Many of us have been grumbling quite publicly since iOS 7 and Mavericks shipped that the fit and finish we expect either on release or shortly afterwards for Mac OS X and iOS has slipped. That we spent a lot of time dealing with bugs or, if we write about Apple, teaching people how to avoid them or work around them. That software and OS problems, once they occur, are rarely fixed in part or full; features we need are removed rather than matured; and new features are added that aren’t fully baked.
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Part of what makes these sorts of statements reasonable, though, is to enumerate the problems, whether they’re long-running or unique to Yosemite or iOS 8 (or to the last two releases of each system). Here’s a list of regularly recurring issues or fundamental problems I’ve seen supplemented by those provided by others.
Comprehensive list of persistent issues you hear a lot of people – users and die-hard Apple developers alike – rant about all the time (via Daring Fireball).
Meanwhile, I continue to have no major issues with Windows 8.1. Not that I’m trying to start a pissing contest here, but it seems like the ‘it just works’ mantra doesn’t really apply to Apple products anymore, which was seemingly their main advantage.
I was listening to the latest iMore podcast and about the last half of it was them bitching about how Apple’s stuff doesn’t work as reliably as it used to …
http://www.imore.com/imore-show-438-ces-2015-software-quality-12-in…
I know what you mean, and it’s not just Apple’s stuff that is regressing. My old Red Hat 6.2 laptop (from over 10 years ago) just worked – stayed up 14 months between reboots, even though it went through a suspend/resume cycle daily. Nowadays, with current Linux distros, I’m lucky to get 5 months of uptime on a laptop. [Desktops still run forever until the battery in the UPS wears out, but that’s a different matter.]
Edited 2015-01-10 02:46 UTC
I’ve completely removed all the ‘Metro’ apps I could from my 8.1 laptop, so there’s that. The only real issue I’ve been experiencing is that Windows isn’t willing to pair with my wireless headphones after they’ve been used with another device… I have to remove them, then re-pair them.
I should probably also note that I don’t regularly use many Microsoft apps other than OneNote; Thunderbird for email, Pale Moon for browsing, Wunderlist for tasks, Steam, and games.
Several of the complaints in the article are about first-party apps (iTunes, iWork, Mail, etc.) that can be replaced by capable third-party apps if you’re willing to step outside the Apple ecosystem. Which may be difficult if iTunes is still a requirement for iPad/iPhone users.
Haven’t had any of the issues here. Retina macbook running yosemite and a 5S.
I do agree that iOS 7/8 are overall less reliable than iOS 6, and I think they should focus one or two releases solely on reliability, but it’s not that bad. Biggest issue I have on iOS is often videos loaded from safari don’t close, requiring me to restart Safari, and sometimes the battery percentage display doesn’t seem very linear (dropping very quickly through 10 percent and then staying at one level for a long time).
On the iPads I think they screwed up the updates. Ipads older than the Air frequently show a very “androidy” interface lag which is unacceptable and didn’t exist in iOS6. I don’t own a tablet, but I think they really screwed the pooch on performance optimization and QA on the iPad.
Yosemite overall is a big improvement over previous releases and looks much better. Mail was unusable before Yosemite with large Exchange mailboxes it is hugely improved. Calendar is still unreliable with exchange though. Luckily MS just released a new Outlook that works pretty well. Last system reboot was a few months back for an update.
Otherwise no complaints. Handoff works although I find it pretty useless. Continuity works and I use it occasionally to make calls on the macbook. Messages sync is awesome.
Edited 2015-01-10 03:17 UTC
Agreed. There are bugs, as explained in the article, but notice the bugs are not for the most part showstoppers, or major crashes or instability like what used to be associated with a certain OS.
People just like to complain about Apple these days, it’s the new cool thing to do.
I’d still rather use OS X than Windows or a Linux desktop for now, and that’s saying a lot for my own situation.
Indeed, there were always bugs. I remember that in 2007, (10.5.x) both my MacBook and Mac Mini would often drop Wifi connections, which could only be solved by switching WiFi on and of a couple of times or rebooting the machine. I think the only difference was that with the longer release cycles (longer than a year), stuff would get fixed eventually.
Bugs are a fact of life. I also use Linux and have a VM with Windows 8. In the average Linux desktop environment I encounter far more bugs than in OS X and in Windows 8 the number is probably comparable, depending on the hardware/drivers that you use.
The thing that is really annoying is that the suddenly cancel products with features that people rely on. E.g. iDisk (part of MobileMe), iWork ’12 (which removes a lot of features compared to the previous version, and breaks compatibility with pre-’09), and Aperture (which is suddenly cancelled).
Edited 2015-01-11 09:49 UTC
As a long-standing, but now former, Mac user, I would say that this is not new. Mac users have always waxed eloquent about it in public, and complained about it or joshed about its problems in the company of fellow Mac users. As a phenomenon, this goes back to the days of System 7 and earlier. Marco’s original post was very much in that tradition, as is the one Thom posted here.
Not all showstoppers are shown aka samba implementation which causes MacPro to be unusable in a mixed environment (you cannot share MacPro drive over Samba).
I had to install Windows Server 2012 on my MacPro… I call than a showstopped one
I don’t have a Mac, but reading through this list, it hardly sounds like things that call into question the long term health of OS X. As complex as general purpose OSes are these days, there’s always going to be a list of gripes about even the best of them.
I can’t help but think some of the exaggerated negativity about Apple software results from the exaggerated praise of their hardware, which has some advantages, but is not fundamentally different from competing products. But people blow out of proportion the greatness of Apple hardware, then overreact to Apple software not being the perfection they expect from Apple.
The problem is that Apple users pay around 1000 euros more for their systems, so they want to see the price difference going into the respective system quality.
Who wouldn’t get the quality difference for the given price difference ? Would you be ready to pay a premium device that is just an average model with a different logo ? Hardware specs aren’t enough.
I have a 2011 Mac Air, kindly donated by my brother last year, and till then I’d assumed the cool-aid had over egged the overly expensive Mac’s but there must be something to the ‘it just works manta’.
Not now, OSX is OK when it works but OMG does it remind me of early XP, its so buggy.
And this is precisely why so many users are upset. OS X used to be rock solid. Now it acts like XP pre-sp2, all the while with artificial limitations to keep users on the upgrade treadmill. Guess that’s what happens when you go from a good leader to a bean counter for a CEO.
No it wasn’t, OS X has had it’s share of growing pains all through it’s entire release cycle… specially at the beginning; OS X wasn’t really usable until Jaguar (3rd release). Most mac users had to dual booting back to OS9 for a lot of the Cheetah/Puma/Jaguar days to get work done because of app compatibility and usability/stability issues.
Hell, upon initial release almost every OS X version has been rather unstable/buggy. And yet, there is this comical cycle where people complain about how buggy/unstable/crappy the new OS X version is with respect to the previous super stable/awesome version. This has happened specially with the last few releases. Apparently, all that an OS X release needs to become awesome sauce is to have a new version coming out to replace it.
Indeed.
It’s kind of funny that people now remember Lion and Mountain Lion as stable releases. They were absolutely horrible at the beginning, compared to Mavericks and Yosemite. Especially Mavericks fixed a lot of shortcomings in Lion (e.g. better support for full screen apps).
The thing that has changed is the release cycle. Before, most bugs would eventually get ironed out in a dot release. Now it’s the same thing again every year. Of course, one can stay on the previous release longer, but it gets a smaller amount of attention.
Another problem is that lately they have been pushing changes that are not that important (like freaking saving to iCloud by default, apps ported from iOS, a redesign), rather than fixing real problems (HFS) or making the system faster and more stable.
Edited 2015-01-11 09:55 UTC
The list sounds quite accurate to me. While I like Apple products, their software has been less reliable for the past couple years compared to how it was 5-10 years ago.
Mac Issues I’ve Personally Experienced:
– Growing save dialog
– Screen sharing lag and flakiness
– iMessage syncing issues (infrequent)
– Miscellaneous Mail failures (seem to be fixed by 10.9.1)
– Dropped WiFi connections (10.10.1 didn’t fix this, but the 10.10.2 dev preview did, though latency and jitter have gone up in 10.10.2)
I gave up on iWork with iWork ’12 since it dropped too many features and was overly dumbed down. I still use Aperture and am content with it, though I’m disappointed that it is being discontinued.
iOS Issues I’ve Experienced:
– General lag on my 5th gen iPod touch
– Lock screen password prompt on my iPod freezes if I type in my password too quickly
– AirDrop from iOS to iOS and Mac to iOS usually work, but for iOS to Mac transfers my iDevices (iPad and iPod) fail to detect any of my macs 80% of the time. They randomly detect macs on AirDrop 20% of the time though.
Edited 2015-01-10 03:44 UTC
may differ from others, but I use, at home, a Mac Mini (i7 quad core with 16 GB ram) running Yosemite and also Windows 7 Pro via Parallels; and I am finding Yosemite to be perhaps the best and most agile Mac OS release to date.
Although I am not enamored with some of the ‘improvements’ to the iTunes interface, I find that it works well in my ecosystem where I sync and control content for two iPads and 2 iPhones.
I use Windows 7 Enterprise at the office, and it is generally reliable as well.
Lets not forget that a “Glitch in OS X search can expose private details of Apple Mail users”: http://www.itworld.com/article/2867215/glitch-in-os-x-search-can-ex…
In brief: the Spotlight preview feature loads images even when users have switched off the “load remote content in messages†option in the Mail app, a feature often disabled to prevent email senders from knowing if an email has arrived and if it has been opened.
The worst part? They asked Apple why the “load remote content in messages†Mail privacy setting does not apply to mail shown in Spotlight searches and asked if it is planning to fix this issue. Apple did not immediately respond.
RT.
I would be perfectly happy with an OS X release every 2 or 3 years instead of every year…I think we went full speed on from Lion to Mountain Lion to Mavericks to Yosemite too quickly…I would have been happy had Lion just been gradually updated to contain most of the features of Mavericks and had supported 32/64 kernel mode for a few more years (Windows 8.1 even supports this!) It would have been nice had the switch to only 64-bit kernel been made at Yosemite…maybe the extra few years would have produced a better product as Yosemite is buggy as all hell for me.
Edited 2015-01-12 01:34 UTC
In terms of stabilty of the OS, Snow Leopard was very king. Yosemite gives me issues with Wifi and with Bonjour discovery of my printer and network drive.
In term of apps Apple is not doing a great job. The emphasis is too much on presentation. Leaving out relevant features and messing up the user experience, is becoming a bad habit. Some apps are really inferior products that cannot face the competition (Numbers, Mail), or just bloatware (iTunes).