feedback assistant itself.
It is difficult to judge how many fixes for my 200+ reports were done but some remains unsolved for years. That means when fix come you may be required to get newer device to get fix as Apple praxis is not to fix issue in release where it was introduced unless it is bashed by users.
I do not mind if they would not respond. If they work on bugs and fix them, they do not need to spend time responding to me.
MacRumors, you’re going to scare them away from replying to any email ever again
I'm still sad about this. The new, coloured tab bar design was visually far superior. OK, it had some issues and wasn't perfect, but instead of fixing the issues, and/or making it optional, Apple just killed it entirely and went back to the ugly old tabs that we're still stuck with today. (no, there is no way to go back to using traditional/separate tabs with the new design. Apple only left the new design in "compact" tab mode, which sucks).
Sometimes, Apple would do well to listen less to the pitchfork-wielding mobs on Twitter and listening more to their top UI/UX designers!
Apple, please bring back the "show colour in tab bar" option for the separate (non-compact) tabs mode!
Well spoken. I liked that compact design with the "show color in tab bar" too. At some point in time, the designers have to follow their own heart and ideas regarding the design, rather than bow to the masses. If they fail, they fail.
That said, there are certain design decisions Apple made that never really worked:
- The Touch Bar, for instance. Good idea in theory, but not super useful or widely loved in practice.
- The Retina MacBook with only a single USB-C port was also a pretty user-unfriendly decision. Again, they had an idea that it might work out, and they stuck to their guns, but ultimately the choice was impractical from a usability standpoint.
- The "trashcan" Mac Pro design... no upgrades, too many restrictions, and not enough recognition of who actually was supposed to be using the product.
- Of course, let's not forget the butterfly keyboard mechanism... oh, they thought this would be the bee's knees of technological advancements, and it ended up saddling them with giving away years of free repairs on defective keyboards around the world (they're still doing this, I believe)...
Anyway, we are digressing a bit from the point of this thread, which is more about user feedback (software in particular) and how Apple deals with it, rather than their questionable hardware design decisions.
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That's a very considerate and humble thing for you to say.
The only question is, how would you know if they are actually working on the bugs that people report to them, unless they provide some kind of feedback? Some bugs might take a long time to fix, or might be given less priority. Wouldn't it be better to actually know what their intentions are, rather than wondering if they had actually received and read your feedback?
The low quality of code might likely be because of their own self-imposed yearly major update schedule. In short, Apple is doing it to themselves, because they think they have to be releasing new features each year to stay competitive.
Hi Craig, you didn‘t listen to the developers when there was no public beta. And the developers gave you qualified feedback.
Did you really think that Apple
would listen to millions of „Iwannahaveit“ guys instead?
Somethings really wrong at Apple.
Google, on the other hand, manages to work well with the community in Android development. So maybe you should take a look.
Did you really think that Apple
would listen to millions of „Iwannahaveit“ guys instead?
Somethings really wrong at Apple.
Google, on the other hand, manages to work well with the community in Android development. So maybe you should take a look.
This is the risk to have very frequent software release. Major release should be every 2-3 years but with good quality.![]()
Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, has admitted that the company's beta testing program, which offers developers and public beta testers access to beta versions of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS, isn't effective in giving users the amount of influence and interaction they desire.
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In an email exchange with MacRumors reader Kieran, Federighi responded to a complaint that Apple’s beta program doesn’t effectively listen to user feedback and suggestions, noting the challenge Apple faces when "literally millions of people participate in our betas, and many, many, many of them want to provide feedback to help influence Apple's products."
When users enroll in Apple's beta program, they're given a device profile that allows them to download early versions of Apple's next operating system, such as iOS 16 and macOS Ventura. Beta testing happens all year round but is most prominent following WWDC in June, where new versions of Apple's operating systems are shown before they're released to the general public in the fall. During the summer, beta testers test the software, finding and reporting bugs, suggestions, and general comments about the new updates.
To provide feedback to Apple, users can use the Feedback app and fill in information about the bug they're experiencing or a suggestion. Often, however, beta users' feedback goes unanswered by Apple. "I agree that the current approach isn't giving many in the community what they'd like in terms of interaction and influence," Federighi admits. "We haven't yet figured out how to achieve that in a practical and constructive way. We'll keep thinking," he continued.
Apple has in the past responded quite drastically to feedback from beta users over changes and new features in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, but only after widespread criticism and coverage.
For example, last year, Apple turned around a design change for Safari on macOS Monterey following widespread user complaints, allowing users to choose between the design it had promised that was more refined and easier to use and the older tab bar design. More recently, Apple also responded to heavy criticism regarding Stage Manager on iPadoS 16 by delaying iPadOS 16's release entirely and key new features until later this year.
While it's unclear what Apple will do to address the ineffectiveness felt by beta users on the part of interaction and influence over Apple's operating system, as admitted by Federighi, we could see an updated approach for next year's batch of new updates, which will include iOS 17 and macOS 14.
Article Link: Craig Federighi Admits Apple's Beta Programs Don’t Provide the Interaction and Influence Many Users Desire
The problem Apple has is the same problem millions of companies have around the world and that is the person who is ultimately responsible for making the decsion never bothers to see what goes on beneath them because they put too much trust in their managers to tell them the truth as to what is going on. I therefore have no doubt that the person at the end of the line who is the one who makes all the final decsions as to what goes on in the beta programs has no idea of the actual problems going on in the beta programs.
We read it in the press time and time again and there was even a reality TV program called 'Undercover Boss' which in many cases highlighted the problem and that is bosses apologising for not realising that there is a problem because it was hidden or shielded away from them. Who's to say that this is what is going on with Apple's beta program. Those on the front line (the beta testers) are telling their bosses there are problems, not just with the beta they are testing but with the whole program and it's management and this is not getting up further in the chain of command and the person in control of the beta program does not know that there are major problems with the program because managers and senior managers are keeping it hidden away from that person.
We read it in the press time and time again and there was even a reality TV program called 'Undercover Boss' which in many cases highlighted the problem and that is bosses apologising for not realising that there is a problem because it was hidden or shielded away from them. Who's to say that this is what is going on with Apple's beta program. Those on the front line (the beta testers) are telling their bosses there are problems, not just with the beta they are testing but with the whole program and it's management and this is not getting up further in the chain of command and the person in control of the beta program does not know that there are major problems with the program because managers and senior managers are keeping it hidden away from that person.
This. Also, the pandemic may have had an effect on code quality as well. Hopefully now that Apple employees are getting back to the office, we'll start to see an uptick in efficiency, productivity, and quality.
Well, regardless of whether they improve their Feedback process on their end, it would be great if they could at the very least just fix the app?
![6083256A-241D-4B5A-BD0F-6AFDC132EE1C.png]( "6083256A-241D-4B5A-BD0F-6AFDC132EE1C.png")
I always say that at work when the ticketing system is broken. What is the ticketing system for the ticketing system?