Luke Miani video highlights iOS bugs

[TruthAboveAllElse]

It’s not just you

I’m glad other people have the energy to compile stuff like this. I was getting sick of people gaslighting me and pretending it hasn’t gotten super buggy. I don’t keep track of the bugs I encounter, and so I can’t recall them all on command. But I do notice the deteriorating quality of Apple software.

 

[UliBaer]

That's exactly why i still stay on iOS 17.7.2.
It (17.7.2) already has more bugs than i like to have, but still less than iOS 18...

 

[Paddle1]

I find iOS 18 has many sporadic bugs. They don't happen all the time and they don't happen to everyone, but they're there.

Overall it's still very usable but there is the possibility of occasional hiccups. The video makes it seem like it's completely unusable but it's not really like that. I wouldn't be surprised if iOS 19 is worse since it's supposed to be an overhaul.

 

[Populus]

I’m also glad to see someone like Luke with the huge subscriber base he has, to compile some of the many bugs and UI glitches is accumulating over the past 2-3 years.

It would be cool if this story made it to the MacRumors front page.

And like Luke says, maybe it’s not just about polishing even more the UI (or remaking it entirely like it’s supposed to happen in two weeks), but also about remaking, rebuilding the base code from the ground up for current systems, Apple Silicon based (A13 and up, M1 and up).

I know it’s easier said than done and iOS itself is supposedly based on OS X base code (Darwin?), which is based on FreeBSD. And I know it’s a several years long work. But it would be great to have systems really made from the ground up to take advantage of the new technology the current chips offer, with powerful Neural Engines and GPU cores.

Or maybe that’s just too much. Well, then hopefully they will be able to just adapt the core, the kernel, to the new chips and rebuild the system from that layer up, using Swift.

What seems clear is that macOS iOS and iPadOS, especially now that they will share a similar interface, need to have some sort of deep rebuild to make it fresh, efficient, stable, consistent, and responsive.

I know there’s no software without bugs, that’s what many Apple apologists say, we’re not talking about an isolated strange bug, we’re now talking about a buggy operating system. And that must be fixed, either this year along with the UI redesign, or next year with iOS 20th anniversary.

 

[Astrohunter]

iOS was always buggy, and in Jobs times lacked basic features.
Makes me laugh when people say how great iOS was in his times.

 

[TruthAboveAllElse]

iOS was always buggy, and in Jobs times lacked basic features.
Makes me laugh when people say who great iOS was in his times.

I've been using iOS since Jobs' times. This is just not true. It is significantly more buggy now.
Apple's music catalog is also way less accurate.
There's way less thoughtful touches that most people don't notice but subconsciously make a world of difference.

There's still some thoughtful touches. There are more features of course. Usability is not as good, it is not as intuitive. But, for a variety of reasons it is still the best solution for me at this time, so I still use it.

But no it was not always this bad, because it is BAD now. People who claim it isn't must be really good at not paying close attention to what is happening right in front of them.

 

[Astrohunter]

I've been using iOS since Jobs' times. This is just not true. It is significantly more buggy now.
Apple's music catalog is also way less accurate.
There's way less thoughtful touches that most people don't notice but subconsciously make a world of difference.

There's still some thoughtful touches. There are more features of course. Usability is not as good, it is not as intuitive. But, for a variety of reasons it is still the best solution for me at this time, so I still use it.

But no it was not always this bad, because it is BAD now. People who claim it isn't must be really good at not paying close attention to what is happening right in front of them.

In my family everyone is using iPhones.

I remember how frustrating it was to manage photos in Jobs times, like the whole camera roll thing was driving me crazy.
There wasn’t even an option to change date of a photo etc.

I remember also seeing all kinds of bugs on all our iPhones, sometimes even simple file sharing couldn’t be done because of bugs…

Anyway personally I’m not seeing lots of bugs, and if there are some they are minor, same with other iPhones in my family.

Maybe some people are just unlucky? I mean how come that this Youtuber has so many bugs and no one in my family does?

 

[TruthAboveAllElse]

In my family everyone is using iPhones.

I remember how frustrating it was to manage photos in Jobs times, like the whole camera roll thing was driving me crazy.
There wasn’t even an option to change date of a photo etc.

I remember also seeing all kinds of bugs on all our iPhones, sometimes even simple file sharing couldn’t be done because of bugs…

Anyway personally I’m not seeing lots of bugs, and if there are some they are minor, same with other iPhones in my family.

Maybe some people are just unlucky? I mean how come that this Youtuber has so many bugs and no one in my family does?

I really think people are good at ignoring bugs. "This doesn't work try it again oh it worked that time oh I forgot that ever happened" (Well, a part of us never forgets, I believe.) Or people blame themselves, "I must have tapped the button wrong."

I'm not under the illusion that iOS was ever bug free. But I am also damn sure it has a lot more bugs now than it used to. And the way bugs are treated internally is probably the cause of this. There was at some point a change in how employees are incentivized to fix things. There must have been.

There's also a general lack of polish, even if not specifically "bugs." Things like Apple Music not suspending screen savers when in full screen lyric mode. There's tons of places where more care and attention to detail could be brought. I wish I completed my cogsci major instead of philosophy, I'd try to get a job in UX.

 

[Astrohunter]

I really think people are good at ignoring bugs. "This doesn't work try it again oh it worked that time oh I forgot that ever happened" (Well, a part of us never forgets, I believe.) Or people blame themselves, "I must have tapped the button wrong."

I'm not under the illusion that iOS was ever bug free. But I am also damn sure it has a lot more bugs now than it used to. And the way bugs are treated internally is probably the cause of this. There was at some point a change in how employees are incentivized to fix things. There must have been.

There's also a general lack of polish, even if not specifically "bugs." Things like Apple Music not suspending screen savers when in full screen lyric mode. There's tons of places where more care and attention to detail could be brought. I wish I completed my cogsci major instead of philosophy, I'd try to get a job in UX.

I don’t really encounter all these bugs.
I have encountered though bugs like my Freeform notes being suddenly gone, or all my passwords, or some files on iCloud.

They should really improve their cloud services, iCloud is not even close to Dropbox.

But as for the OS bugs overall, I haven’t noticed all the bugs from the video, other than the one where volume on headphones increases sometimes.

 

[redcarian]

And like Luke says, maybe it’s not just about polishing even more the UI (or remaking it entirely like it’s supposed to happen in two weeks), but also about remaking, rebuilding the base code from the ground up for current systems, Apple Silicon based (A13 and up, M1 and up).

I know it’s easier said than done and iOS itself is supposedly based on OS X base code (Darwin?), which is based on FreeBSD. And I know it’s a several years long work. But it would be great to have systems really made from the ground up to take advantage of the new technology the current chips offer, with powerful Neural Engines and GPU cores.

If you have a mature system, and it has a problem, and you decide to rewrite it from scratch, you now have two* problems.

To quote Joel Spolsky from 25 years ago:

Yes, I know, it’s just a simple function to display a window, but it has grown little hairs and stuff on it and nobody knows why. Well, I’ll tell you why: those are bug fixes. One of them fixes that bug that Nancy had when she tried to install the thing on a computer that didn’t have Internet Explorer. Another one fixes that bug that occurs in low memory conditions. Another one fixes that bug that occurred when the file is on a floppy disk and the user yanks out the disk in the middle. That LoadLibrary call is ugly but it makes the code work on old versions of Windows 95.

Each of these bugs took weeks of real-world usage before they were found. The programmer might have spent a couple of days reproducing the bug in the lab and fixing it. If it’s like a lot of bugs, the fix might be one line of code, or it might even be a couple of characters, but a lot of work and time went into those two characters.

When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.

(Replace the Windows-oriented tech specifics with modern Mac/iPhone examples, if it helps)

Or maybe that’s just too much. Well, then hopefully they will be able to just adapt the core, the kernel, to the new chips and rebuild the system from that layer up, using Swift.

What seems clear is that macOS iOS and iPadOS, especially now that they will share a similar interface, need to have some sort of deep rebuild to make it fresh, efficient, stable, consistent, and responsive.

Do they? What makes that clear? Replacing a codebase that’s nigh on 30 years old is a huge coding effort with undefined benefits. The code has to be irredeemable to make it worthwhile, or somehow fundamentally architecturally unsuitable - hence the iTunes to Apple Music transition (and even then, I’ll bet you a pint there’s an absolute ton of iTunes logic in Music).

And you need your developers are hyper-good, or they'll just replace all the old bugs with brand-new shiny-but-different bugs. Narrator: They did, in fact, replace all the old bugs with new bugs.

I know there’s no software without bugs, that’s what many Apple apologists say, we’re not talking about an isolated strange bug, we’re now talking about a buggy operating system. And that must be fixed, either this year along with the UI redesign, or next year with iOS 20th anniversary.

Put yourself in Apple’s position, and ask: “Must it be fixed, though?”

The cost/benefit analysis of a commercial bug fix is different to a hobby project. I think the thing that’s clear is that the current bug count in iOS is not hurting Apple at all - the software is good enough to keep iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks flying out the door as fast as they can make them, which is what Apple wants; they’re a hardware and services business, not a software company.

I would be delighted were Apple to embark on a Great Crusade against bugs, fixing all this stupid stuff. But they ain’t gonna, until it makes sense to do financially.

*Many, many more than two. But definitely at least two.

 

[01cowherd]

But I am also damn sure it has a lot more bugs now than it used to.

I don't know if there are more bugs or even worse bugs now, but I can say that there are more bugs that I would classify as "must fix immediately" that are still around after many months or years. I still have issues with the volume controls not functioning properly, and I know I'm not alone. How is it that Apple cannot make the volume controls work 100% of the time?

 

[Populus]

If you have a mature system, and it has a problem, and you decide to rewrite it from scratch, you now have two* problems.

To quote Joel Spolsky from 25 years ago:

(Replace the Windows-oriented tech specifics with modern Mac/iPhone examples, if it helps)

Do they? What makes that clear? Replacing a codebase that’s nigh on 30 years old is a huge coding effort with undefined benefits. The code has to be irredeemable to make it worthwhile, or somehow fundamentally architecturally unsuitable - hence the iTunes to Apple Music transition (and even then, I’ll bet you a pint there’s an absolute ton of iTunes logic in Music).

And you need your developers are hyper-good, or they'll just replace all the old bugs with brand-new shiny-but-different bugs. Narrator: They did, in fact, replace all the old bugs with new bugs.

Put yourself in Apple’s position, and ask: “Must it be fixed, though?”

The cost/benefit analysis of a commercial bug fix is different to a hobby project. I think the thing that’s clear is that the current bug count in iOS is not hurting Apple at all - the software is good enough to keep iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks flying out the door as fast as they can make them, which is what Apple wants; they’re a hardware and services business, not a software company.

I would be delighted were Apple to embark on a Great Crusade against bugs, fixing all this stupid stuff. But they ain’t gonna, until it makes sense to do financially.

*Many, many more than two. But definitely at least two.

Hey, thanks for your thoughtful and respectful response. You really have a point on each point (so two points?). I completely agree.

Yeah I knew it was easier said than done when I was writing my comment. Maybe it’s not a years’ worth of code but rather a decades’ worth of code. So then it just isn’t worth it for Apple, and I understand it. I also concur, Apple is, and has always been essentially a hardware and services company, not a software company. And yes they have had great operating systems during many years but their focus is on hardware, features and services. And when they’ve tried to pile up many new features on a yearly basis, bugs and glitches occur.

However I’d say that, what I find more worrisome, and we’re seeing this especially on iOS 18, is that bugs and malfunctions, instead of being addressed along the yearly development cycle, they pile up as months, and sometimes even years, pass.

And yeah at the same time I also want those annoying bugs fixed and have an ultra stable and clean operating system like they say Android has. Let’s hope the implementation of AI tools in Apple software development team will dramatically improve the code minimising the bugs and ugly glitches.

 

[redcarian]

One thing we can and should all do to make things better is use the Feedback Assistant to report bugs. It’s in Applications/Utilities.

 

[winxmac]

Some say that iOS 15.x was the perfect release and unfixed bugs started showing up in iOS 16.x that are still in iOS 18.x

 

[Populus]

Some say that iOS 15.x was the perfect release and unfixed bugs started showing up in iOS 16.x that are still in iOS 18.x

My memory isn’t that good, but that could be my experience. 14 felt very polished, 15 too. Then iOS 16.. a bit buggy but I think they ironed it out finally. 17 wasn’t exactly buggy but some of the bugs we have on iOS 18 started back in 17. iOS 18 added way more bugs and, despite solving some of them, others remain and new ones appear each major version.