The second example is, I think, a perfect example of what most large companies do, which is to neglect specific features in favor of others. People want to work on the "new hotness" rather than maintain something written 10 years ago by a team that no longer exists.
I don't think either suggests that Apple software is getting worse as a whole. The simple fact that they rolled out an entirely new architecture and it's worked pretty flawlessly (except for some fraction of people when the battery drains to 0 and it hibernates and needs a restart) suggests to me that they aren't just resting and pulling in money based on their monopoly status (which they don't even have in any industry).
The first real shit app was iTunes. And ever since then, the OS has just stagnated while they put more software in to sell music, apps, and cloud storage.
Which is why I speculate that overall, it might not be better. You had to wait a couple years to get the fixes. Now they probably ship the fixes and new features on a more regular basis.
True... but this one has caught me, over and over, and it makes me paranoid of a low battery. Before I just had a lazy habit of not getting off the couch until the battery actually died from 0%. Now I panic the moment it turns red, because the cursor bug quickly makes working miserable and requires a restart for my sanity.
> I don't think either suggests that Apple software is getting worse as a whole.
To me, it suggests they are letting more surface-level bugs get a pass than previously. Before, they might have had poorly designed software once in a while, but not things this basic and easily discoverable.
You should try windows...
But 2 years of this bug was embarrassing.
I would argue the opposite.
Their software has historically been terrible.
OG iTunes ranks at the top of the worst pieces of software I've ever used - rendered the iPod almost useless for me.
Their software is still unimpressive, but I'd argue it's trending in the right direction.
The App Store is functional. Safari is not terrible. Their email client is fine. The Apple TV UI is pretty snazzy, etc.
Music App sometimes breaks. It just doesn't play certain sections of some songs, even on replay, closing the app doesn't help; a device reboot is required to play songs in their entirety. And this happens on both devices that are connected via hardwire as well as wifi/LTE.
Considering Apple's revenue it is ridiculous how long bugs persist in their applications.
https://9to5mac.com/2021/11/19/apple-podcasts-app-store-rati...
I actually have a whole laundry list of things I consider regressions in the Music app, but I'll just regale you with the most frustrating one for my use case:
If you use Home Sharing with wired headphones, it works. If you use wireless headphones with a local music library, it works. If you use wireless headphones and Home Sharing, it does not work. The program refuses to play anything. This was a nice surprise when I first tried to use Music after getting this laptop.
(I'm actually really curious if anybody else experiences this behavior -- anybody reading please chime in if so!)
Once they saw they could make money selling music, they started focusing on that and pushing that POS down your throat. Then when they finally realized they could sell apps on iPhones, that's where the focus went. The OS has stagnated since then, IMO. Their bread and butter has been selling apps, music and cloud storage, and it's clear (IMO) that's where all the actual development focus has gone.
Also the e-mail client is trash. It is supposed to support MS Exchange, and my co-workers and I used to use it at work just fine with OS 10.14. It was an awesome replacement for shitty Outlook. Once 10.15 came out, it would quit syncing, freeze up, stop sending email, etc. This was not just once in a while, it would literally quit working almost immediately. I was forced back into Outlook again. It felt like they never tested it with Office 365 even once. But of course, their own e-mail services work fine with it.
...iTunes was originally released with MacOS 9. It predates the public release of Mac OS X.
It abso-fucking-lutely is terrible
I actually just found one that has me scratching my head...
If I plug a USB-C -> Ethernet adapter in to my M1 MBP on OSX Ventura...it brings down the entire network.
Just ethernet + adapter + power is fine, plug it into the laptop, entire network dies.
All wired devices on the network (except for an AP strangely enough) drop all connections and can't get DNS responses.
I haven't had the time to dig in further than that yet though.
Someone did reply with this link[0], which may be the same or similar to what I'm experiencing just a different scenario.
[0]: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/05/11/usb-c-hubs-breaking-ether...
Turned out that it happened when one specific USB-C dongle with ethernet and PD was left powered on but not connected to the computer (I think there were other preconditions as well like it was powered-off and you connect power to it but not a computer to it). The device will then decide to go into DHCP server mode and start sending advertisement packets and the switch would start broadcasting them, the internal firewall would see this and start blocking the switch and in turn turn off the AP that was connected to it so 26 ports would be offline essentially. Most of us were on wifi and everyone who was on an ethernet (3 ppl) would go "FFS internet is unstable again. Stupid switch is probably buggy", disconnect their cable and go on wifi. Plus they never really reported it as they had work to do and Wifi kinda worked so not a big issue.
It was just a really cool moment when we found out what caused it and we fired up Wireshark and looked at the traffic and we were right. I haven't had a moment of so much joy in a really long time.
Still trying to determine why and when though, as this adapter used to be fine.
[0]: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-7-port-type-c-hub-with...
Argh. I hate it when this happens. It's infuriating that this hasn't been fixed yet.
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
One thing that really annoys me that I don't remember from High Sierra is this weird "overbounce"/"overscroll" functionality. This drives me absolutely nuts! Preview does this for example, and actually so does Firefox (but you can disable it there).
If you open up a PDF in Preview, set the zoom so that a full page width is entirely within view (i.e. no scrolling needed), then scroll a bit to the side anyway, you'll see what I'm talking about. The viewport moves even though the full page width is in view. I've found that this triggers even when I'm trying to scroll down, resulting in a weird, glitchy scroll feel.
I feel like I should temper the bad with the good a bit though. For example I have not had Bluetooth fail randomly with this new computer, whereas it failed quite a lot on my last one -- often requiring a reboot to fix.
They all miss the point. The problem with Apple in it's relentless mission of maximising vertical integration, is that you are forced to align with their decisions at every single level, whether it's technical, social or political. "Cult" doesn't do it justice, Apple is has gone far beyond this.
Most other proprietary tech is not like this because the pieces are smaller with some reasonable degree of either interchangeability or combinability. Apple isn't neutral technology it's some kind of political entity. When you sign up, you are handing over all control, which is fine until they do something you don't like at which point your only choice is abandon the entire thing or accept it - I don't give a crap about NFTs, but I give a crap about some things, and I don't want to be part of an ecosystem where I can be pushed around. I don't blame the people who are stuck in it, it's hard to exit something that can define a lot about how you work with technology, they are essentially the victim of a big bully with a very difficult to stomach exit strategy.
No seriously, I'm baffled. How was this released?
MacOS on Apple Silicon for an extremely long time (maybe it's solved now? 2 years later?) which caused incredibly glitchy, almost unusable cursor movement if you let your battery drain to 0%, then plugged it back in and woke it from hibernate.
Screen Time in macOS is unbelievably, ludicrously, fully broken. Nothing about it works almost at all. Metrics for children don't show up. Web filtering falls open after a few hours at random (presumably because the background services crash). The "site not allowed" page predates HTML5 and randomly doesn't work. You can't block built-in apps like Apple News, the best you can do is set a 1-minute time limit. Tons of IP Addresses and Apple phone-home addresses get blocked on the "allowed sites only" mode resulting in constant popups. I had to pay for Qustodio because it's just useless. Also, it has elementary bugs that are horrifying. For example, the pane where you add allowed websites doesn't remember websites you just added when you dismiss it - so if you open the pane again without a reboot, and add another site, it forgets the one you added last time you opened the pane.
However janky other things might be on macOS, Screen Time with "Allowed Sites Only" is by far the most broken thing on macOS, bar none. Try using it with your younger children and rage in frustration as it crashes-open silently and allows Private Browsing with no filtering after a few hours.