What's wrong with Apple?

Hey! I remember you man! You used to be on these forums all the time!

 

It feels like their best hotshot coders, for whatever reason, have ended up at Google and fixed android into kitkat. Wouldn't surprise me if that's what happened.

 

Nothing is wrong. Brace yourself for a slew of deniers.

 

You're looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. There has never, ever been a time when everything "just worked" all the time.

Since you didn't come to the world of Apple until 2007, you missed the OS X transition. That was fun. You had a new OS that was incredibly slow, buggy, missing tons of basic functionality, and had almost no applications that ran on it, and an old OS that while tried and true, was built on archaic underpinnings and had all kinds of fundamental issues that could not be solved without the total rewrite that was OS X. To get anything done, you had to install both OSes (Macs for a time all shipped with two different operating systems preinstalled, both fully bootable - imagine that…) and switch between them depending on what you needed to do, what software you needed to run, and how adventurous you were feeling. It took many years for OS X to slowly turn from an unusable mess to a fast, stable, and useful operating system, and many years for developers to port their applications over.

I would say that I spend far more time being productive and far less time struggling with the operating system and the hardware on my Apple products than at any other time in memory. Yes, I freely acknowledge that Apple's yearly release cycles seem to be resulting in releases that probably should not have been made available to the public in their initial form, and that there are areas of iOS and OS X that are just fundamentally broken or poorly thought out. The thing is, this describes all Apple products - past, present (and future) and also every tech product anyone has ever produced, ever.

 

Very well said!

 

It's been way too long since I can recall a glitch/problem free iOS/OS. Each iteration of iOS has one problem or another. I hadn't had a problem except for the WiFi bug in iOS 6 (or which every one that was). However, iOS 8 is terrible. I upgraded from 5S running 7.1.2 to 6 running 8.0.2 and it felt like a downgrade software wise. The way things are going you may have to wait till 8.3 or 8.2. Also things like WiFi Sync has never worked (what the hell Apple?). So I understand what you mean.

 

I'm not good with dates, but I do remember product introductions. The beginning of Apple's software quality problems on the Mac side started with OS X Lion and also with the versions of iLife after the ones that included iMovie 06 HD. I think that was also around the time Bertrand Serlet left, who had headed OS X development. Now Scott Forstall who was heading iOS has been gone for some years. And of course Steve Jobs has been gone for three years, but even before then he probably had taken on a "big picture" role for some time and had been less hands-on.

My own theory is that Apple is a victim of its seemingly unstoppable success. I tried several years ago to get bugs hammered out with Apple's engineering team going through all the right channels and they were recalcitrant. I have the same networking issues between my Macs today that I had years ago. Mavericks cleaned up some bugs with TextEdit and QuickTime but many bugs linger. I don't think Tim Cook uses the products enough to know when something isn't right. I'm sure many people remember the summer before iOS 6 came out. All the developers running betas of it said Maps weren't ready. It was a train wreck everyone saw coming. How did the CEO of Apple not see it? Back when I was trying to get Apple to pay attention to bugs in the Mac OS the general feeling in society was that Apple had superior technology to Microsoft. There is a lag in what the media reports and what the situation actually is.

There's a saying in medicine that a patient does not all of a sudden deteriorate—the doctor all of a sudden notices. I think that's what's happened. The bugs I use to encounter were on the Mac side, and I don't think people use their Macs as heavily as I do mine so these were things people didn't care about. But when it hits iOS--that's when people care. That's when people notice.

I'm not sure if the problems Apple has with software have to do with Jobs dying or not. The timeline coincides with when he became sick and was technically CEO but may have not been hands on. Tim Cook was apparently a whiz at whittling away fat and pitting manufacturers against each other, improving margins. Jony Ive is apparently a whiz at staring into the distance and coming up with designs. Steve Jobs, though he wasn't an engineer, was fascinated with software and GUIs. He certainly knew a good user experience from a bad one. Of course Apple has tens of thousands of employees. But the ones at the top do seem to make a difference.

I, too, have an all Apple ecosystem. And it doesn't work anymore—whether it's controlling my Apple TV, screensharing and file sharing between Macs, AirPlay audio dropping out, or various WiFi issues—things don't work great.

 

It's all got too bloody complicated. That's the problem.

 

OP, I'm with you. Things are a mess and this latest update has taken it to new levels. Dunno what's going on in Cupertino.

 

And even with the products! They are not well made anymore!

I have a rMBP from 2013 that needed to replace the motherboard twice after one year of usage! Thank God i bought AppleCare!

My iPhone 5s came with a broken display right out of the box!

 

This is a very, very good point. Trying to get all the bits and apps of iOS to talk to each other now, when before they were all neatly sandboxed in their little playpens, is a hellish task. Android has been working on it for almost a decade and is only now getting it right. Then trying to get all of THAT mess to talk to all of the bits in OS X. Whoa.

Maybe they're worried about ChromeOS/Android integration and pushing the coding teams very hard to beat them to the punch?

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Well my experience with Apple stuff going back to the early 90's -- well before that even... anyway, my experience is that Apple stuff has always looked like it's well made, feels like it's well made, has been profoundly marketed as though it is well made and PRICED like it's well made, but in reality is just the same at best mid-level junk put out by any other electronics manufacturer. Kind of like Sony.

 

From my personal experience, OS X Lion (10.7) was a bad release. It just 100% was not ready for the public. OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) is what Lion should have been. 10.8 was a good replacement for the venerable Snow Leopard 10.6. Things may not have been 100% at the time of release but the final version (10.8.5) was pretty solid and worked great for me. Mavericks 10.9 wasn't too bad for me, I never really experienced any of the issues most talked about.

Yosemite 10.10 Public Beta so far is rock solid for me (minus a crashing issue with Safari which I reported to Apple). I think its solid enough to be the one OS X since Snow Leopard that I will be able to tell people "Yes, upgrade when it comes out". I'd dare say 10.10 PB5 is as stable, if not more stable then Snow Leopard 10.6.0-10.6.5. Snow Leopard didn't get really good until 10.6.6 and wasn't rock solid until 10.6.8. I think Apple did a better job this time thanks to the bug reports from Public Beta testers.

Now, iOS 8. This is, without a doubt, the buggiest iOS version Apple has released in a long time. I have been using iOS on and off since 2.x and a user non-stop since iOS 3.1.1/1.2 (iPod touch 3rd Gen). When I upgraded to iOS 4, I experienced the fact that even Apple can have bugs when OSes first come out, but it was nothing big (I forget what it was now). When iOS 5 came out I no longer had the iPod touch, but instead an iPhone 4. No real problems with the OS.

iOS 6 gave me issues at first, mainly with Exchange/Gmail accounts. Once I got my iPhone 5, I had non-stop issues with cellular and Wi-Fi. I'm pretty sure it was the hardware as I tried multiple restores, but there is no way to know for certain. These issues continued through iOS 7.1 (and multiple AppleCare replacements) until I got my 5s. They stopped, and never returned. It was weird. Other then the slow animations that were (drastically) speed up with iOS 7.1, iOS 7 wasn't bad.

Although, one thing to note is that with every single major iOS update I have done, and I mean every ONE, battery life decreased until it was improved at either the X.0.3 or X.1 mark. ALWAYS.

FWIW, I think Safari under iOS 8 has a memory leak or something. Every time I enter the app with music playing (either resuming from multitasking or opening for the first time) the music goes dead for a millisecond while it launches and then comes back. All. The. Time. Same thing happens when I connect to a website, all though its spotty. For instance, it'll happen when I load the main page of MacRumors, but going the forms it won't.

iMonitor for iOS seems to agree with me. With Safari launched (in the background) and music playing (also worth noting that the music is local to my device from iTunes, I'm not streaming) I have 34MB of RAM left of 1GB on my 6 Plus. Closed Safari, remaining memory it up to 180MB. I have tested it by clearing out all my website data and closing all tabs minus one (i.e. Macrumors homepage or Apple.com) with the same result. Does the same thing after restoring fresh. Now, if its a memory leak with Safari or the OS I do not know but its ridiculous and it needs to be fixed.

TL;DR: iOS 8 is a buggy mess that needs fixing and OS X Yosemite 10.10 PB5 is as stable as early public releases of Snow Leopard.

 

Yosemite is pretty great. There's a little bit of lag in some spots, mainly with resizing Finder and opening the Apps grid on the dock.



After about 10 days on iOS 8 GM, I downgraded my iPad 4 to 7.1.2 within the window. There were several issues:

I turned on Family Sharing and then was no longer able to install or upgrade apps. I tried everything short of a full restore; it was totally borked.

As others have noted, the app sharing extensions do not stay in the order you put them. This was the major feature they managed to ship on time, and it was just totally frustrating.

Safari was janky, it crashed on a lot of websites that it never had a problem with before. Also, while the new tab overview screen looked cool, the pan and zoom controls were overly finicky. It didn't feel polished like the rest of iOS.


On the plus side, the visual tweaks to notification center (blurred buttons instead of thinly drawn outlines) and the widgets were great.

In the end, there were too many problems and not enough new features to justify give up f.lux. As with all new releases this is the biggest hurdle for me. Once there's a jailbreak I'll move to iOS 8.x.

 

I've been thinking a lot about this since i downgraded my iPad Air from 8.0 to 7.1.2 due to glitches, bugs, and UI changes that added up to an experience I could not stand.

A big part of it, I've suggested here already, is the yearly software updates. By the time they get the bugs ironed out of one major revision of the OS, it's time for a new one. Various posters are taunting "nonbelievers" here by saying we claim every time that the last OS was the best ever. Well, by the time we are asked to upgrade to a new buggy major release, from an old one that's debugged, that seems true!

Another thing I've noticed is that while Apple's always been stylish (the product designs are usually quite attractive), it's heading to the point where the focus and major hires are marketing/style/etc. Ive is in Vogue magazine; Arendts is hired from Burberry; Beats' major distinguishing feature was the blingy colors and design. Products are now marketed as much for their colors as for what they do. The iWatch is similar--solid gold! Apple is transitioning to a company that sells fashion accessories.

Apple hit home runs with the iPhone and iPad, completely redefining the phone and tablet markets. But my guess is they've not been able to find a "next big thing." Other companies are making nice phones, tablets, and watches now, and Apple is now trying to define a niche for itself in a crowded marketspace, rather than being able to create new marketspaces. And the new Apple niche is purveyor of stylish bling to hipsters. Said bling lets you do stuff, of course, but it's the bling aspect that's becoming central.

For Thursday, we have good reason to suspect a gold iPad Air. The colorful Apple logo with "It's been too long" makes me expect multi-colored computers. I'm betting on a new Mac Mini that will be a minor hardware revision of the current one, but which will be available in various magical designer colors. The hardware would be an incremental change, hardly worth a presser, but it's the style that will get the attention.

 

Because people have been asking for more and more customization and features.

 

But hasn't that always been the case?

The difference now is that the guy who was entirely comfortable saying "NO", constructively, is no longer there.

 

Say what
If you think a Mac book air/ pro retina is the same quality as any other manufacturer you are in denial.
If you think an iPad air is the same as any android plastic tablet you are in denial again
If you think the iPhone 5-6 is the same as any android phone, apart from HTC M8, then you are also in denial

That's 3 ticks on the denial sheet, congrats. Comparing Apple build quality with Sony's is joke of the month.

 

Why do you think that using metal instead of plastic makes something better. Seriously, you need to answer this.
Sony Xperia Z3, including the Compact are both amazing phones, as is latest Android OS.
If you pay similar money for a Windows Laptop as a MBP then you will get a high quality machine, make no mistake.

Stop being such a fanboy and accept that other manufacturers also make some pretty decent products. Some growing up required.

 

This site has become depressing to read. Every thread is full of people bitching about Apple. Yet people I meet in the real world who use Apple products all genuinely enjoy their products and don't really have any major complaints the way people on here seem to portray their experiences. I don't know if theres legions of paid shills on here or just that people who aren't having any major issues don't come on here to complain but you can't read a single thread without the majority of it being bitching. Then everyone acts like they are a super important power user who the littlest bug just completely destroyed their system of doing things they've finely honed for years and its just all ruined now.

And Sony Vaio laptops were/are super flimsy. Press down on the keyboard, and the whole top piece flexes down severely. Theres zero flex on a MBP. Barely any on the Air's. Apple's laptops are FAR ahead of Sony in build quality and design.

Last, people have known for years that the X.0 releases can be buggy. Yet people jump in head first into brand new OS's and features. If you want the stability of later X.1 and X.2 releases then stay on the prior OS and don't update so fast. I've been on iOS 8 since the early betas, and haven't had nearly half the issues some people are complaining about. The GM, and 8.1 are far better than some of the betas were.

 

So I am not the only one with that music problem.

Ive been using Apple since 2003 and by 2007 everything of mine was Apple.

iOS8 is awful. Its the worst iOS I have ever used. I have owned every iPhone since 2007 but returned my 6 and I am staying with my 5S. I plan on rebuying the 6 in Jan 2015.

The quality of the 6 is awful. Poor screen calibration, home button is loose and the screen scratches extremely easy. On my 6 everytime I opened up text messages, every conversation would scroll to the top when using the Swpye keyboard.

 

I have to disagree with the quality of the 6. Mine has been great (I have a 6 Plus though). All the issues I have had (minus a loose headset jack that I'm not worried about) have been software problems thanks to iOS 8. I agree however that iOS 8 is horrible and was not ready for prime time. My entire house is Apple BTW, so I'm much like you. I have not upgraded my Apple TVs to the latest software because I'm afraid of that having issues. I have been an iPod user since 2005, Mac since 2009, iPod touch user 2009-2011, and iPhone since 2011 and have never had this many issues with an OS release.

I would have been totally fine with an iOS 7.2 or 7.5 that added support for the new phones and a handful of new features (possibly Handoff) and thats it. Save 8 for next year. In fact, I think Apple should do that not only for iOS but OS X so it gives them more time to refine the OS. Maybe that is what they will do this year to give more time to the devs. It would make sense; a new X.0 release when a numbered model comes out (6, 7, 8) and a X.5 update when the S model comes out (6s, 7s, 8s) or vice-versa. Now, it means things might not progress as fast feature wise but I personally would be OK with that.

 

My 6 plus was much better quality wise then my 6. Just was too big. Others here have agreed the 6 plus quality is better then the 6.

I'm hoping ios8.1 is better.

 

Sounds like you didn't experience iOS 7.0 through 7.0.3 on the 5s. THAT was far buggier than any version of iOS 8 that I've installed so far.

But, I think a big part of this has to do with coinciding a new OS with new hardware. Recall that the early versions of iOS 7 crashed the apps twice as often on the 5s than other iPhones, with Safari crashing and occasionally causing the phone to restart. A big part of this has to do with what the actual changes to the OS are.

iOS 7 primarily focused on the UI. The underlying code was not extensively retooled, except in the case of the 5s where Apple had to do an end-to-end transition to 64-bit, not only with iOS but with the bundled apps as well. This would be the equivalent of the OS X 64-bit transition that took 10.4 through 10.7 to complete, all occurring in one update. The "white screen of death" random reset issues, Safari crashes, and Touch ID "fade" issues were much more specific to the 5s, and not surprisingly, centered on the key hardware revisions (the 64-bit A7 and Touch ID).

iOS 8 is more of a extensive change under-the-hood, so the bugs are more spread out. This is a similarly broad expansion of the OS as OS X Leopard 10.5 was, and recall how many updates that OS required before it found its stride, and it had more than 2 1/2 years in development.

Even so, I've not seen the same issues with crashing and random resets with iOS 8 that I saw with iOS 7. Again, that might have to do with the 5s being the more mature hardware, and the most problematic bugs getting stamped out previously. Not surprisingly again, the biggest problems seem to have occurred with the newer models that also have a lot more new hardware than the 5s had. Aside from some random issues with Bluetooth (which 8.1 purportedly fixes), 8.0.2 runs quite well on my 5s.

 

Yeah, I think it's suspect how many of these threads and posts that pile on are written by people who joined the site in "September 2014."

There's also a lot of revisionist history going on. People talking about the speed and stability of iOS 7 don't always it clear whether they're talking about iOS 7.0 or 7.1.2. I remember version 7.0 being far more crash-prone and unstable than 8.0 was. Of course, as I mentioned above, it also seems that most of the problems have occurred with the newer phone models that are also packed with new hardware.

Sony? Several years ago, I used a Vaio laptop for work, and it was not much better than the fleet of Dell and HP laptops that I had also used. Level of build quality was nowhere near the Macs of that time.

As a company, Sony many years ago went chasing after market share and filling every available niche. They still made premium top-of-the-line products, but they also churned out a steady stream of poorly made crap that eventually tarnished the Sony name. I don't see anything from Apple that points to that kind of denigration.