Is iOS 8 bad coding or planned obsolescence?

[Morac]

A couple of hours spent on an iPhone turns up several recurrent bugs for me and if Apple engineers and beta testers can't pick these up then it's just plain shoddy. The fact that so many happily accept them just lets Apple off the hook.

What really annoys me is I'll report bugs to Apple and wait and wait and after a month or two either I'll get request for more details, despite the problem being very easy to reproduce or I'll get a message saying my bug report is a dupe of another bug report with a much larger bug number (meaning it was filed a good time after I filed mine).

 

[Max(IT)]

I'm often the go to "tech" person in my "corner of the universe". I don't go around prosthelytizing IOS or any phone or anything for that matter; but when asked an opinion I give it based on how I see it. I've had more than my share of "what phone should I get"?

Me too, but the easy answer is "what phone do you see in my hand?"

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This is a response to the original post.

This is the problem exactly: there are two kinds of people in this world.

1) People who *are capable of noticing the stuff you just mentioned*
2) People who *are not* and/or *don't care AT ALL*

Most people are type (2) and that's OK. If you're reading this, you're more than likely a type (2). Your iOS 8 device probably has the exact same behavior that would annoy a type (1), except your brain is incapable of noticing, and therefore you think it's perfect.

Just like some people have much sharper eyesight than others, or better hearing, or the ability to discern musical tones much better, or are colorblind, or have better 3D-spatial reasoning, also some people's brains run at a higher FPS, or they are more intelligent and can notice finer details in things that most people miss. Being a type (2) doesn't mean you're stupid, but it does mean you're not capable of seeing things that Steve Jobs would see or being annoyed by things that would annoy Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was one of those rare type (1) people, and he had the power and authority within Apple to act as quality control using these sorts of criteria. No wonder most people thought he was an *******... He'd probably say "this is sh**, make it a flawless buttery-smooth 60FPS or you're fired and I'll get someone who can!

Whereas most CEOs just offload the QA to other people and assume it will be OK. Then whoever does QA is afraid to be too much of a jerk and/or is a type (2) person who just doesn't notice or care. Or they are more interested in meeting a deadline than making sure the product is perfectionized to the degree that only 1% of people will notice the difference.

All-in-all it could be a lot worse, but frankly I think the all-white design (or, really, *lack of design*) is the worst thing about iOS 7 and 8. The glitchy and buggy text selection and editing is a close second.

Bit it does make you wonder if Apple actually has anyone in QA that has the power to fire bad engineers.

Completely nonsense....

 

[I7guy]

Yes. But I would like to have iOS 7/8's control center, app-switching, security updates, and Metal. I'll keep iOS 6's look-and-feel, skeuomorphism, and especially its vastly-superior in-browser text editing.

There are so many third party developers who absolutely ruined their beautiful apps by trying to redesign them according to Apple's self-contradictory iOS 7 and iOS 8 design guidelines. "Deference" and "depth" ugh, they gave no APIs for depth and "deference" is just stupid. 2Do used to have such a pleasing, gorgeous, skeuomorphic design and it was trashed in favor of a low-contrast, hard-to understand iOS 7/8 look. Same thing happened to Grafio... They removed the great icons and wood paneling in favor of a crowded toolbar of thin-line icons that are hard to look at.

I don't understand this world anymore, how a company can just destroy amazing works that we've waited for all of human history to finally get. And they ruin it just a couple of years after everyone universally agrees that it's the best thing ever. I'll never understand that, nor how ANY of you can somehow think the new way is better, the stark white eyesore.

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I agree. That's why Steve Jobs was so unique, he actually cared about things that most people are like, "Meh, let the whiners whine. Most people won't care."

It's called "having exacting standards" and it's what put Apple on top. If they go away from that, you might as well get Android.

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This is the attitude that will destroy Apple. The attitude that performance glitches are not "worthy" of caring about. This attitude is a lowering of the bar, it is allowing a cruddier, crappier product to pass the muster.

This kind of thing is the canary in the goldmine. Apple has a substantial lead based on putting out the better product, and it was better precisely because it didn't do this kind of crap. If I was in charge at Apple then I would raise hell over this and many of the other problems in iOS 8, instead of just pretending everything's OK just because most people aren't capable of noticing or caring about these sorts of problems.

If Steve Jobs truly had exacting standards there would not have been any software or battery issues or anything other issue in any release under his watch. But we know that wasn't the case. What he had was the ability to see the high level strategy and the ability to know what works and what doesn't. Judging from the last few years, the Steve Jobs era is over and apple is now into the tim cook years. The most recent financials shows the company is in no way going downhill due to some of the glitches publicized here on MR.

Most of the them will ultimately be fixed and dealt with. And those few people who are stuck in the Steve Jobs era and who is fanatical about every aspect of IOS and who aren't happy with some of the glitches apple might lose as a customer.

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I must say that I don't miss wood panelling but I do agree that way too many people seem to accept what verges on mediocrity and these forums are testament to it. The amount of people who say their phones perform flawlessly, and that everything is like butter etc simply astound me. A couple of hours spent on an iPhone turns up several recurrent bugs for me and if Apple engineers and beta testers can't pick these up then it's just plain shoddy. The fact that so many happily accept them just lets Apple off the hook.

I find it interesting you paint such a broad stroke on the other side of what you are complaining about.

No doubt there are bugs and then glitches. I care less about the glitches, the bugs annoy me. Having my phone reboot is not in the same league as slow animation on the weather app, for example.

Don't reallly now the percentage of people:
- who are totally satisifed and believe there phone performs properly.
- who are satisified but has notificed some glitches and don't care.
- who are not satisified due to the glitch in the weather app
- who are not satisified due to the bugs
etc.

You can create your own classifications and search for them on the internet.

 

[sunking101]

If Steve Jobs truly had exacting standards there would not have been any software or battery issues or anything other issue in any release under his watch. But we know that wasn't the case. What he had was the ability to see the high level strategy and the ability to know what works and what doesn't. Judging from the last few years, the Steve Jobs era is over and apple is now into the tim cook years. The most recent financials shows the company is in no way going downhill due to some of the glitches publicized here on MR.

Most of the them will ultimately be fixed and dealt with. And those few people who are stuck in the Steve Jobs era and who is fanatical about every aspect of IOS and who aren't happy with some of the glitches apple might lose as a customer.

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I find it interesting you paint such a broad stroke on the other side of what you are complaining about.

No doubt there are bugs and then glitches. I care less about the glitches, the bugs annoy me. Having my phone reboot is not in the same league as slow animation on the weather app, for example.

Don't reallly now the percentage of people:
- who are totally satisifed and believe there phone performs properly.
- who are satisified but has notificed some glitches and don't care.
- who are not satisified due to the glitch in the weather app
- who are not satisified due to the bugs
etc.

You can create your own classifications and search for them on the internet.

So many people (here) claim that iOS8 is fine/verging on perfection, and yet repeated clean installs and setting up as a new phone does nothing to prevent frequent (multiple) app crashes, the irritating spinning data wheel in Safari, phantom battery drain on certain days, screen freezing, portrait/landscape rotation bugs, occasional lag, control centre infrequently not pulling up etc for me. I see iOS8 as being a mess of super-obvious bugs and months in they're still present.

We're agreed on the weather app, glitches don't bother me either.

 

[C DM]

So many people (here) claim that iOS8 is fine/verging on perfection, and yet repeated clean installs and setting up as a new phone does nothing to prevent frequent (multiple) app crashes, the irritating spinning data wheel in Safari, phantom battery drain on certain days, screen freezing, portrait/landscape rotation bugs, occasional lag, control centre infrequently not pulling up etc for me. I see iOS8 as being a mess of super-obvious bugs and months in they're still present.

We're agreed on the weather app, glitches don't bother me either.

Seems like that might be the case for some, while for many others it isn't, and some of them it's pretty much the complete opposite of that. There's got to be something behind it. Since if iOS was truly flawed all these things would apply to everyone it would seem.

 

[vista980622]

People have been talking about the bugs in iOS 8 and those that still persist in iOS 8.1, so the question I've been asking myself is if Apple really need more time to deliver a proper point update (like the months it took to release 7.1) or if this is something else?

Now, before I start I'd like to point out that I generally feel that the worst part about iOS 8 is really the performance in terms of speed and smoothness, unlike people generally complaining about certain bugs or crashes. Perhaps this belongs in that category as well. I have one 5, two 5S's and people sharing their opinion on how iOS 8 runs on the new 6 devices.

First off, I've mentioned it before, but the weather app in iOS 8 will still lag regardless if you're using 5, 5S or 6. Going through the list view and detailed view, flicking between several cities, you'll notice frames drop and that 60 fps isn't really in the weather app at all. This never happens on a separate 5 I have running iOS 7.

The other thing I've noticed on two 5S's is this:



That might have been an overreaction, but the point remains. You might be thinking I'm nitpicking, but these small things, coupled with different bugs and other issues of performance does end up to a conclusion that the so called "flawless" experience or smoothness is not really there anymore. That 60 fps experience that was pretty much constant, is sort of missing, for now. Are these the small steps of planned obsolescence?

Image

Now people might be saying that iOS has become more sophisticated, which is true, but judging by the increase in CPU and GPU performance from the A8 since the first iPhone (50 times = CPU, 84 times = GPU), would you say that the system requirements of iOS has gone up that much as well? Without being a software engineer at Apple, I wouldn't really say so. The A6, A7 and A8 are all still very powerful and capable chipsets and given how it seems that we're entering a tick-tock phase with not the huge jumps as we've seen before, these chipsets should still last for quite some time without hiccups.

How do you feel about this? Do you share a similar sentiment? Do you agree or completely disagree? Unfortunately I feel I need to add that I have no intention of switching to a different phone etc. So all questions or claims that I should stop complaining and leave will be redundant. I'm heavily invested into this OS and the ecosystem in general.

All I'm asking is a genuine discussion of how you feel your phone is working and if you share the same thoughts.

Redundant coding. Apple adds too much new code without clearing out old codes that are no longer useful.

For example, iOS 8's audio framework still references to the original iPod touch, which stopped receiving updates since 2010. Another example is although iOS 8 defaults all app's keyboard to new design and there is no intended way to revert keyboard designs, legacy keyboard's graphics support are still left in iOS.

 

[Max(IT)]

Redundant coding. Apple adds too much new code without clearing out old codes that are no longer useful.

For example, iOS 8's audio framework still references to the original iPod touch, which stopped receiving updates since 2010. Another example is although iOS 8 defaults all app's keyboard to new design and there is no intended way to revert keyboard designs, legacy keyboard's graphics support are still left in iOS.

Interesting... Do you have any reference about that?

 

[vista980622]

Interesting... Do you have any reference about that?

Extract iOS 8's file system, then use ida pro to extract dyld_shared_cache and dig around system framework binaries, or extract graphics assets (.car) files into png files with other tools, the results may surprise you.

 

[marvz]

This is a response to the original post.

This is the problem exactly: there are two kinds of people in this world.

1) People who *are capable of noticing the stuff you just mentioned*
2) People who *are not* and/or *don't care AT ALL*

Most people are type (2) and that's OK. If you're reading this, you're more than likely a type (2). Your iOS 8 device probably has the exact same behavior that would annoy a type (1), except your brain is incapable of noticing, and therefore you think it's perfect.

Just like some people have much sharper eyesight than others, or better hearing, or the ability to discern musical tones much better, or are colorblind, or have better 3D-spatial reasoning, also some people's brains run at a higher FPS, or they are more intelligent and can notice finer details in things that most people miss. Being a type (2) doesn't mean you're stupid, but it does mean you're not capable of seeing things that Steve Jobs would see or being annoyed by things that would annoy Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was one of those rare type (1) people, and he had the power and authority within Apple to act as quality control using these sorts of criteria. No wonder most people thought he was an *******... He'd probably say "this is sh**, make it a flawless buttery-smooth 60FPS or you're fired and I'll get someone who can!

Whereas most CEOs just offload the QA to other people and assume it will be OK. Then whoever does QA is afraid to be too much of a jerk and/or is a type (2) person who just doesn't notice or care. Or they are more interested in meeting a deadline than making sure the product is perfectionized to the degree that only 1% of people will notice the difference.

All-in-all it could be a lot worse, but frankly I think the all-white design (or, really, *lack of design*) is the worst thing about iOS 7 and 8. The glitchy and buggy text selection and editing is a close second.

Bit it does make you wonder if Apple actually has anyone in QA that has the power to fire bad engineers.

WTF did I just read.

And thanks for this statement - so you are a type (2) person. If you can't appreciate the brilliant and modern design of iOS 7+ you clearly have no idea what you are talking about and I'm more than happy that you have nothing to do with Apple's QA.
I just had the opportunity to play around with an iPhone on iOS 6 - it does look horrible.

 

[C DM]

WTF did I just read.

And thanks for this statement - so you are a type (2) person. If you can't appreciate the brilliant and modern design of iOS 7+ you clearly have no idea what you are talking about and I'm more than happy that you have nothing to do with Apple's QA.
I just had the opportunity to play around with an iPhone on iOS 6 - it does look horrible.

The way something looks to someone has nothing to do with what it's actually like or what it looks like to someone else.

 

[PRSGuitarist]

Another small point is that, according to the ex-apple employees, they never ever do any sort of planned obsolescence, or code anything to be slow on old hardware. They actually get quite angry when people even suggest that they do - so i'm going to believe them

Yes, as a software engineer, myself, I believe them. To me, it seems like a tin foil hat explanation for what is likely just perpetually expanding software running on old hardware.

 

[Max(IT)]

Extract iOS 8's file system, then use ida pro to extract dyld_shared_cache and dig around system framework binaries, or extract graphics assets (.car) files into png files with other tools, the results may surprise you.

Hmmm, I don't have the tools readily available (not my field anymore, and it's been a while...), so I'm giving you credits about that.
But I cannot understand why.....

Apple surely doesn't lack experienced software engineers....

 

[sanke1]

It is clearly planned obsolescence as they made their flagships iPhone 6 obsolete at launch.

 

[Max(IT)]

It is clearly planned obsolescence as they made their flagships iPhone 6 obsolete at launch.

Totally baseless statement....

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Another small point is that, according to the ex-apple employees, they never ever do any sort of planned obsolescence, or code anything to be slow on old hardware. They actually get quite angry when people even suggest that they do - so i'm going to believe them

Of course they get angry - the question either implies that the software runs badly because they're incompetent, or it implies that it runs badly intentionally. Neither of these possibilities are complementary.

 

[sunking101]

It is clearly planned obsolescence as they made their flagships iPhone 6 obsolete at launch.

Agreed. Apart from a few nods to advancement, such as a bigger screen and incremental processor/GPU/camera upgrades, they kept the core RAM the same as the previous two iPhones. This 1GB of RAM was barely sufficient on the iPhone 5 and was noticeably insufficient on the iPhone 5S. Nobody here can honestly say that they weren't dismayed when the specs for the upcoming iPhone 6 & 6 Plus were released last year, and they saw that they only had 1GB of RAM. The iPhone 6 models really only brought a bigger screen to the table and Apple assumed, correctly as it happens, that people would flock to buy them for this feature alone.

 

[DoctorKrabs]

WTF did I just read.

And thanks for this statement - so you are a type (2) person. If you can't appreciate the brilliant and modern design of iOS 7+ you clearly have no idea what you are talking about and I'm more than happy that you have nothing to do with Apple's QA.
I just had the opportunity to play around with an iPhone on iOS 6 - it does look horrible.

This looks perfect to you?

Design is something that people disagree on much of the time, and when you make a completely general argument and say "this looks good, that looks bad", you have no argument at all.

Debate like a real man.

 

[Max(IT)]

This looks perfect to you?

Design is something that people disagree on much of the time, and when you make a completely general argument and say "this looks good, that looks bad", you have no argument at all.

Debate like a real man.

What's wrong with that?

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Agreed. Apart from a few nods to advancement, such as a bigger screen and incremental processor/GPU/camera upgrades, they kept the core RAM the same as the previous two iPhones. This 1GB of RAM was barely sufficient on the iPhone 5 and was noticeably insufficient on the iPhone 5S. Nobody here can honestly say that they weren't dismayed when the specs for the upcoming iPhone 6 & 6 Plus were released last year, and they saw that they only had 1GB of RAM. The iPhone 6 models really only brought a bigger screen to the table and Apple assumed, correctly as it happens, that people would flock to buy them for this feature alone.

Not this again.... IPhone 6 users still are happy with 1 Gb of RAM, and most of them are just enjoying their phones without even knowing how much RAM it sports....

 

[DoctorKrabs]

What's wrong with that?

Icons with white backgrounds lose their borders if there's a white background, and this is done intentionally. Even though it is supposed to be like that, it looks like it's unfinished and unpolished, throwing off the consistency of icons.

They have done everything they can to remove shadows to try making it "rational". Even the original press screenshots for iOS 7 had drop shadows behind the icons. I don't know why they're avoiding them.

 

[sunking101]

What's wrong with that?

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Not this again.... IPhone 6 users still are happy with 1 Gb of RAM, and most of them are just enjoying their phones without even knowing how much RAM it sports....

You mean that most of them aren't noticing any problems due to their usage patterns.
I could take out my phone, make a call, send an SMS, google a train connection, send some emails or check the weather with zero problems too.
An hour and a half of heavy web browsing would throw up numerous frustrating and cumbersome issues though...

Now I don't begrudge people who encounter no problems with iPhones, or iOS, but to say that certain scenarios don't exist which cause muchos bother for some others is ludicrous. Many people can find limitations with the iPhone, and that's whilst engaging in what would be considered as basic tasks.

 

[Max(IT)]

Icons with white backgrounds lose their borders if there's a white background, and this is done intentionally. Even though it is supposed to be like that, it looks like it's unfinished and unpolished, throwing off the consistency of icons.

They have done everything they can to remove shadows to try making it "rational". Even the original press screenshots for iOS 7 had drop shadows behind the icons. I don't know why they're avoiding them.

That's just your opinion.
I actually love that style.

Tastes are subjective by nature.

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You mean that most of them aren't noticing any problems due to their usage patterns.
I could take out my phone, make a call, send an SMS, google a train connection, send some emails or check the weather with zero problems too.
An hour and a half of heavy web browsing would throw up numerous frustrating and cumbersome issues though...

Now I don't begrudge people who encounter no problems with iPhones, or iOS, but to say that certain scenarios don't exist which cause muchos bother for some others is ludicrous. Many people can find limitations with the iPhone, and that's whilst engaging in what would be considered as basic tasks.

And as I already said to you a million times, WRONG.
You are not the only "heavy user" here.
In my organization we are managing thousands millions dollars equipment (and I mean hundreds of thousands !) with iPads, all with 1 Gb of RAM and heavy professional software installed.
No-one is whining about the RAM the way you are doing here. No one.

 

[sunking101]

That's just your opinion.
I actually love that style.

Tastes are subjective by nature.

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And as I already said to you a million times, WRONG.
You are not the only "heavy user" here.
In my organization we are managing thousands millions dollars equipment (and I mean hundreds of thousands !) with iPads, all with 1 Gb of RAM and heavy professional software installed.
No-one is whining about the RAM the way you are doing here. No one.

I'm 'wrong' because I somehow encounter major issues with the lack of RAM on my 6+?
I never said anything about "heavy users", merely using the phone in a certain way. You could make calls all day long and be a heavy user, or send iMessages for 10 hours straight. Neither endeavour would cause you to hit a RAM brick wall.

What's this heavy professional software you speak of? An app?
Being in one app won't cause you to notice a lack of RAM either. It is, as I have explained on many previous occasions, an issue one runs into if switching between browser tabs and an app. If you don't mind the tabs and apps reloading as you switch between them that's fine, and in some instances it wouldn't be a problem. If searching on websites, and also switching between them and a search on the Amazon or Ebay app, reloading will reset all your search parameters. It's a ballache. So too when typing data into a webform, if you leave the tab to check some info in an email or your notes app, then go back to the webform it's pot luck whether it reloads or not. These are all things that I do on a daily basis!

 

[I7guy]

I'm 'wrong' because I somehow encounter major issues with the lack of RAM on my 6+?
I never said anything about "heavy users", merely using the phone in a certain way. You could make calls all day long and be a heavy user, or send iMessages for 10 hours straight. Neither endeavour would cause you to hit a RAM brick wall.

What's this heavy professional software you speak of? An app?
Being in one app won't cause you to notice a lack of RAM either. It is, as I have explained on many previous occasions, an issue one runs into if switching between browser tabs and an app. If you don't mind the tabs and apps reloading as you switch between them that's fine, and in some instances it wouldn't be a problem. If searching on websites, and also switching between them and a search on the Amazon or Ebay app, reloading will reset all your search parameters. It's a ballache. So too when typing data into a webform, if you leave the tab to check some info in an email or your notes app, then go back to the webform it's pot luck whether it reloads or not. These are all things that I do on a daily basis!

So by the same token because you don't like the hardware specs you feel Apple deliberately setup for obsolence?

 

[Max(IT)]

I'm 'wrong' because I somehow encounter major issues with the lack of RAM on my 6+?
I never said anything about "heavy users", merely using the phone in a certain way. You could make calls all day long and be a heavy user, or send iMessages for 10 hours straight. Neither endeavour would cause you to hit a RAM brick wall.

What's this heavy professional software you speak of? An app?
Being in one app won't cause you to notice a lack of RAM either. It is, as I have explained on many previous occasions, an issue one runs into if switching between browser tabs and an app. If you don't mind the tabs and apps reloading as you switch between them that's fine, and in some instances it wouldn't be a problem. If searching on websites, and also switching between them and a search on the Amazon or Ebay app, reloading will reset all your search parameters. It's a ballache. So too when typing data into a webform, if you leave the tab to check some info in an email or your notes app, then go back to the webform it's pot luck whether it reloads or not. These are all things that I do on a daily basis!

So because you can't keep switching between Amazon and a multi tab web browser, that's planned obsolescence???
Btw I can fill a web form, check the email and then return too the web form without any data loss. Actually that's what I'm doing every day.
As I already mentioned, maybe your iPhone is defective....

 

[sunking101]

So by the same token because you don't like the hardware specs you feel Apple deliberately setup for obsolence?

Well, when one considers that the iPhone 6 has the same Achilles heel as the iPhone 5 and 5S, then yes. We all know that Apple will slow down the iPhone 5 very soon, come the next major iteration of iOS, and that really there's no way that the phone cannot cope with the same o/s as the iPhone 6. It has a plenty fast enough processor to cope with any version of iOS that the iPhone 6 can. RAM is already an issue now, like it was 12 months before the iPhone 6 was even released. Come iOS9, the 6S will be out and it will have 2GB of RAM. Instantly the iPhone 6 will become compromised, and how often does that happen just 12 months after being released? Sure we expect to have a slightly slower processor and a slightly inferior camera, but never do we expect the S model to have such a major jump in crucial hardware over its predecessor. iOS9, or certainly iOS10 will take increasing advantage of the hike in RAM and all those with the iPhone 6 will be left in the same boat as iPhone 6 and 5S owners.