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Apple Seems To Have Forgotten About the Whole 'It Just Works' Thing (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, writing for ZDNet: "It just works." This is the phrase that Steve Jobs trotted out year after year to describe products or services that he was unveiling. Well, Steve is now long gone, and so it the ethos of "it just works." 2017 was a petty bad year for Apple software quality. Just over the past few weeks we seen both macOS and iOS hit by several high profile bugs. And what's worse is that the fixes that Apple pushed out -- in a rushed manner -- themselves caused problems. A serious -- and very stupid -- root bug was uncovered in macOS. The patch that Apple pushed out for the root bug broke file sharing for some. Updating macOS to 10.13.1 after installing the root patch rolled back the root bug patch. iOS 11 was hit by a date bug that caused devices to crash when an app generated a notification, forcing Apple to prematurely release iOS 11.2. iOS 11.2 contained a HomeKit bug that broke remote access for shared users. And this is just a selection of the bugs that users have had to contend with over the past few weeks. And it's not just been limited to the past few weeks. There's no such thing as perfect code, and sometimes high-profile security vulnerabilities can result in patches being pushed out that are not as well tested as they could be. But on the other hand, Apple isn't some budget hardware maker pushing stuff out on a shoestring and scrabbling for a razor-thin profit margin.

34 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. All part of the marketing strategy... by Quakeulf · · Score: 4, Funny

    Next year they'll relaunch everything with the slogan:

    It just works. Again.

    1. Re:All part of the marketing strategy... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "It's thinner, whiter, and has a slightly more recessed Apple logo, and at twice the price you'll know you're better than everyone else."

      The result will be a sales goldmine.

    2. Re:All part of the marketing strategy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      No. It's now "You'll just pay."

      That will never change.

  2. Not just bugs by LucasBC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It isn't just bugs, either. A lot of their recent software efforts seem sloppy and confused. Interfaces that were elegant and useful are now cluttered, ugly and non-intuitive, lacking in some highly desirable functionality, yet messed up with unwanted changes from previous versions. When I switched from Windows to Mac in 2010, I did so solely because of their highly desirable software; not because of their overpriced shiny hardware. But now that benefit is waning, and I know several people beside myself who are considering abandoning the Apple ship. They need to get their act together.

    1. Re:Not just bugs by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That has me worried too. Apple seem to be dropping the ball a lot lately, not on bugs but on what they used to be really good at: taking new-ish technology and presenting it in an easy to use, attractive and reliable package. Like the fingerprint scanner in the iPhone, and in fact the iPhone itself is an embodiment of that idea. But where is Apple these days? Take HomeKit: home automation is a field that cries out to be improved in terms of ease of use, security and interoperability. Apple entered that market with... something that we had years ago: remote control of lights from our phones, using WiFi, a protocol ridiculously unsuitable for large scale home automation. They lag behind in maps, voice assistants, and their new smart speaker has little to be exited about. With $250 billion in the bank, you'd think they have the funds and manpower to bring some of that old Apple innovative spirit into new areas and improve on good ideas of others, but no. I still prefer my iPhone over Android ones, but I'm afraid Apple are on their way to become irrelevant.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:Not just bugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Things like:
      - Hidden menus or scroll bars are one example. If you don't know it is there, you can't use it. And there are a lot of these.
      - Switching the default for Message delete from "Delete" to "Cancel" in a point upgrade for no apparent reason (perhaps for iCloud Messages?)
      - Preferences all over the place on iOS.

      I've had a Mac since the 128k Mac, but some of the changes and bugs that have happened recently are steps backwards from consistency.

    3. Re:Not just bugs by Albanach · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Totally agree, following a recent experience with an iPad Pro. Previously you could use Siri from across the room, much like you would do with an Amazon Echo or Google Home. Want to start some music, ask Siri. Want to Set an alarm, ask Siri.

      The latest version of iOS disables Siri if you have a cover on your iPad. So if you're baking and just want a times, you'd have to wash your hands, walk to your iPad and remove the cover.

      So for a product which is intended to have a cover over it whenever it's not being used, unlike say an iPhone, Siri is permanently disabled when it's not in use. This, Apple support has stated, is by design, though it looks more like they rolled out a feature to disable Siri on iPhones when they're in a pocket and then didn't care about any knock-on consequences. Rather than acknowledge a mistake, or even to make available a toggle so the end-user can choose, they just say this is what they want and the customer needs to live with it.

  3. Apple's Software Updates Are Like Halloween Candy by magusxxx · · Score: 4, Funny

    Linus: "I got my Wi-Fi back!"
    Lucy: "I got an iTunes update!"
    Charlie Brown: "I got a brick."

    --
    Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
  4. Others by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Photo syncing between iTunes and iOS devices via USB is broken - many people are having issues syncing photos. Some sync, some don't, particularly if you have a large photo library.
    2. Nested albums in Photos is broken - they don't show on iOS devices
    3. Nested albums in Photos don't show up reliably on Apple TV

    Apple needs to take a year and fix bugs on all their products and get back to the "just works philosophy".

    And he said something about the "alternative medicine" experiment probably cost him his life. Crazy.

    1. Re:Others by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      Here's another: macOS 10.13, if you have an external display and scaling enabled, one core sits at 100% all of the time in the window server. Lots of people have reported it, but I don't believe it's fixed yet. It basically means that you can't use an external display (e.g. a projector) while on battery, and if you do anything computationally intensive then expect it to be slower.

      On the plus side, this bug meant that I didn't update to 10.13 and so missed out on the root login bug...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. It just works better than anything else by GreatDrok · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm a daily user of Mac OS, Windows and Linux. Of the three, Mac OS is still the best option. Windows is and always has been horrible and the UI changes that keep coming along are terrible, plus they keep rebooting my machine for updates. Linux is reliable although having upgraded my machines to systemd I don't really think Linux users can cast stones anywhere.

    The main advantage of Apple has always been the tight integration of hardware and software and I have to say that having used Macs for nearly 20 years now, we're in no way in some terrible low point in Apple software quality. It has always been a bit variable. I remember complaining to Apple multiple times about Terminal.app on Tiger which wouldn't open bash about 50% of the time you started it. Took them until 10.4.6 to fix that one I believe. Every time we have one of these articles people proclaim that it is because Jobs is gone but there were issues when he was around. It really isn't all that different to how it was except that they have a lot more users today than they did back in the PPC days and yet for all that success we still haven't had the promised plague of viruses and malware that Windows got despite the switch to Intel and the increasing user base. I'd say it works well enough and I'll keep buying because it saves me time and money in my business.

    --
    "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    1. Re:It just works better than anything else by loonycyborg · · Score: 2

      Well systemd is basically clone of launchd from MacOS. It's nothing more than Linux becoming more MacOS-like. It's very dumb hypocrisy that MacOS has launchd, Solaris has SMF and people complain only about systemd. You simply can't have a competitive desktop OS based on sysV init now. This systemd witchhunt is a threat to future of desktop Linux.

  6. Re:alternative medicine by shaitand · · Score: 2

    It just might work(TM)

    -Steve Jobs

  7. Re:alternative medicine by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

    The terrible Apple formatting is the icing on the cake. Really, you could have just typed anything with quotes around it and it would have made the point.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  8. Re:Proofreading doesn't work either by Albanach · · Score: 5, Funny

    That summary is so full of typos and missing words it's just embarrassing.

    Fixed that for you :)

  9. No Magic Left by sycodon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apple is now just another Sony, IBM, Microsoft, etc.

    The drive provided by Steve has left the company. Their target is no longer innovation or excellence, but next quarter's earnings reports.

    The Shine if off the Apple.

    As someone who still has a Fat Mac in his garage, it is just sad.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:No Magic Left by spiritgreywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Their target is no longer innovation or excellence, but next quarter's earnings reports.

      Honestly I would really like someone to mention a tech company (or any company for that matter) that once they hit Wall Street, they didn't suddenly develop a myopic "What Can We Do This Quarter To Make The Executive Stock Options Fatter?"

      Every time I worked for a privately held consulting or software company - it totally rocked. As soon as they went public? It was all downhill from there.

      I'm a firm believer that it's the vision of the controlling entity that can make or break it - in the case of Jobs? He was a fastidious tyrant - but people followed him and respected him and made shit that "just works". With him being gone? Where's the rallying entity? It sure isn't Tim Cook or Wall Street.

      --
      Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
    2. Re:No Magic Left by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Tech companies need a strong leader who is detail obsessed. E.g. consider Microsoft back in the Bill Gates days

      https://www.joelonsoftware.com...

      In those days we used to have these things called BillG reviews. Basically every major important feature got reviewed by Bill Gates. I was told to send a copy of my spec to his office in preparation for the review. It was basically one ream of laser-printed paper.

      I rushed to get the spec printed and sent it over to his office.

      Later that day, I had some time, so I started working on figuring out if Basic had enough date and time functions to do all the things you could do in Excel.

      In most modern programming environments, dates are stored as real numbers. The integer part of the number is the number of days since some agreed-upon date in the past, called the epoch. In Excel, today's date, June 16, 2006, is stored as 38884, counting days where January 1st, 1900 is 1.

      I started working through the various date and time functions in Basic and the date and time functions in Excel, trying things out, when I noticed something strange in the Visual Basic documentation: Basic uses December 31, 1899 as the epoch instead of January 1, 1900, but for some reason, today's date was the same in Excel as it was in Basic.

      Huh?

      I went to find an Excel developer who was old enough to remember why. Ed Fries seemed to know the answer.

      "Oh," he told me. "Check out February 28th, 1900."

      "It's 59," I said.

      "Now try March 1st."

      "It's 61!"

      "What happened to 60?" Ed asked.

      "February 29th. 1900 was a leap year! It's divisible by 4!"

      "Good guess, but no cigar," Ed said, and left me wondering for a while.

      Oops. I did some research. Years that are divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they're also divisible by 400.

      1900 wasn't a leap year.

      "It's a bug in Excel!" I exclaimed.

      "Well, not really," said Ed. "We had to do it that way because we need to be able to import Lotus 123 worksheets."

      "So, it's a bug in Lotus 123?"

      "Yeah, but probably an intentional one. Lotus had to fit in 640K. That's not a lot of memory. If you ignore 1900, you can figure out if a given year is a leap year just by looking to see if the rightmost two bits are zero. That's really fast and easy. The Lotus guys probably figured it didn't matter to be wrong for those two months way in the past. It looks like the Basic guys wanted to be anal about those two months, so they moved the epoch one day back."

      "Aargh!" I said, and went off to study why there was a checkbox in the options dialog called 1904 Date System.

      The next day was the big BillG review.

      June 30, 1992.

      In those days, Microsoft was a lot less bureaucratic. Instead of the 11 or 12 layers of management they have today, I reported to Mike Conte who reported to Chris Graham who reported to Pete Higgins, who reported to Mike Maples, who reported to Bill. About 6 layers from top to bottom. We made fun of companies like General Motors with their eight layers of management or whatever it was.

      In my BillG review meeting, the whole reporting hierarchy was there, along with their cousins, sisters, and aunts, and a person who came along from my team whose whole job during the meeting was to keep an accurate count of how many times Bill said the F word. The lower the f***-count, the better.

      Bill came in.

      I thought about how strange it was that he had two legs, two arms, one head, etc., almost exactly like a regular human being.

      He had my spec in his hand.

      He had my spec in his hand!

      He sat down and exchanged witty banter with an executive I did not know that made no sense to me. A few people laughed.

      Bill turned to me.

      I noticed that there were comments in the margins of my spec. He had read the first page!

      He had read the first page of my spec and written little notes in the margin

      --
      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:No Magic Left by ctilsie242 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is why Dell's quality across the board has improved since they were taken private. They are not under the lash of shareholders demanding stuff the next quarter, otherwise lawsuits are threatened. Dell can do what the hell it wants to. Charge off a ton of earnings for R&D? Perfectly fine.

      Apple needs to do the same if it wants to remain a player long term. Otherwise, they may end up suffering a fate similar to Sony with regards to consumer electronics in the early 2000s, especially with companies like Samsung coming out with innovative products on a constant basis.

    4. Re:No Magic Left by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2

      Thank you for the only comment in this article worth my time to read.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    5. Re:No Magic Left by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      Many moons ago I was working on an interface between an accounting system and a sales system. I explained to a guy that the accounting system stored dates internally as CCYYMMDD.

      "That's ridiculous", he answered, "how would you represent a BC date?"

      "I have no idea, but if I ever have to send an invoice to Alexander The Great I'll get back to you!" was my reply.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:No Magic Left by trabby · · Score: 2

      Mediator? If he was still of this earth he would be yelling his box off at the programmers responsible for that ridiculous root bug followed by demeaning them. He was a prick but at least things got done right because of it.

    7. Re:No Magic Left by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      With a market cap of $900 billion, that's not going to happen any time soon.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:No Magic Left by CaptainDork · · Score: 2

      I have lived this

      I worked as a systems analyst for Mobil Oil (they went under) (not my fault) in the Dilbertized corporate world.

      I asked a new hire, "Joe ... how does Mobil make its money?"

      He said, "By selling refined hydrocarbons."

      "WRONG!," I said.

      "They make money selling stocks."

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Re:Proofreading doesn't work either by GungaDan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To be fair it was a pretty bad year for Tom Petty.

    --
    Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
  12. More honest slogan by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Funny

    Given the prices they now charge a more honest slogan would be:
    It just works...for us.

  13. Console by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you want a real eye-opener as to how MacOS is doing, open the Console and look at the system.log chat.

    This is where most system process and apps dump their error and warning messages - not just when something crashes or some part of the UI hangs, but also errors that were caught and handled.

    It's a ridiculous torrent of messages like this:

    > iTunes[774]: tid:18d2f - Mux ID not found in mapping dictionary

    > iTunes[774]: tid:18d2f - Can't handle disconnect with invalid ecid

    > AOUDownloadCount[21315]: ERROR|AOUDownloadCount.m|700L|Error:AOUDownloadCount::createLockFile:plist file is not exist.

    > AOUDownloadCount[21315]: ERROR|AOUDownloadCount.m|493L|Error:AOUDownloadCount::getDownloadCountInfo:file locked failed.

    > AOUDownloadCount[21315]: ERROR|AOUDownloadCount.m|376L|Error:AOUDownloadCount::sendDownloadCountInfo:get DownloadCountInfo failed.

    > com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.quicklook[21327]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.quicklook

    > kcm[21335]: DEPRECATED USE in libdispatch client: Setting timer interval to 0 requests a 1ns timer, did you mean FOREVER (a one-shot timer)?

    > com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent): Unknown key for integer: _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit

    > com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.TMHelperAgent.SetupOffer): Service only ran for 7 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 3 seconds.

    > GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[21387]: 2017-12-19 14:56:55.942 GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[21387/0x700002adb000] [lvl=2] -[KSEngineInvocation(KeystoneThread) runKeystonesInThread] Failed to upload Keystone statistics: (null)

    > GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[21387]: 2017-12-19 14:56:56.985 GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[21387/0x700002adb000] [lvl=2] -[KSEngineInvocation(KeystoneThread) runKeystonesInThread] Finished with engine thread

    > GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[21387]: 2017-12-19 14:56:57.629 GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent[21387/0x7fff977bc340] [lvl=2] -[KSAgentApp(PrivateMethods) checkForUpdatesUsingArguments:invocation:error:] Finished update check.

    > diagnosticd[21406]: no EOS device present

    > com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent): Unknown key for integer: _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit

    > com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.quicklook[21428]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.quicklook

    > Console[21403]: BUG in libdispatch client: kevent[vnode] monitored resource vanished before the source cancel handler was invoked

    Thousands and thousands of messages. Often the same messages repeated every few minutes... 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No fixes in sight.

    The kicker is that while all of this is happening in the background, my Mac is just sitting idle and appears to be functioning kind-of okay. I don't get any visible reports of errors or warnings; the apps continue to work okay - with occasional bouts of UI hangups and app crashes.

    MacOS doesn't "just work" any more. It's just gotten very good at hiding the junky, poorly designed state of its apps. Apparently, MacOS is so good at this that devs don't really need to consider bugs a high priority. The consequences are no longer pinpointed to the app that's at fault - they are more generalized, like spontaneous freezing, anomalous behavior, and cryptic error messages.

    Obviously, this is a big problem for Apple. I switched to MacOS sometime around Lion / Mountain Lion. I've noticed that ever since Mavericks, performance and stability started trending south. High Sierra is pretty bad. Still not Windows-level bad, but... the gap is narrowing, and not because Windows is improving.

  14. "It just works" ... by Green+Mountain+Bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That was always, at best, "It just works - as long as you only want to do what we let you do."

  15. Re:alternative medicine by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    It just about works.

    It only just works.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  16. Re:alternative medicine by Snufu · · Score: 3, Funny

    It works?!

  17. on the other hand.... by roc97007 · · Score: 2

    "But on the other hand, Apple isn't some budget hardware maker pushing stuff out on a shoestring and scrabbling for a razor-thin profit margin."

    Not yet.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  18. Re:Proofreading doesn't work either by roc97007 · · Score: 2

    First rule of being a proofreading nazi, your rants will have mistakes too. :-)

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  19. H1B fhird world code by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 2

    Thats what you get when you hire cheap third world H1B workers. You get third world code. Then we wonder why millenials are sitting in their parents basement begging for Bernie Sanders to pay off their student loans while Bernie helps more foreign aliens steal their jobs