Slashdot Mirror


iOS 11 'Is Still Just Buggy as Hell' (gizmodo.com)

It is becoming increasingly apparent that iOS 11, the current generation of Apple's mobile operating system, is riddled with more issues than any previous iOS version in the recent years. Two months ago, in a review, titled, "iOS 11 Sucks", a reporter at the publication wrote: I'm using iOS 11 right now, and it makes me want to stab my eyes with a steel wire brush until I get face jam. Gizmodo today reviews iOS 11 after living with the current software version for two months: It's been two full months since Apple released iOS 11 to millions and millions of devices worldwide, and the software is still just buggy as hell. Some of the glitches are ugly or just unexpected from a company that has built a reputation for flawless software. Shame on me for always expecting perfection from an imperfect company, I guess. But there are some really bad bugs, so bad that I can't use the most basic features on my phone. They popped up, when I upgraded on release day. They're still around after two months and multiple updates to iOS. Shame on Apple for ignoring this shit. Now, let me show you my bugs. The worst one also happens to be one I encounter most frequently. Sometimes, when I get a text, I'll go to reply in the Messages app but won't be able to see the latest message because the keyboard is covering it up. I also can't scroll up to see it, because the thread is anchored to the bottom of the page. The wackiest thing is that sometimes I get the little reply box, and sometimes I don't. The only way I'm able to text like normal is to tap the back arrow to take me to all my messages and then go back into the message through the front door. [...] Other native iOS 11 apps have bugs, too. Until a recent update, my iPhone screen would become unresponsive which is a problem because touching the screen is almost the only way to use the device.

30 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. It's you by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    You are holding it wrong.

    1. Re:It's you by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No it's Apple. That's Apple trend since a couple years ago. Little by little the iPhone is becoming a Potemkin village. Nice outside, questionable inside. No more attention to detail, obvious bugs that should be found and fixed easily, rough design ; either the CEO makes bad choices, or he is unable to manage his staff.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:It's you by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

      Apple are closet Nazis too.

      Look at their OS names

      Yosemite - clearly an attempt to disguise the famous Nazi expression 'Yo, Semite!'

      El Capitan - another attempt to disguise the Nazi SS rank SS-Hauptsturmführer by translating it into Spanish, the language spoken by Franco

      I could go on.

      And look at their stores. It's a bunch of white people, stylishly dressed in mostly in black designer clothes. You know who else was mostly white people dressed stylishly in black designer clothes? The fucking SS, that's who.

      And they had a cult of personality around a charismatic leader who was a complete bastard. And after that leader died it all started to fall apart.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    3. Re:It's you by cayenne8 · · Score: 3
      I guess it is all too "touchy-feely" at Apple now.

      It appears that Tim doesn't know how to crack the whip like Steve did.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    4. Re: It's you by Brockmire · · Score: 2

      Jesus, have you been watching the news? There's a big clamp down on "touchy-feely" in the tech and media industries.

  2. An OS is not a throwaway phone app! by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know all the cool kids are doing Agile and sprinting away, and I think that's fine for development. But one of the things I really don't think is doing companies any favors is the super-fast iterations of operating systems. I'm a Windows guy and we see this with Windows 10 a lot...features just feel unfinished even when they're part of an official release. On the Windows Server side of the house, the pace is a little slower and it shows...server operating systems need to be more stable and not have surprising feature changes.

    I'm an old fuddy duddy, but I think that core things like operating systems should have a slightly slower pace of development that allows for more testing and more careful planning. I see this in iOS 11 too...I just upgraded and was very surprised how many of the built-in apps have serious design flaws and appear to have been changed just because. (The Podcast app is unusable while driving anymore because you can't have it automatically play through a list of podcasts, as an example.)

    Going super-fast and doing the DevOps thing is fine, but honestly a lot of this thinking came out of startups, where the product was an app whose only client is a smartphone, and whose only customer is a consumer who is getting a free service. Failures of this can be tolerated if you can quickly patch up the back end...but an OS deployed on a machine is a different story.

    1. Re:An OS is not a throwaway phone app! by king+neckbeard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think it's the short release cycle that is the problem (it works well for the Linux kernel), so much as it is that cycle in a commercial, proprietary environment. The latter puts a focus on getting out a certain amount of new and shiny, which can result in lower quality releases.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    2. Re:An OS is not a throwaway phone app! by fermion · · Score: 2
      I don't think it is an iPhone app at all, or at least not older iPhones.

      Apple is getting into the situation of supporting too much hardware, which was never it's forte. Apple is good at supporting a small number of models, think mac air, iMac, MacBook, mac pro. Sometimes it has successfully supported multiple platforms, such as when they transition from PowerPC to Intel, but that is short lived.

      The iOS works really well on iPad pro. I know the iPhone 8 people have few problems. It does not work so well on iPhone 6.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    3. Re:An OS is not a throwaway phone app! by jez9999 · · Score: 2

      I've been using Windows 7, Linux Mint (which still runs Linux kernel 4.4.0), and a Cyanogenmod with Android 5.1.1 and I can't remember the last time I had a significant OS-level problem.

      People massively overrate "new" and "shiny". Stuff that's old and aint broke is pretty good.

    4. Re:An OS is not a throwaway phone app! by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The latter puts a focus on getting out a certain amount of new and shiny, which can result in lower quality releases.

      Well I think this ties into another relevant criticism: There's no reason that an OS needs a lot of these "features".

      Is the OS stable? Is the filesystem good? Does the UI allow you to open applications? Yes? Ok, cool, then you're done. Pretty much everything else should be done on the application level, not by the OS.

      I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I just don't think things like web browsers, Dropbox competitors, Music stores, and AI assistants needs to be integrated into the OS. Tying these items to OS upgrades means that they have to push out a whole new OS upgrade when they want to release features. Kernel-level changes shouldn't get scheduled based on when they want to release new ad-blocking in the browser.

  3. CEO Responses by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

    CEO responses to this kind of release:

    Steve Balmer: Throws chairs while shouting "developers developers developers!"
    Tim Cook: "LOL but look how much cash we have."
    Satya Nadella: "Huh? We sold a phone?" Quietly high-fives himself in the mirror.
    Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong". 3 days later several senior product positions at Apple open up for hiring. Spouses report their loved ones missing. Police find no trace but are baffled by reports of a severe thunderstorm located exclusively over Apple headquarters just after Jobs' announcement. Perfect iOS software released a few days later.

    1. Re:CEO Responses by dbialac · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a shame that Steve didn't seek treatment for his cancer from actual doctors right away. The type of pancreatic cancer he had has a nearly 100% survival rate. Basically, you die if you do what Steve did. Now we're stuck with ugly icons, no headphone jacks and displays that look like something somebody posted on There I Fixed It.

    2. Re:CEO Responses by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      So iOS is now another thing I can blame on David Wolfe.

  4. Re: Bugs by Vokbain · · Score: 2

    There is no 7s or 7s Plus.

  5. buggy MFi by doginthewoods · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a profound hearing loss and depend on the iPhone MFi to hear conversation through my aids during phone calls. It is a buggy mess- it will drop one or the other side (L/R) during a call, take seconds to decide how to handle to audio (between speaker and MFi) when a call comes in, and sometimes will route notification sounds through the aids. There is such a thing as inconvenience. But when your ability to hear on the iPhone through MFi is compromised, that is a huge problem.

    --
    Republican leadership = Idiocracy
  6. Tip of an iceberg by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 2

    This isn't counting the clusterfuck that is the ugly iPhone Ecks knob and corresponding "safe area" hack.

    Thousands of app authors have had to modify their code (and worse - other people's code) to work correctly with that nonsense, and the cumulative cost of all those wasted person-hours is probably in the millions.

  7. Article is trash by zifn4b · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This article (more like a blog post) sounds like a teenager ranting in the most irrational way not providing coherent evidence for their claims many of which are ambiguous. Any review that uses terminology like "sucks" or "monkey armpits" and juxtaposes Samsung vs. Apple without any real comparison of the two products sounds like an article that isn't interested in providing useful information to consumers. They either 1) want to just rant and listen to themselves talk or 2) want to get ad revenue from sensationalism or both.

    Why does this trash keep getting posted to slashdot?

    --
    We'll make great pets
    1. Re:Article is trash by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's written by someone who used to write for Gawker and Gizmodo. Yeah, that explains a lot. Hate dripping with condescension is their stock in trade.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:Article is trash by jeremyp · · Score: 2

      It's anti-Apple, that's why. Apple used to be cool on Slashdot but then they remembered they needed to be profitable and started making decisions that Slashdotters don't like but (judging by their financial results) a lot of people do.

      Apparently some things don't line up the way the author likes so he's having a rant.

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
  8. Re:There was a solution to this many years ago by Train0987 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would gladly carry an extra 1/4" thick phone if someone would bring back the slideout keyboard style.

  9. That's an Apple user alright by TimothyHollins · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's been two full months since Apple released iOS 11 to millions and millions of devices worldwide, and the software is still just buggy as hell. Some of the glitches are ugly or just unexpected from a company that has built a reputation for flawless software. Shame on me for always expecting perfection from an imperfect company, I guess.

    This perfectly defines an Apple user. You get rawdogged all the way to the bank, and you blame yourself for getting boned! If this was Windows, you'd be blaming Microsoft, if this was Unix, you'd be blaming open source, if this was the Republicans, you'd be blaming the Democrats (and vice versa), but when it comes to Apple, it's not their fault the software is buggy, it's yours for expecting Apple to deliver on their promises.

  10. Certainly More Problems Than Prior Releases by CycleFreak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have an Android phone (my personal phone) and an iPhone 6 (work provided)

    There are aspects of iOS that I think are superior to Android. But it does seem that Apple rush-botched iOS 11.

    Notifications: There is no way to clear all recent notifications at once. This only becomes available after they have "aged" enough. I like to keep the notifications clean, so this really bothers me. I have to clear them one at a time. Why take away the "Clear" function from the top of the notification list?

    Battery life is noticeably worse than it was with iOS 10. The first unpatched iOS 11 was just awful. Once-a-day charging was the norm, then I could not get past 5pm without having to charge the phone. Patches have since made this better, but iOS 11 still sucks battery faster than iOS 10.

    The swipe-up panel is terrible. Definitely a case of changing for the sake of change.

    Auto-brightness. Which genius decided to bury this setting under "General --> Accessibility --> Display Accomodations"? Why isn't it under "Display & Brightness" from the main settings page? And if you manually change brightness from the swipe-up panel, auto-brightness is disabled. Then begins the lengthy PITA that is finding the Auto-Brightness option and enabling it again

    To list some that come to mind. But there's more ... At least it seems that Apple is responding and issuing iOS 11 patches fairly quickly. But, really, these things should not have been released into the wild initially.

  11. Huh? by Corporate+T00l · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've just spent the last 5 days coordinating a trade show, messaging like mad across iMessage, Hangouts, and e-mail, both from inside the apps and from the home screen. The problems described simply do not occur on my phone. I'm not sure why, but maybe the situation is just not as bad as this reviewer describes and the problem does not afflict every phone equally.

  12. Re:Bullshit by GregMmm · · Score: 2

    But this is the entire point. Apple product are about the experience. You would never see this just a few years ago, and if you did, it was fixed quickly. This brings up questions on how Apple brings products to market. Did any of these issues get caught in testing? Were the issues classified as OK for deployment and to be fixed later? Either of these scenarios pose a major shift in the Apple thought process of their products. When paying for an expensive product, you expect a great experience. Neatly aligning the header with a search bar is the experience. Without the experience, Apple is just overpriced. For instance I love my MacPro, because of how easy and powerful the user interface is. I used one at work and at home, and could do things I could only dream of on a Windows interface. Again, the point is the experience. Heavens knows I could buy a lot more hardware and run Windows or Linux, but I wouldn't have the same experience.

  13. Re:Bullshit by BronsCon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The "bugs" are almost all sufficiently minor to not bother people without OCD issues.

    From a brand that used to pride itself on impeccable visual design, that's actually quite sad. From Microsoft, or even most Android manufacturers, it wouldn't be such a big deal, because that level of visual perfection was never their thing and they never attracted those OCD users in the first place like Apple did.

    Apple spent years cultivating the following of these people, now they're seeing what happens when you trigger them.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  14. Re:Bullshit by phayes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The "bugs" are almost all sufficiently minor to not bother people without OCD issues.

    From a brand that used to pride itself on impeccable visual design, that's actually quite sad. From Microsoft, or even most Android manufacturers, it wouldn't be such a big deal, because that level of visual perfection was never their thing and they never attracted those OCD users in the first place like Apple did.

    Apple spent years cultivating the following of these people, now they're seeing what happens when you trigger them.

    There's no way to be certain but if there were, I'd wager everything I could that almost all the "claimed OCD iOS users" are instead apple haters flocking to another molehill in attempts to build another fake mountain.

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  15. Re:Bullshit by BronsCon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or, you know, it could be literally decades of Apple marketing to perfectionists. You can't market to perfectionists, build a userbase of perfectionists, and be surprised when every flaw is pointed out when you start slipping.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  16. X.0 was buggy, the rest not by mr100percent · · Score: 3, Informative

    11.0 was buggy. 11.1 fixed most of it. Iâ(TM)m on 11.2 beta and itâ(TM)s much improved.

    People griped the same about 9.0 and 10.0. This isnâ(TM)t much different

  17. Re:Bullshit by phayes · · Score: 2

    Or, you know, one could use the modding of people who comment on stories that paint Apple badly on slashdot compared to other site like Ars Technica as a proxy.

    There aren't enough OCD perfectionists in the world to make up enough people claiming "Not neatly aligning the heading with the search bar" == "Buggy as hell". However the ranks of Android zealots here that see Everest behind every molehill ...

    On Slashdot, people who point out legitimate inconsistencies in stories like the "FaceTime already HACKED" story from earlier this week were downmodded into oblivion. and the people saying "This is why I'll never buy APPLE TRASH" were upmodded.

    On Ars, people asking "if this is a legitimate hack, and not someone who trained FaceTime using the device password to recognise the 3D print, why don't they say so" were upmodded.

    Wait a few days and it is clear that the claims of FaceTime being hacked were by people having the password. Ars doesn't lack stories calling out Apple for problems (Where is the Mac Mini renew. Why is the New MBP & iPhone X so expensive, etc), but they have avoided becoming the abode of trolls like Opportunist who get upmodded here for merely stating "I Hate Apple".

    There really is only one conclusion that can be drawn and it doesn't put slashdot in a good light.

    Beyond my personal disdain of people obsessing on minor details to make mountains out of molehills, were Ars to come out with a similar story where enough people were upset with the details to comment and mod the complaints up, I'd believe that there was a problem. Right now it's just the usual slashdot haters doing their thing.

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  18. The actual link by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    Oddly, the summary gives a link to a two-month old critique of the fonts and style, but fails to link to the actual story being summarized.

    It's here: https://gizmodo.com/ios-11-is-...

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com