Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-apple-users-really-hate-apple-software-20160208-column.html

by molecule • 10 years ago

641 583 10 years ago

skorecky5• 10 years ago

I think there is a decline in the quality of Apple's software. However I think there is a correlation between the amount of users and complaints / bugs found. Now that Apple has a large and growing user base the seeming quality is also degrading. However I could be wrong, just my opinion.

Personally I haven't had as many issues as described in the article e.g. Preview has always worked fine for me.

However the biggest issue I do have is anything network related. Getting new messages in Mail is terribly slow, iTunes constantly gives me an error then loads the album or whatever just fine afterwards.

treve• 10 years ago

Try running an up-to-date OS X on a machine that came with a magnetic disk. It's become practically unusable.

skorecky5• 10 years ago

I am

pearle• 10 years ago

This is my experience. I have a late 2013 iMac with a spinner running El Capitan and it's one of the absolute worst OS experiences I've ever had and I've been using computers since the 80s.

wtallis2• 10 years ago

Until six months ago I did most of my day-to-day web browsing on a 2007 MBP with a 7200 RPM 160GB drive. I had to upgrade because the dying GPU was destabilizing the system, but with 4GB of RAM and competent ad-blocking, it was fine for the light use it was getting, and that did include Spotlight searches.

X-Istence2• 10 years ago

I'm running on a 2012 Mac Mini Core i7 with 16GB of ram with a spinning rust hard drive.

El Capitan has sped up the OS for me compared to the previous OS X release. Yosemite was so bad that I found myself avoiding using my Mac Mini instead using my rMBP with an SSD because the Mac Mini just felt so incredibly slow. With El Capitan they feel similar to me. Certain disk operations of course are slower, but overall the usability has increased under El Capitan versus Yosemite.

Based upon informal replies on Twitter when I posted about my upgrade experience, I wasn't the only one that noticed a distinct speedup compared to Yosemite on older hardware.

poopsintub• 10 years ago

Mid-2012 MBP with 2.5 Ghz i5, 4GB ram here. I thought Mavericks sped it up, but Yosemite is unnoticeable. I couldn't tell you if it is faster or slower than when I bought it, to be honest. All the problems people mention in the thread, I'm somewhat surprised by. I guess I'm lucky enough to not have wifi issues, rely on iTunes, or Apple Music.

speeder• 10 years ago

I am trying hard to not update.

I am using a old mac mini, and I can't afford a new one... every time I update xcode, it get slower and more unstable, specially because the memory consumption jumps up, it is now in a point where it uses more memory than the mac mini has in first place (meaning it is constantly trashing with swap... crashes are common too, project corruption is also getting increasingly common).

I lucked out that my current client had a old non-updated iPod to allow me to use (you can't use new version iOS with old Xcode).

skorecky5• 10 years ago

Apple does very aggressively update software to work best with the latest hardware. Sadly this does cause some negative effects for older generation users but without taking advantage of the newer stuff those users get screwed as well.

simmons• 10 years ago

e.g. Preview has always worked fine for me.

That's the first thing that went through my mind when I read the complaint about Preview crashing. Then I got to thinking about how Preview can eat up a lot of memory in certain situations (maybe large complex documents rendered to retina framebuffers), so maybe it's a memory issue. Journalists may not be as likely as people like me to insist on ridiculous amounts of RAM.

sawwit• 10 years ago

There is a huge memory leak in Preview since El Capitan and the display of PDFs sometimes fails when you zoom in. I have no idea how many users are affected by this, but it seems strange that Apple hasn't fixed it yet. Perhaps it is just a tricky bug.

venomsnake2• 10 years ago

Try it with modernist cuisine's official pdf-s. That is the test i use when I really want to make a pdf reader suffer.

mmastrac2• 10 years ago

It's not just software. While I'm still a fan of Macbooks, I'm getting close to abandoning ship thanks to the increasingly un-repairability of these things. I have a Macbook from ~2008 that's still functional as a media PC thanks to memory/SSD upgrades and battery replacements over the years.

My current Macbook Pro has memory soldered on to the motherboard and a battery glued to the case. The SSD is technically replaceable, but the specs that this laptop shipped with are going to be the specs that it dies with.

When the battery goes, I'll have to either risk destroying the machine or pay way too much to Apple to do the job for me. At that point I'll probably just switch to a brand with a more reasonable user-servicing model, assuming those still exist.

yuhong• 10 years ago

The EPEAT fiasco is my favorite here.

givinguflac4• 10 years ago

While I agree with you, when your current Mac is older and relegated to media PC duty, are you going to need more than the 8 or 16GB of RAM it shipped with? As for batteries, it's almost the exact same price to buy a battery a replace it yourself as it is to have Apple do it, and you don't have to deal with proper recycling (hopefully you would.) I'm hoping we see a reverse trend but who knows.

gburt• 10 years ago

If and only if you live near an Apple store. Otherwise you might be without your machine for a week or two during that period: that is a serious cost for many people in our profession.

carlob• 10 years ago

Who would ever need more than 512kb of RAM…

tluyben26• 10 years ago

If you live in the US. In most countries in the EU last I checked it is far more expensive and harder to come by.

merpnderp• 10 years ago

Yeah, I feel the same way. I just upgraded a 2011MBP's HDD to and SSD and replaced the battery myself, and from start to finishing up the OSX install was about an hour. My 2013 MBP is nearly unrepairable. Which is too bad because I really like the hardware. Luckily other manufactorers are closing the quality gap quickly and functionally to me linux and OSX are nearly interchangeable.

ZanyProgrammer• 10 years ago

I worry that the higher end ultrabooks are going to end up as repairable as the MBP.

jszymborski2• 10 years ago

Regret is a strong word, but I'm definitely beginning to miss the ability to switch out the battery in my Asus Zenbook (which is soldered in).

skorecky5• 10 years ago

It does suck the repairability is next to none but they have the best looking hardware out there. I have yet to see any other manufacture come close to what Apple can do hardware wise. A metal laptop enclosure is basically unheard of outside of Apple sadly. I would like to see someone step up.

cesarbs• 10 years ago

Do you buy hardware based on what it looks?

jacquesm2• 10 years ago

Try installing ubuntu on a 7.1 macbook air and feel some pain. You're right though, nice enclosure. Of course I really should have known better but the places that I shopped at did not have anything at all that came close in stock.

stronglikedan3• 10 years ago

My Dell M3800 has everything a MBP has, including the aluminum enclosure and Thunderbolt port, and more, such as 15.6 4K touchscreen and multiple USB ports. Oh, and it's also repairable.

slantyyz8• 10 years ago

I would say that some of the recent Dell, Microsoft, Asus and Razer designs are pretty nice, and there are plenty of metal laptop enclosures out there if you look.

sgc• 10 years ago

I am typing on a $500 Asus flip that is all aluminum with a glass touchscreen. It is very nice, but I regret the OS (Windows 8.1,locked in place using the hosts file to avoid MS upgrades).

The issue I see is that the other side of the fence is not so sweet either. You cannot release a buggy OS that leads to my laptop bricking itself 3 times, and then jump right into another one with a hyper-aggresive update cycle, and expect me to follow along. Never. I risk losing massive amounts of work and significantly impacting my revenue at the same time.

I still have not decided if I will accept the sunk cost of Apple or a user experience downgrade to Linux, but hopefully I can put the decision off for a number of years like I did migrating away from Windows XP.

The entire modern tech ecosystem is rotten:

My drivers don't work. My OS doesn't work. The official development software for my target OS stinks. The official emulator to run it is dastardly. The api and functionality of the OS itself is pathetically broken, and less productive than battling bugs in php ten years ago. It all looks pretty from top to bottom if you squint, but the emperor definitely wears no clothes. 2016 is massively frustrating, and I long for the time when the basic premise of a computer being a tool that needs to function effectively was the norm.

roymurdock4• 10 years ago

Had to buy a new laptop to replace a 2009 MBP recently.

Chose the mid 2012 non-retina display. Took out the disk drive and put in my own SSD and RAM. Does everything I want it to do without the slightest complaint. All told I probably paid ~$700 less for a comparably powerful machine with 10x the internal storage of a late model MBP retina, albeit heavier and with a slightly inferior display.

Next time I need to upgrade I'm with you - it's just too painful to knowingly buy into an ecosystem where upgrades and repairs feel like unabashed extortion.

Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income.

toomuchtodo8• 10 years ago

Obviously there's a very large target market of folks that just want their tech to work and will happily drop a few hundred bucks each time they need to upgrade or repair. But it's hard to go back once you've opened up your computer and seen how cheap/easy it is to replace some of these extremely modular components. I imagine my mindset will change as I get older and have less time/more disposable income.

There is. I'm 33, and do devops/infrastructure. I just want my rig to work. Macbook Air maxed out on ram and disk. To me, its disposable every three years (comes out to be ~$60/month).

Apple is going to have to get pretty bad before I throw away the experience of walking into an Apple store, buying a new laptop, restoring from TimeMachine, and being up and running almost immediately.

As you mention, disposable income and a lack of time changes the equation.

mmastrac2• 10 years ago

Yep. That was the last Macbook that I would consider to be "adequately repairable". I handed one of those down to my kid after replacing the optical drive with an SSD (creating a fusion drive) and loading it up with RAM. It's still very usable as a desktop/gaming Mac. I've even replaced the battery in it once (IIRC it was glued in, but in a way that was reasonably simple to extract).

mizzao• 10 years ago

There was an article about how that MBP model is still very popular: https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a

HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10840227

sbd01• 10 years ago

I've just bought the computer you have and have maxed it out as well. It does what I need, and it will last me for a few more years, but I don't know what I'll do when I need a new computer. I've always chosen Mac, and I have no idea where to look for a good, high-performance Windows laptop.

Someone12343• 10 years ago

Unfortunately Apple values looks over functionality. Apple just keeps making changes for thinness, almost at any cost. And soldering wasn't the first example, I'd argue that removal of the ethernet jack on the MBP was a sign of things to come. Essentially everything started going downhill with the 3rd generation MBPs way back in 2012 (the original "Retina").

The 3rd gen removed: Ethernet, Firewire 800, Superdrive, Kensington lock, and nothing is user replaceable eventually... All for what? To save 0.93 pounds in weight and 0.2 cm in thickness (13" model).

I don't care if the "Macbook" and the MBA want to go this route of maximum thinness/lightness; but what irks me is that they ruined their supposed power user machine for these cuts. Give me the functionality back. It wasn't like the MBP was heavy or large even before 2012.

epistasis2• 10 years ago

For me, and for nearly everyone I know, thinness is far more functional than an ethernet port. As is weight, a pound is actually a lot!

Ethernet ports are easy to add as a dongle, you can't do the same with thinness. I really only need ethernet in fixed locations, and where there I already have power, and that's the case for most people.

It's totally cool that you have different needs, but it's not cool to misascribe that to "looks."

TheOtherHobbes3• 10 years ago

I could be wrong, but my impression is that Tim Cook is trying to position Apple as a lifestyle/fashion brand that happens to do consumer electronics and maybe a bit of software, and not as a consumer technology company that happens to be so cool it became a lifestyle/fashion brand by default.

His idea of better seems to be all about size and superficial design, not user satisfaction. Which would be good if size was all about the user experience - but it's not.

Jobs fucked up regularly (who remembers OS X 1.0?) but he still had a laser-like focus on the overall experience and he could rely on that to keep Apple on track.

Cook doesn't have that, and it's not clear that anyone else at Apple does. He's had five years of significant product launches now, and most of them have been okay-I-guess sidesteps - smaller, thinner, bigger, a different colour - or outright duds.

Also, U2.

Opportunities have been missed. Apple could have opened and owned whole new markets - user generated music and video, health devices, home automation, the power user high-end. Instead we got a watch and a a TV hardly anyone cares about, the promise of a car that will probably be late to the party, a music streaming service that streams music just like all the music streaming services do, and AI something something something maybe one day.

The money may still be flowing in, but the stock is going to get hammered if nothing changes soon.

arrrg• 10 years ago

Ha, I love the 2012 models and still have my 2012 15" rMBP. Save for the bullshit ghosting issue (three screens later I finally got my non-ghosting Samsung screen – oh, first gen woes) that was handled awfully by Apple at the time I love this device. Oh, and rubber feet falling off after four years suck, but, eh.

All the things they removed are things I never ever used. Or used rarely but didn’t really need. Exactly all the things you mention. All the rest (the performance over the Airs, the gorgeous screen over the Airs and previous Pros, the lightness, compactness, extremely solid feeling stability of the thing), it’s all just there.

Just accpet that not all people have the same needs as you. I think the 2012 models are a pitch-perfect demonstration of striking exactly the right balance (for most people). I love ’em to death. And things got only better from there, albeit incrementally.

sjm-lbm2• 10 years ago

The extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products - a lot of Android phones have dropped user-replaceable batteries, for instance, and a sizable amount of good Windows ultrabooks are about as repairable as MacBooks.

kordless2• 10 years ago

extra annoying part is that Apple's total lack of reputability is starting to spread to competing products

Oh, please. Apple has nothing to do with that problem. The problem is we're a throw away society hell bent on buying the latest greatest thing. If it's anyone's fault, it's our own.

pekk• 10 years ago

This lack of repairability is actually not a recent thing at all. For example, I worked a support job in the late 90s where a high proportion of Applecare complaints were resolved with "replace the motherboard." With PCs we just replaced the offending part, which was rarely the motherboard.

The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries.

delecti• 10 years ago

The worst part of this is that Apple's success has dragged the rest of the market toward things like non-replaceable batteries

I think that statement is only half right. Apple may have pioneered the move towards non-replaceable batteries, but I think it's only a symptom of increasingly integrated and small devices. If an inch thick device is thicker by 1mm because the battery is easily detachable, that's much less of an issue than on a 10mm laptop.

They may have done it in an egregious way first (gluing/soldering in components), but we probably would have gotten there before long anyway.

yardie• 10 years ago

I've used Apple products since the early 90s. Replacing the MB is the only option since almost all components are on the MB (sound, GPU, modem, network). In contrast PCs had everything highly compartmentalised according to the PC/AT spec. Sound was ISA/PCI, video was AGP/PCI, modems were ISA, 10/100baseT PCI.

While I agree I know very few people that actually replaced their battery. Usually, when the battery died is about the time they replace that laptop anyway.

Animats• 10 years ago

The real problem is that lithium-ion batteries suck in every dimension except energy density. They're fragile, can blow up, don't allow many charge/discharge cycles, and charge slowly.

There are other battery technologies, such as lithium iron phosphate, which have much better lifetimes, but you give up some energy density. Sealed units should use one of those technologies.

ksubedi2• 10 years ago

As much as I liked Mac OS X, I recently jumped ship from my early 2015 retina macbook pro to a dell xps 13 and i am super happy. Windows 10 is definitely not the same but it is much much better than how windows 8 used to be. The biggest factor that got me to switch was how locked down the hardware was and i couldnt even replace the battery if i wanted to. And i got the 128gig version thinking there would be aftermarket storage upgrade option down the line but it doesnt seem like that is happening.

threeseed4• 10 years ago

couldnt even replace the battery if i wanted to

Just take it into an Apple Store and pay the $129 to replace it. I've replaced a battery once on my 2012 MacBook Pro so would not consider this to be a reason to pick one platform over another.

aftermarket storage upgrade option

I agree this sucks. But personally I am happy for Apple to focus on I/O performance at any cost even if it means no aftermarket upgrades. I just find that with so much being in the cloud and the size of USB drives increasing there hasn't been a need for a large internal storage drive.

siquick• 10 years ago

Yep same issue with 2013 MBA. The 4GB RAM is becoming a bottleneck but it's soldered in so I'll be forced to upgrade within a year.

superuser2• 10 years ago

Non-user-serviceability buys smaller and lighter form factors. I would expect the story to be similar for hardware with similar size, weight, and battery life characteristics.

EDIT: and most importantly, more battery chemistry per weight. Safety requires that serviceable batteries are enclosed in rather substantial cases whose internals are non-user-serviceable. Apple "cheats" by making this case the entire laptop, rather than a specific battery module.

shas3• 10 years ago

So, it's probably wise for Apple or any other company to keep a model or two that are modular to satisfy the geekier crowd. It would be expensive, because with larger-numbers, the razor thin laptops will be cheaper due to scale.

threeseed4• 10 years ago

And much faster performance.

The drives in the new MacBook Pro are blisteringly quick compared to just a stock standard SSD.

zanny2• 10 years ago

Anyone who wouldn't care about having the battery glued to the chassis also would not care about the 1mm difference between making it removable or not.

I also think on at least the Android front Samsung has consistently demonstrated the ability to make phones with both SD cards and removable batteries for years without compromising form factor. The S3 / S$ / S5 and Notes 2 - 4 were all extremely thin profile despite supporting removable batteries.

This is just misdirection to try to persuade people its a good thing to remove choice. It is not, it costs basically nothing in manufacturing or size to make the battery / ram / hard drive removable, and the only reason Apple / Dell / Samsung (now) / every other Android phone manufacturer does it is either to rip you off on overpriced battery replacement or drive planned obsolescence to make you buy more shit you really wouldn't need if you could just replace your damn battery two years later.

api3• 10 years ago

Apple is optimizing for the mainstream of the market, which mostly never repairs things (except using licensed repair outlets or the original store) and values slimness and lightness and appearance above repairability.

They're also locking down the platform more and more. I don't think this is some conspiracy to take away user freedom. I think it's because anything that makes a platform 'hackable' also makes it 'pwnable' by malware. Again they are optimizing for the mainstream of the market, which is mostly users with absolutely zero clue about malware or security. They want to field an OS that apps can't easily trojan/backdoor and conscript into a botnet or crytolocker your files, etc. Unfortunately hacker types are casualties here.

It's very, very hard to remain appealing to the hacker crowd while also targeting the mainstream. You're targeting two very different local maxima and a lot of what these two camps want is in absolute conflict -- e.g. UX vs. "power" and packability. I actually think Apple is doing a decent job all things considered. Macs are still great for development and are hackable enough, and if I want more hackability I can spring for a $30 Raspberry Pi or run anything I want inside Parallels with the bonus of not borking my main host machine if I mess it up. I am worried about the future though. If they overly "iOS-ify" the Mac they will lose me.

paws2• 10 years ago

This.

rayiner5• 10 years ago

Comparable laptops aren't really any better. The rMBP is a lot more repairable than say the Surface Book (which won't let you even open the case without possibly cracking the display). At least Apple has a battery replacement service at an advertised price--what'll Dell charge you to replace the non-servicable battery in the XPS13 or XPS15? And no other PC laptop hits that right sweet spot of power/battery/display quality. ThinkPads have great power and good battery, but shitty screens.[1] Dells and HPs with gorgeous 4k screens can barely get 4-5 hours out of them.

I almost jumped ship recently because the Surface Book hits a great mix of screen quality/power/battery life, but judging by the forums, it's buggy as hell. So what to do? I'd love a swap-able battery in my rMBP like I have in my T450s, but at the end of the day, I never reach for my ThinkPad when I've got my Mac handy. I'll just go ahead and pay the $200 bucks Apple charges to replace the sealed battery.

[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display.

miimbles• 10 years ago

I'm not sure about the battery, as it's brand new, and I don't have a need to replace it yet, but the RAM and SSD are both user replaceable on the XPS15. The battery looks like it would be a fairly easy swap as well, as long as you could source the new one.

maaku2• 10 years ago

There are plenty of serviceable laptops out there.

snuxoll2• 10 years ago

It may be a pain in the butt to do so, my 2014 Dell XPS 13 it is serviceable - the RAM is still soldered onto the mainboard unfortunately, but aside from that every other component can be replaced. I fail to understand why I can't even replace the battery safely in a modern MacBook without a headache.

bduerst• 10 years ago

Many business class laptops are modular enough to replace the hard drives.

I swapped the DVD player out on an elitebook for a second 500 GB SSD.

matzipan4• 10 years ago

S and X Thinkpad lines have considerably improved screens nowadays. Nowhere near Retina, but they get the job done. Also, most of the parts inside are field serviceable, you don't really need more than a screwdriver to fix it.

Godel_unicode• 10 years ago

It's a bit of an overstatement to say that the batteries are unreplaceable. They have some tape on them and they require patience to remove, but that's not anything new as far as laptop part upgrades go.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157

tracker15• 10 years ago

The big difference being a lot of the competition's options are at a 30-50% lower price.

Domenic_S2• 10 years ago

Surface Book

Man, I love the idea of this thing.

But I recently tried moving to Surface Book. Spent nearly $3k on a real nicely specc'd one. It BSOD'd daily, sleep modes are really confusing, battery drained terribly overnight, it was overall a bit of a nightmare. Granted probably half of my complaints are about Win10 rather than the SB itself, but still. I returned it.

It's SO CLOSE and if it was $1,000 cheaper I may have just dealt with it. Just not quite there.

xlayn• 10 years ago

[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display.

Oxymoron: tech reasons of how great your computer is; and an argument on why a non technical people don't like it.

lhl8• 10 years ago

ThinkPad screens have been getting better. I'm actually pretty happy with contrast/brightness of the FHD IPS on my X250 (color gamut definitely could be better, but at least it doesn't do dynamic contrast like recent Dells), but the new screens, like the X1 Yoga's new OLED screen looks fantastic (I believe that'll be a 100% Adobe RGB screen).

Whenever I switch back and forth, I'm always shocked by how many PC laptops do trackpads so terribly when the Macbooks have been out there for years now.

zwarag• 10 years ago

@[1] that says more about your wife then about the ThinkPad.

anonbanker2• 10 years ago

You can install OS X on a surface tablet. it's definitely been done.

agumonkey2• 10 years ago

It's probably a transition. Apple doubled down on engineering and integration feats due the the mobile ecosystem and marketing lever (mind you MS is taking that road too if you look at Surface tech talks and ads). So things were standardless (non-disk-form-factor SSD), some things were soldered. Unless it never profitable again to have pluggable boards (let's say if simpler to just tape a new SoC and access cloud data) it will come back. Modular cell phones projects exist, tiny usb3 sockets that can be used for almost any device, etc etc I'd bet we will have gumstix like modules in laptops. Might also help durability since you don't have to avoid breaking a big motherboard full of surface mounted components.

mgrpowers• 10 years ago

I agree. I've had three different top of the line MBPs and they don't feel as solid as my 2007 macbook. The solid states are unreliable, the battery life never comes close to what's promised and that damn fan won't turn off. Sure, I'm a power user but isn't that why I'm paying 3500 for this?

ixtli• 10 years ago

I feel as though this is comparing two different orders of magnitude. Apple users are, in general, getting upset about software user experience. A subset of users have always been upset about repairability of apple hardware, though admittedly it's gotten worse with its laptops in the past years. The subset that wants to do what we want to do with our hardware here is much smaller and thus not who Apple is trying to sell to. In the end, the users buying macbooks want lighter, thinner machines and are willing to sacrifice basically anything to get it. Personally I've given up laptops because I'm not willing to make this tradeoff, even with "pc" hardware.

Edit: There are even some people in this thread, who I assume are "power users," that are willing to sacrifice previously sacrosanct things like ethernet ports for mobility. Personally I'm not willing to do so but I also don't have a pressing need for a laptop.

lvspiff• 10 years ago

Don't forget about the regular Mac Pro - I recently purchased 3 of them for my design team thinking a desktop should be better than a laptop - 2 of them have had a failure, 1 requiring a replacement graphics card the other needed a system reinstall - both took a couple days to get sorted out. I doubt our next round of funding will go towards Mac products - we can buy a Dell just as powerful with same day business support for WAY less - but to tell the truth none of the Dell Precisions we have bought in the last 3 years have had any issues.

josh64• 10 years ago

There is an Apple repair program for that issue http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-...

Good luck!

TheSpiceIsLife• 10 years ago

Yep, agreed, it's a bit of a worry. But as another commenter pointed out, these $2000-ish laptops are costing us around $2 a day over about 3 years, so I use my MacBook as my primary machine and replace it around the 3 to 4 year mark, and have a couple of Core2Duo laptops (one running Windows and one running Linux) in the house also. It's less than the price of a cup of coffee, here in Australia you can't get a coffee for less than $3.50.

I put a 128GB USB3.0 SanDisk Ultra Fit[1] in my MacBook (these things are tiny), to supplement the SSD. Currently on sale for AU$74. Plenty fast enough for storing media, and I'm wearing my SSD less now too.

Not to sure what to do when the SSD wears out, probably boot of the USB stick, but that's a while away and I'll sell the laptop before then anyway.

1. https://www.sandisk.com.au/home/usb-flash/ultra-fit-usb

Ezhik2• 10 years ago

I run OS X on a ThinkPad T420, and this unholy combo is an experience I am honestly enjoying a lot.

I like having a 9 cell battery, I like having >1TB of storage, the ThinkPad keyboard and TrackPoint, and I like being able to take the thing apart.

At the same time, I also like OS X. I get UNIX underlyings, yet can continue to use software like Photoshop. And there's just a big bunch of subjective things that IMO OS X just does better, like scrolling and font rendering.

Still, the device is growing older, and I honestly have no idea what to replace it with once the time finally comes. The strange combo I have doesn't really have a modern equivalent. Do I sacrifice modularity to stay with OS X? Do I go to Windows or Linux to keep modularity with a modern ThinkPad (which are getting too close to the way modern MacBooks are, sadly).

jjude• 10 years ago

I thought the licence terms disallowed running OSX running on anything other than Mac. Of course, I always clicked 'Agree' without reading the licence terms.

I have been thinking of something opposite: run ubuntu on Mac.

bsg75• 10 years ago

When the battery goes,

... it may be too late: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=macbook+air+ba...

SunShiranui• 10 years ago

I had the unfortunate experience of owning an early 2011 MacBook Pro. The graphics card broke down multiple times (three, iirc) requiring a 500€ logic board replacement. This was a widespread issue, and we, the affected users, repeatedly asked Apple to recognize it and run a repair program.

By the time (two years?) they decided to roll one out I had already bought an Asus laptop, which was comparable in most ways and costs about half of what I paid for the MBPro.

I don't think I'll be buying Apple hardware for a while. Their increasing push towards planned obsolescence troubles me deeply.

crudbug• 10 years ago

This is more of a business decision than technical. The industry should avoid going into this trap. Co should give users a choice and keep the ports open.

I bought a T550 minimal configuration, for $600 upgraded the RAM to 16G & 500G SSD for $200, after using MBP for 7 years.

Though the MBP is still kicking ass with an upgraded 8G RAM & 500G SSD.

tracker15• 10 years ago

I have to agree... When I got my current rMBP(late 2014), I actually had to return my first purchase when I found out I couldn't upgrade the ram or ssd myself. Even though you can technically replace the SSD, the interface Apple is using doesn't seem to be common at all, so you're stuck with mostly costly options in a sea of cheaper SSD components.

The display isn't the best, but close... the touchpad is bar none the best in any laptop, but I might be willing to sacrifice that when I need another laptop... I haven't been doing iOS native, and my work issued laptop is an rMBP as well, but may just create a build server for cordova out of a used mac mini if/when the need arises.

I never bought into iOS devices, mainly because of early ties to Apple, and I'm somewhat entrenched in Android's ecosystem. The poor software updates, broken SMB/CIFS support and a host of other issues has me more than concerned.

Mandatum2• 10 years ago

I upgrade every 2 years. It costs me about $1-2K for the "next" model's difference (after selling the old one on Craiglist/Ebay), however averaging the usage out over those 2 years I'm still getting really good bang for buck without hardware fault issues.

rubyfan2• 10 years ago

I have one of the last MBP from that era that still has replaceable memory, hard drive and optical drive. My machine is maxed out on memory, SSD and swapped the optical for a backup HDD.

I love the thing and had the fried graphics card issue fixed some time ago instead of opting to replace the MBP with a newer model.

This old thing is struggling to keep up with El Capitan these days though and I'm now mulling a Thinkpad with OpenBSD as a replacement. I kind of wish I could get this same body with updated hardware and OSX 10.6 but that's not in the cards.

Spooky232• 10 years ago

The Apple Music thing is my pet peeve. I bought a $2500 iMac. I carry a nearly $1000 phone. I don't want Apple Music.

Leave me alone. I get periodic full screen ads when I try to listen to music. Is that too much to ask?

ChrisLTD• 10 years ago

Agreed. I've seen these ads twice in the music player on my iPhone in the last couple of weeks.

marklawrutgers• 10 years ago

They're not done squeezing money out of you yet.

kough• 10 years ago

Oh, fully agreed. Have you gotten one of those ads when you don't have good network connectivity? Fails to load, fails to respond even if you go into airplane mode -- you have to wait until it can talk to Apple servers again before being able to use the app. Just happened to me yesterday.

I just bought my first iPhone (switching from an Android, the droid maxx - great battery life) largely because I missed being able to easily sync music with my phone. What do I get? Broken music player. Two of the four tabs at the bottom of the Music app are Apple Music-related (radio, "connect"). The UI for switching between displays of my library - artist, album, song - has degraded terribly. And I had to painstakingly delete all of the "cloud" versions of things I'd bought long ago from iTunes. Figured out how to only show music local to my device and now there's an annoying bar across the top of the app at all times.

I mean, fuck, how do you screw up the best mobile music player interface that hard? Just to encourage adoption of a shitty streaming service, with no way to opt out?

Do people not care about syncing music to their phone and listening to it offline anymore?

alva• 10 years ago

"Have you gotten one of those ads when you don't have good network connectivity? Fails to load, fails to respond even if you go into airplane mode"

Had this happen twice today on my long commute. After 15 minutes, gave up trying to make my very expensive phone play music. This on top of the usual iTunes complaints is pushing me to abandon Apple until things improve.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

As someone who in general is a huge Apple fan, I feel Apple Music was entirely avoidable mistake, and detracts from their brand.

They need to rethink this app/service.

Bud8• 10 years ago

Respectfully disagree. I'm a professional classical musician, and I LOVE the access to a huge library of music that Apple Music gives me.

271828182842• 10 years ago

I've been using OS X since just Leopard, but I've noticed a decline as well. I'm not excited for new releases anymore. For example, I haven't moved to El Capitan. By contrast, I couldn't wait for Snow Leopard--I was really excited to use it.

marssaxman2• 10 years ago

Snow Leopard was the peak, in my experience; like you, I felt like each new version of OS X through 10.6.8 came as an improvement. Since then, I greet each new release with a sigh - "okay, let's find out what previously straightforward process they've decided to complicate with a bunch of fancy animations this time".

AlexandrB2• 10 years ago

I think people mythologize Snow Leopard. Personally I had multiple very annoying issues[1] in SL that were never resolved until I upgraded to Lion. While I wont say that OS X release after SL have been bug free or had fewer bugs than SL it has always been a trade off - some things got better and others got worse.

The only constant is iTunes, it seems to get progressively worse with every release :(

[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2256080?start=0&tstart=...

kozukumi• 10 years ago

iTunes has been awful for years. The only reason it hasn't got worse is because devices are more powerful. I do think they are producing more and more buggy-on-release software with a video game mindset of "patch it post launch". Sadly it is the way software appears to be today. I have no problem with fixing problems post-launch (obviously!) but shipping a product just to meat a deadline (looking at Microsoft with Windows 10 here as well!!) is a pain in the ass for users.

There is a big difference between shipping an MVP (a HN favourite!) and a buggy piece of shit product.

Will it harm Apple (or Microsoft, or ...) in the long run? Probably not. Sadly users seem to be used to this kind of thing now from all the main players so what alternative do they have?

On a positive I have found Android L to be a solid release which is probably the only solid major point release I have used from any major software company in many years.

aczerepinski• 10 years ago

When did iTunes remove drag and drop adding songs to your phone? That's probably the specific date that I'd pin the decline to. When they said "let's take something simple and make it more complicated."

__jal• 10 years ago

As the joke goes, iTunes would be a great operating system, if only it had a decent MP3 player.

ghrifter4• 10 years ago

Two apps I use the most on my iPhone are Podcasts and Music. On my PC (windows) I use iTunes often.

Both the iPhone apps and the modern version of iTunes are an utter, over-designed mess. It felt like the core programming functionality was there, until some UX designer got a hold of the front end of those apps and decided to fubar it beyond recognition.

There is _Literally_ no way to just look at all music on your iPhone. You have to have it in playlists or add the songs you want to a playlist, or just shuffle all songs.

*Edit: No way to look at all iPhone songs while not using iTunes with your iPhone plugged into your PC.

irq• 10 years ago

This just isn't true. You can easily browse your songs on an iPhone in the Music app by album, artist, song, genre, etc. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, or maybe you're not familiar with the UI?

ghrifter4• 10 years ago

I have iOS 9.2 and updated Music to the latest version. There is no "view all songs". But perhaps you found some way? Like I just want to see all songs, not playlists, not genres, everything. I'd love to find out :)

dceddia• 10 years ago

This kills me. In an older version of iTunes (not that long ago), I could open it up and see every song in my library in one big long list. Typing a few characters would find the song I wanted. When that song finished playing, it would just play the next one in the list.

Now, it's just as you say - hard to find specific albums or artists or songs, and once I do, I can't quite tell what it'll do when a song finishes playing. Since I found it through the search box, and not in a list... will it play the next song in the album? In a playlist? Will it just stop?

What I don't know is whether my feelings about the new interface is logical, or if it could be summed up as "you damn kids." Is it a paradigm that I'm just not used to yet, or is the UX objectively bad?

ghrifter4• 10 years ago

I just think that for some programs or interfaces, like YouTube, it is fine for a while. Works great.

But then they hire a new UX person, or the incumbent UX person gets bored - so they keep refactoring the interface to put out an image of "getting work done" or "adding features and enhancements".

Basically making work for themselves and refactoring an already fine interface that user's are familiar with and just introducing new headaches to users along the way.

martinald2• 10 years ago

I use both Windows 10 and OS X on a rMBP all day at work. I definitely think Windows 10 is way more stable and polished.

I constantly have problems with OS X WiFi connecting/dropping out, this has only been a recent thing since 10.11 (before OS X wifi support was incredible).

I also have problems with Spotlight screwing up. I use spotlight for launching apps, and it often just loses all the apps which I use all day every day. Instead of finding 'Skype' for example, it'll return a list of all the times I've mentioned Skype in emails instead. Again, this broke in 10.11.

I never really use the new features in OS X, which is fine, but 10.11 especially has so many regressions in it for me it is pretty annoying. It also absolutely blasted my unix config in a really hard to fix way, which hasn't ever happened on a previous OS X update.

sehr2• 10 years ago

Ugh, I have to make spotlight reindex my entire hard drive every few months too

makecheck2• 10 years ago

Definitely should download Alfred (on Mac App Store) as a replacement for Spotlight. I use it basically for launching and quick math, etc. but it can do almost anything.

It doesn't have any of the slowdowns that Spotlight does, and it still has a small interface by default that can move anywhere on the screen.

captaindiego2• 10 years ago

Spotlight has been straight broken for me since 2008, especially when using large external drives (stuck "scanning" for >5 hours every time the drive is power cycles, using a whole core). I just gave up and now forceably disable spotlight.

martinald2• 10 years ago

You raise a good point, but like many of these things it's not totally broken, just temporarily. Just when you're about to try and look for a fix/alternative, it starts working again.

So you get that impression of everything being a bit creaky but never really getting motivated to spend some time fixing it.

jszymborski2• 10 years ago

And so the pendulum swings, as it always does.

Apple will begin sitting on it's laurels while core services and products degrade, while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new leadership.

If you switch Apple and Microsoft in the above paragraph, it sounds a lot like the past...

brickmort• 10 years ago

Apple will begin sitting on it's laurels while core services and products degrade, while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new leadership.

(buzzer sound)

AlexandrB2• 10 years ago

while Microsoft enters a quiet, user-first renaissance under new leadership

I'm not holding my breath. A lot of decisions around Windows 10 have been, in my opinion, user hostile. If Apple drops the ball, the most likely outcome is that we return to the bad old days where there's Windows - it's ugly and it sucks but everyone know how to use it - and nothing a whole lot better.

paxtonab• 10 years ago

...[Mossberg] fingered iTunes for the desktop "I dread opening the thing"

This is so spot on. It feels like they rearrange iTunes every month, especially the mobile version.

Recently I noticed that I'd be searching for a song (that I have on my phone) and it would default to their streaming service.... Why would I want to use my data to stream a song that I already have on my phone?

midnitewarrior3• 10 years ago

If Steve were alive, people would be getting fired after comments from Walt such as these.

slantyyz8• 10 years ago

> If Steve were alive...

Well, if he was alive, a lot of weird design choices would not have been made. Like the pencil sticking out of the iPad, that weird battery pack, the magic mouse with the charging port on the bottom, etc.

jmspring2• 10 years ago

iTunes started getting shittier and shittier even when Jobs was alive. I doubt people would get fired.

michaelt• 10 years ago

Really? I installed iTunes on Windows in 2005 to load songs onto my first-gen iPod shuffle, and it sucked back then too, despite the fact Steve was very much alive.

Reedx• 10 years ago

I'm not sure about that... iTunes has always been awful.

emmet• 10 years ago

iTunes was terrible long before Steve died.

tajen3• 10 years ago

It's a dodge-the-purchase-button game. Any player (in my case Spotify) has a better UI. In iTunes it has become incredibly hard to search for music!

nerfhammer• 10 years ago

The purpose of the new iTunes is to steer you away from listening to music and towards purchasing music or social features, or whatever other part of their ecosystem they're trying to push.

marbletiles• 10 years ago

I've just gone through some pain to downgrade from iTunes 12 to iTunes 10 and can't believe I've been putting up with such crap for so long. iTunes 10 is so much better and so much easier it's ridiculous.

hudibras• 10 years ago

Recently I noticed that I'd be searching for a song (that I have on my phone) and it would default to their streaming service.

It gets worse: this is now also the default behavior on the ipod touch.

partiallypro2• 10 years ago

You think iTunes is bad on Mac? Try it on PC. iTunes has always, always been horrible. I think anyone suggesting it was ever "good" is rewriting history.

sithadmin2• 10 years ago

Mossberg pointed to "a gradual degradation in the quality and reliability of Apple’s core apps." He fingered iTunes for the desktop ("I dread opening the thing"), and the Mail, Photos, and iCloud programs.

As somebody that's used a Mac for 90%+ of all computing-related tasks since OS X was released, all of the above-mentioned apps/services have been dead to me for years. I honestly can't remember the last time I purposely used any of the above.

What's driving me away is a combination of flaky behavior on the desktop (bizarre wifi glitches; bizarre NFS/SMB/AFP mount behaviors; increasing system instability), and a lack of differentiation across both the desktop and mobile platform. There was a time when I needed a Mac or i-Device to do things I cared about/needed, but those days are long over. Almost all of my compute activity happens on a server in my homelab or 'the cloud', and Linux and Android meets or exceeds my needs for completing other tasks. I just swapped my iPhone 6+ for a Nexus 6P, and my current MacBook (12" model) will probably be my last when I retire it in 3-4 years.

drhayes9• 10 years ago

Do you have any recommendations for a music player that isn't iTunes?

TheOtherHobbes3• 10 years ago

I use Vox.

It's not the best player ever, but it's free, it's better than iTunes, and it does all I want.

sithadmin2• 10 years ago

I use Spotify for most stuff, and Amazon Prime Music (with a library I uploaded) for more unusual stuff.

theOnliest• 10 years ago

Swinsian (http://swinsian.com) is good...it's like what iTunes used to be (when it was actually usable).

stephendedalus• 10 years ago

When I started using Android I subscribed to Google Play Music. It allowed me to upload my music collection, including songs that we're on Google Play. It's not matching, like Apple. It's literally just taking my music and allowing me to store it in the cloud and download it onto mobile devices. It's really handy so far and makes much more sense compared to iTunes. Plus there's no "sync" concept once you're there. You just download music out of your collection or you don't.

kawera• 10 years ago

Fidelia and Audirvana are both pretty good.

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/

http://audirvana.com/

tajen3• 10 years ago

To whomever would hear it:

I want and need a deluxe Linux OS for which I would pay $200/year, which would do things well. This includes:

- Porting bugfixes forward (I dropped Ubuntu because they didn't port a bugfix from 12.x to 13.04 - After 2 days trying to recover my network auth, I asked a Mac to my boss).

- Designed for me, not for monkeys with big fingers who bring up Amazon results for every search (That's not why I dropped Ubuntu, but desktop developers aren't within the targets of Canonical),

- Who would hire and pay UX designers. I want the Mac OS X experience. I don't want to recompile my kernel. I want few features in the OS, but well-designed. I want people working days over days to fine-tune the mouse controls in the OS (the first warning that made me upset about Ubuntu). I want to hear the rumble of developers integrating Webkit with nice developer tools into an open-source chromium.

- I, developer, using IntelliJ IDEA, using apt-get/brew, I want to be the paying customer of that OS. I don't want my data be sold. I might want some cloud sync, but I don't want share buttons, especially when I watch porn (I'm absolutely serious). And I want the cloud parts of my OS to be under APL-Affero.

- Obviously those bugfixes must be sent back upstream to the OSS community. Ideally there would be half the money left to pay back, but let's start pessimistic.

- As a bonus, in that OS, all apps would be webkit/js-based. But I'm dreaming.

It is totally possible to charge for open-source, even the GPL says it. You can't prevent people from re-sharing the OS online, but you can offer upgrades to subscribed users only.

I wanted the Apple experience, but that's not coming back. Look what Nest did: They're selling a working thermostat for 3x the price. Tesla is selling electric cars for deluxe customers. I want to pay $200 per year, recurring, for a stable env with little novelty and many bugfixes, and I want to "deluxe". I want to purchase the feeling of being superior with my OS.

And I say that as a peson who earns €32.000 gross per year (France).

jeena2• 10 years ago

All of the things are already there but not packaged in the way _you_ want it. You need to invest the time to chose and pick if you want to use Linux in this specific way. If you don't want to do that job, then I guess Linux is not for you, stick to OS X untill by pure chanse someone creates a distribution which does exactly what you want.

(Btw. I never compiled a Linux kernel for my desktop/laptop)

sondr3• 10 years ago

- As a bonus, in that OS, all apps would be webkit/js-based. But I'm dreaming.

Oh good heavens no, that's the absolute last thing I want from a OS.

ld00d2• 10 years ago

Elementary is almost there.

aditya• 10 years ago

Wow, that's a lot of media hoopla.

Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because they want their amazing hardware. No one has ever said anything about any Apple software compared to what people say about their hardware.

Software's not in their DNA and I think all this media attention will just fade after a while and people will keep using and loving Apple hardware and putting up with their miserable software.

For the record, I use Notes/Mail/Photos on my iPhone, and Preview has never crashed for me.

runjake• 10 years ago

"Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because they want their amazing hardware."

If you swapped all occurrences of "hardware" and "software" in the above statement with each other, you'd have what people said about Apple in the 1990s.

k-mcgrady• 10 years ago

I completely disagree. One of the main reasons I switched to OS X was the iLife software. I've heard a lot of people say the same. The reason I use an iPhone over Android? Again, the software.

dasil0032• 10 years ago

Apple definitely had some misses over the years, but this is deeply unfair to a company that has basically designed the entire landscape of consumer software that we see today. The Apple was copied by IBM, Mac OS was copied by Windows, and iOS was copied by Android (which was pre-existing but was completely redesigned in the image of iOS).

If you want to see a hardware company that doesn't get software, look no further than Sony. Apple's main problem is that they don't get cloud services. This is where Apple can't compete with Google in the same way that Sony couldn't compete with Apple.

TranquilMarmot• 10 years ago

It would be nice if there was better Linux support from Apple. I haven't tried it, but from reading guides it seems like installing Linux on a Macbook comes with a whole set of gotchas and workarounds.

dzamo_norton• 10 years ago

For a long time I ran Debian in VMware Fusion in fullscreen mode on my iMac. There's a penalty but it's faster than you might think. My interest at the time was an effort to recover some sense of control over data privacy. Gradually I moved bits and pieces into the guest and these days I simply run Debian bare metal on a Lenovo. When my colleague wants to collaborate on a Keynote or Pages document she shares it on iCloud and I do pretty well editing in Firefox.

Xixi• 10 years ago

I remember Steve Jobs saying that Apple is a software company, and then quoting Alan Kay: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.". Apple certainly has the talent in-house to be a software company (llvm, webkit, cups, swift, metal, etc., even if they didn't start the first three) but somehow it doesn't seem to reach the higher level apps (iTunes, Podcast, etc.).

I suspect poor product management: I strongly doubt llvm or swift are driven like iTunes.

brandonmenc4• 10 years ago

Let's be real, Apple's never been a software company -- they've always made excellent hardware and good enough software that people will deal with because they want their amazing hardware.

Wrong.

This may be less true recently, but for a good decade Apple had the superior OS and were the only ones who got device and media integration right - that's all software.

slantyyz8• 10 years ago

> good enough software

I dunno. I may not be on Apple any more, but I thought some iterations of their software were really damned good, like Snow Leopard, older versions of Mail, Keynote, iPhoto, iMovie (the one that no longer supported plug-ins - was that 08?), Safari, and so on.

For me, iLife (iPhoto and iMovie in particular) has always been a very compelling reason for non-techies to switch from Windows to Mac. It's probably the only thing that I miss from Mac since switching to Windows.

beloch• 10 years ago

I stopped using OSX shortly after Lion came out, surprisingly because of hardware problems and comically poor support from Apple (I'm not going to go into that again here). Since then I've been using Linux for work and Windows, as always, for gaming and blurays (because there's no other viable choice).

Something weird has happened though. When I left OSX, it was already a bit buggy. A lot of stuff didn't work properly and wasn't well thought out. Windows, aside from the unfortunate Metro experiment, has just gotten better.

Over the life of Windows 7, the only time I had BSOD's was when the SSD with the OS got too close to full. If I kept some free space on my OS partition, BSOD's simply did not happen. Windows 8 was even more stable. It just works. Yes, I added Classic Shell so I could just completely avoid Metro, and the result is an OS that just works and doesn't get in the way. I have privacy concerns about W10 which have prevented me from upgrading, and that really is the one major fly in MS's ointment. Free upgrades are nice, but I'd prefer to pay for an OS where my data isn't treated as a product.

Will I continue to use Windows? Well, there's no other choice for gaming and blurays, so yes. Privacy concerns aside, this is more palatable than ever. Linux continues to be a workhorse for me, and I don't miss OSX one bit.

Edit: I should mention that I tend to customize certain aspects of my OS rather extensively. I like things to be a certain way. Linux is fantastic for this. Windows is good too. OSX is really hit or miss. Some things aren't too bad, but other things are an absolute chore. It's amazing that an OS can restrict hardware and customization choices to the extent OSX does and still be buggy.

kmfrk2• 10 years ago

The OS has been pretty good after El Capitain. It was some serious garbage in some of the prior versions, though that also made me question why bother.

The software is another matter.

KirinDave4• 10 years ago

El Capitan has been way worse for my software engineering life than any 3 previous versions put together. The first week was pure misery.

And I've still gone back to routine crashes if I have a VM open. It hasn't been this bad for me in years.

pkaye• 10 years ago

They had some wifi wakeup issues for a couple releases/bug fixes and it took a long time for then to come out with a fix. They control both the hardware and the software and have no one else to blame.

FreedomToCreate• 10 years ago

Walt Mossberg outlined the issues really well. A lot of programs are becoming bloated, and as the company expands the number of people working on its products fragmentation across the platform is inevitable.

Essentially Apple is the first company in history with such as large distributed platform of devices utilized by an unprecedented number of people, and unlike every other company, it wants to keep a tight grip on every aspect of that. By the time is addresses an issue, it loses sight of another. This is how I imagine Apple is functioning right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5C8rnpAbIs

jhh• 10 years ago

What scares me is their inability to fix things. Apple Music has been slow and unreliable as hell and with awful usability from the start. And it has not really improved at all.

They likely see the problem but can't execute.

ewillbefull• 10 years ago

I haven't used Apple software in a long time, but Google is not immune to this either apparently. If you use the YouTube app, and especially if you use Chromecast, you'll experience countless bugs as it fails to reconcile state changes between the devices or properly buffer videos. I'm considering setting up a raspi or something and installing an ad blocker on it to replace my Chromecast. I don't think this is what Google wants but its product is difficult to use any other way.

Hangouts / Google Calendar are also really clunky and seem poorly tested. Things often go out of sync or you're randomly asked to re-login several times a month, and only during video chats.

yggydrasily• 10 years ago

The problem is that Steve Jobs isn't around any more to give the company the proper focus and hold everyone to a high quality standard.

The recent slippage in quality and focus mirrors what happened in the late 80s and early 90s after Steve was forced out. There was considerable leftover momentum in the short term which allowed the company to coast for while and keep up some semblance of health, but eventually the lack of focus caught up with them. They became "beleaguered" in the mid-90s and only recovered when Steve came back (and axed products that weren't working, focused resources on new problems, simplified the product line, etc). It took many years, but he eventually turned them into a powerhouse.

Now that he's been gone for a while, we are seeing a similar phenomenon. In the short term after he left, the company had considerable momentum (due mostly to the iPhone) which carried them along for a number of years, but without someone at the top who had his ability to maintain focus, the company is starting to slip again.

This time, there may be no coming back.

agumonkey2• 10 years ago

You got me imagining Steve Jobs doing a proper 2nd coming of the Christ now that he is somewhere higher. Classic Steve.

dasil0032• 10 years ago

My take on this is not that Apple has gotten worse, but that they have actually gotten better at cloud services. Whereas no one actually used MobileMe or iDisk, their new generation of cloud services is actually being used. It's true that they're losing ground because Google has defined a bar for cloud services that they can't reach, but they are trying and not entirely failing at it.

The secondary aspect is the surface area of what they are dealing with. This is a far cry from the old Mac OS days where they were really a PC company. Now they have to make OS X, iOS (for both phones/tablets), and tvOS all work together seamlessly. If quality was exactly the same, they would have far more bugs just based on the cartesian complexity of possible interactions.

I hope they can sort it out because I'm feeling the pain just like everyone else, but I don't see any better alternatives at the moment.

Analemma_• 10 years ago

My take on this is not that Apple has gotten worse, but that they have actually gotten better at cloud services.

Which isn't saying much, since they're still terrible. Their cloud-synced Notes.app is almost unusable; every time I add a note on the phone there's maybe a one-in-three chance it'll sync to the desktop immediately, a one-in-three chance it'll sync the next day, and a one-in-three chance it'll appear three days later or more. If Apple has in fact gotten better at cloud services, it's only because they were so abysmal before that there was nowhere to go but up.

tluyben26• 10 years ago

For me it always 'syncs' but in a very original way; I get 3-4 copies after a sync on all devices. Not even sure how you make a bug like that. Not complaining though it is better than no sync.

parasubvert2• 10 years ago

I have used that Notes app every day since 2007 and still have notes dating back to that time.

Sync works fine (and near immediately if you refresh on a device) but doesn't actively push, I find.

dubrocks2• 10 years ago

No, the problem is that they are making very questionable design decisions in their new software: this is unaffected by being spread too thin. It indicates a total loss of the sensibilities that made Apple software great to begin with, not just "bugs."

How much of this is due to the loss of Steve Jobs? A great amount, I think. He had all day to look at the outputs of different teams and tell them why it was stupid or ugly.

untog• 10 years ago

I don't much care about the software - I haven't used iTunes in years, don't use Mail, etc. etc. - it's the operating system I care about.

Wi-fi has been buggy on OS X for literally years now. And each new major release seems to bring some new pain point where it refuses to turn on, refuses to connect, doesn't transmit data... and on and on. There's no way Apple can't know about this - it must drive their own employees crazy. Yet, nothing gets done.

If I were in the market for a new laptop right now I'd be taking a serious look at a Surface Book - it's the first thing I've seen that looks like it could rival a Macbook in the hardware department. Sadly, I'd have to do a lot more research into getting a decent POSIX environment set up on it before I could take the plunge.

stestagg• 10 years ago

I've found that wifi is buggy generally with lower end APs. It may be Apple employees generally have a better class of router/wifi

api3• 10 years ago

Recent Macs have a wifi chip that requires WME/WMM extensions (Wireless Multimedia) in most cases. For most APs it will have issues if these are switched off. Rumor is it's a chipset thing not a software thing.

outworlder• 10 years ago

That is my experience as well, with multiple APs. Once I switched to a better one (TP-Link Archer C7) the problems disappeared. Same with an airport express base station. No issues at all, wifi connection is near instant when the notebook wakes up.

lobster_johnson5• 10 years ago

Can anyone in this thread recommend a rock solid off-the-shelf wifi router?

The last year I have gone through three routers:

* Asus RT-N66U ("the Dark Knight"), worked fine on 2.5GHz, but the 5GHz signal gradually became worse until one day it just disppeared. Apparently a lot of users have had this issue.

* Asus RT-AC66U, the smaller version of the same router. Just stopped working occasionally, requiring a reboot.

* Netgear AC1750 R6400-100NAS (little brother to the "Nighthawk"). Current router, was stable enough for a while, but now needs rebooting a couple of times every week. SSL/TLS connections stop working randomly. Devices such as iPhone and AppleTV fail to get packets through on the first try after being dormant for a while.

At work we have the Netgear AC1900/R7000 "Nighthawk", which has been extremely stable. But it's also quite expensive, and large (as is the AC1750).

I've lost all faith in Asus, and the only other brand I can see that has a good reputation is Ubiquity. They make "pro" access points for hotels and such. Then again, hotel wifi is the worst.

legitster• 10 years ago

Wi-Fi is crappy because Apple cuts lots of corners as a way to save battery life. Roaming can be a huge drain on the battery, so disabling or reducing the frequency of certain wireless functions is a quick and dirty way to improve battery life. It's so easy to pass off wireless problems to access points, so I imagine Apple had been doing it for years before anyone noticed.

extropic-engine• 10 years ago

That actually sounds like a legitimate strategy. I would want the device which is plugged into the wall to handle more of the heavy lifting if it means I get an extra hour of battery life.

Domenic_S2• 10 years ago

I recently tried moving to Surface Book. Spent nearly $3k on a real nicely specc'd one. It BSOD'd daily, sleep modes are really confusing, battery drained terribly overnight, it was overall a bit of a nightmare. Granted probably half of my complaints are about Win10 rather than the SB itself, but still. I returned it.

It's SO CLOSE and it was $1,000 cheaper I may have just dealt with it. Just not quite there.

partiallypro2• 10 years ago

Unfortunately the first generation of the Surface Book has been plagued with bugs. I avoided it assuming it would need a generation (or two) to get things right. But look where Microsoft took the Surface Pro in two generations. Surface Book is going to be amazing in a year or two. Heck, it might be there now, I hear a lot of the bugs have been fixed...but imo, it's not worth it right now. I say this as a very loyal Surface line customer.

Gys• 10 years ago

Since I updated to 10.11.3 (a few days ago) my Air crashes about once a day. It used to be once in a while and in the past months about once in a week.

iTunes give we some weird null error if I switch accounts. Since a few weeks I think (do not use it often, only for updates).

My iphone 6 often refuses to show the 'copy'-popup the first time I select something. So I regularly have to selected something again, just to get the popup. This used to work the first time.

Just some examples that come to mind.

dangoor• 10 years ago

I think the latest episode of ATP has a good take on this in their segment "Why are we so critical of Apple?":

http://atp.fm/episodes/155

They have a bunch of gripes, but at the same time there's still a lot that makes them happy and they're not about to start using Windows or Linux instead. This is exactly how I feel: yeah, there's stuff they need to do better and some of their stuff has either gotten totally crufty (iTunes) or was a bit too early (Apple Music, Apple Watch), but overall I still prefer Apple's products to their competitors at this point in time.

OWaz• 10 years ago

Well just today I called my wife, neither my mic nor the speaker in my phone were working. I couldn't hear the phone ringing and when she picked up we couldn't communicate. She instead called me and everything started to work. I have no clue where the fault lies and it's concerning because what if I was calling 911?

SCAQTony• 10 years ago

My hand is raised! My El Capitan upgrade was slower, did not run Open GPL, (till an recent upgrade) and iTunes keeps getting more confusing.

SatoshiRoberts• 10 years ago

Apple should step up it's software game, but it's hard to compete will so many startups singularly focused on executing one thing.

Music, messaging, news. All these things are entire billion dollar industries, we can't expect them to hit a home run on everything.

javajosh• 10 years ago

The problem is that there is no reasonable alternative. If you want a retina display, solid construction, and anything even close to a reasonable command line, then MBPr and OSX are my only real options.

Apparently, engineering and producing a high-quality laptop is a really hard problem. Only Apple and Lenovo seem to be able to do it. And if you go Lenovo, then you are stuck installing Linux who's device drivers are only as good as the time volunteers have given them. And even then the hardware isn't as good, so it's not even worth considering Windows instead of Linux.

I believe that the solution is to introduce some sort of modular laptop standard such that people can build them to taste, and manufacturers can focus on building user installable components at various cost/performance points - like the desktop gaming PC market. Modularity would have additional security and openness benefits.

massysett• 10 years ago

My days installing Linux on PCs are over. Futzing with the device drivers is way too much trouble. However if I had to I would buy a Lenovo, leave Windows on it, and run Linux in a VM.

Overall I am happy with my Mac though. I think techies and press people find a lot more faults with Mac software than most users do. But it could be that after years of using Linux desktops my standards for good GUI software are extremely low.

darkstar999• 10 years ago

Have you looked at Dell's XPS 13 Developer edition? It seems like you are totally ruling out linux even if it comes supported by the hardware manufacturer. I can't imagine Dell released this thing with poor driver support.

bronson2• 10 years ago

Basically the same price as the Air, maxes out at 8GB. I keep hoping someone will just destroy Apple's offering, especially for a product as stale as the Air. One day.

One worry: Linux still has some issues with retina screens, doesn't it? (though distros have gotten a lot better than two years ago when retina was broken everywhere)

I can't imagine Dell released this thing with poor driver support.

I guess you didn't live through Dell (and everyone's) Netbook offerings.

shiftpgdn• 10 years ago

Dell XPS 13 Developer edition comes with Ubuntu and a "retina" level screen for about the same cost as a MBPr. Lenovo Yoga 900 can run fedora based linux without issue and is also a "retina" level screen and solid hardware.

bronson2• 10 years ago

Yoga 900: retina screen, 16GB memory, core i7, 512GB ssd: $1400. That's pretty darned reasonable! Definitely tempting.

Engadget's review says 9 hour battery life, cranky touchpad, and shrunken keyboard. Argh. C'mon Lenovo.

Do you have one?

lttlrck• 10 years ago

Dell XPS 13 is very very nice and runs Ubuntu pretty flawlessly. Battery life is a challenge of course but thats not the hardwares fault and with a newer kernel, the right kernel options and tlp it does alright.

wwweston3• 10 years ago

I'm having similar thoughts about OS X itself.

I have two MacBook Pros right now. One is a 2008 champ that's still going despite having been dropped several times. It's got an SSD and maxed out RAM, running Snow Leopard. It actually does really well.

One is the last 2012 pre-retina that just dropped out of Apple Care last August. It's running Mavericks. It has sleep/wake issues. Firefox can actually trigger a restart of the entire machine. It actually seems notably less stable than Snow Leopard.

I'm afraid to upgrade. I actually don't know anyone who didn't have problems with Yosemite. I've been trying to figure out if El Capitan is actually better.

Or, if not, how I can escape the platform after pretty much 15 straight years of making it my personal choice.

KirinDave4• 10 years ago

Come join us on the Surface side. The SB is a slick laptop, and you can use whatever you need just fine on Win10.

I won't lie, there's bullshit over here. I can name a dozen things I hate. But at least on the Win10 SB I feel productive. On the OSX I feel like I'm constantly dealing with an abandoned system that only sort of runs now.

nier• 10 years ago

Did you run memtest and took a look at how the hard drive is doing with SMART Utility?

InclinedPlane• 10 years ago

Apple has always had problems with software quality. In the past, Jobs was around to not only provide a reality distortion field to distract people from that fact but also to drag the company forward on specific projects and products (such as OS X) which kept the balance of quality to crap high enough. He also kept the company away from making big design or UX mistakes. Since Jobs has been gone Apples has been making missteps at an increasing rate, consider, for example, this set of gems: https://twitter.com/jonyiveparody/status/674749292494491648

Apple's edge has always been that it was well plugged into the aesthetic sensibilities of its market, which is an unusual combination of skills to be tied to reasonably high quality engineering (the same dynamic that existed between Jobs and Woz since the first, really). It's somewhat inevitable that it would go away eventually, it's more sad that nobody cracked the formula so that more companies could have the same level of success. Clunky design is still the norm almost everywhere, and that's only slowly changing.

VeejayRampay2• 10 years ago

Their software was never great to begin with. But there was a form of uniqueness, some innovation. That much is gone now. Despite the fact that they're developing for their own hardware, despite the hundreds of billions, their software is neither especially fast nor particularly reliable.

DigitalJack2• 10 years ago

I can't compare to windows 10, but I had to send my mbpr in for a screen replacement and while I waited for it to come back, I installed ubuntu on my old mbp.

The desktop was a singularly terrible experience of bugginess.

The bugs I experience in OSX are nothing compared to that experience. The only bug I notice right now is sometimes my wife's computer isn't accessible through Finder, and vice versa. Annoying but we have a work around.

At work I use windows 7, and it makes me want to punch the wall several times an hour. Some of that is (I think) the corporate crap that my company installs. Every day is a super horrible experience, and I have not been able to pin down where the problem is stemming from.

Working on my mac at the end of the day is an absolute pleasure by comparison.

I'll concede though that I really don't like the design of itunes and haven't ever thought it was good. It's definitely worse now than in the past though.

RE iphone/android... I switched to android for a year. It's not been horrible, but also not great. Really the main problem I have is the awfulness of the google app store. 25,000 five star reviews for the AT&T app, yeah right. In fact it's rare to find anything less than 4 stars. It's all rigged reviews out the wazoo, probably fed by the mechanical turk.

VeejayRampay2• 10 years ago

I hear your point, but I feel like the comparison is not fair to Ubuntu. Like I said, Apple develops their own software for their own hardware. They control the whole thing. One can HOPE that everything will work out of the box. Ubuntu on the other hand has a MUCH harder task at hand depending on the computer and it's a known fact that common hardware has better support (Intel chipsets in general for example). The libre community is also spreading itself thinner by having to support every other architectures and hardware under the sun with little funding.

So my point was that given the extremely favorable conditions Apple is benefiting from (their own hardware, extremely forgiving users, bajillions of cash, advertising), they're not delivering the goods anymore.

midnitewarrior3• 10 years ago

Yes, but they love the Microsoft apps on Mac and iPhone.

Strange times are these in which we live.

KirinDave4• 10 years ago

It's practically downvote bait in here to talk about how happy, overall, I've been with my move to the Surface product line or how much more I like the current incarnation of Win10 and the devkit than any of the other options.

But yeah, I never thought I'd say I was happier using the Microsoft variant but here I am.

And that's with 2 OS revs full of crashes, poor power management, and a replaced device because rev0 literally tore its hinge apart. I still enjoy the thing more than opening up my "work" laptop and struggling with OSX's halfhearted core apps and awkward expression of UNIX and just... the least amount of system stability surrounding virtualization I've had with any of the OSs I've tried.

mwcampbell• 10 years ago

What do you mean by awkward expression of UNIX?

1024core3• 10 years ago

I used to be fairly content with Apple: the iOS ecosystem (or walled garden) was pretty decent, and OSX is basically Unix. I was happy.

Then, after a few years of iOS use, I switched to Android. Suddenly, I was an outcast among friends: any group SMS conversations I had been a part of, I would no longer get. I get it: Apple uses iMessage, and it is not present in Android. But at least Apple could warn the sender that it is unable to deliver the message to me, instead of silently dropping it! Friends started calling me: are you OK? And I had to patiently explain to them the iMessage fiasco. I tried everything to disavow iMessage on my phone number; but nothing works. I still don't get messages in group conversations, months later.

This totally soured me on Apple. Instead of being a greedy little fuck, why can't they just play nice? They are the biggest company in the world; they don't have to be giant pricks too!

LeoPanthera4• 10 years ago

But at least Apple could warn the sender that it is unable to deliver the message to me, instead of silently dropping it!

It's harsh, but this only happens if you don't follow the instructions.

Deregister and turn off iMessage: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

If you follow this, you'll never miss a message.

1024core3• 10 years ago

I did follow the instructions. I deregistered several times, and Apple knows that my number is not registered with iMessages anymore.

piyush_soni5• 10 years ago

It was such a widespread issue that they had a lawsuit filed against them. Not sure what happened to it eventually.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/08/05/imessage-android-lawsuit...

headgasket• 10 years ago

The real cook has left the kitchen, for good. Honestly could we have really expected anything else, over time? Do you remember Apple in the Scully to Amelio days? Barbarians at the gates, again.

Cartwright2• 10 years ago

I dread helping anyone with iTunes related issues. The syncing process is dangerous, it's far too easy to wipe someone's collection of music / family photos / pictures. I'm not sure if this is an isolated issue but I start sweating bullets as soon as I have to connect an iDevice to iTunes. What really shocks me is that instead of showing a big red warning message before a destructive sync, it silently goes ahead and wipes data without even asking. And there's no easy way to tell what a sync is going to do. After any iTunes sync I generally think "Ok, now let's assess the damage".

To add insult to injury it's almost impossible to make a file-for-file backup before decimating a device with iTunes sync. In fact, the iTunes sync process is the main reason I stick to Android despite it having a whole other ecosystem of flaws. I'll take a USB Mass storage device and robocopy / rsync, thanks. They actually work.

aantix• 10 years ago

The second I see iTunes is syncing I think to myself "oh fuck, oh fuck" and look to force quit the app as soon as possible.

Then I spend the next half hour looking at the connected device to ensure my collection is still there.

It's part of the reason why I switched over to the (defunct) Rdio. Managing the individual iTunes music files was just too stressful.

LeoPanthera4• 10 years ago

I never understood this. You keep all your music in iTunes. What harm could possibly come even if it did accidentally wipe your device? The worst possible scenario is that you'll have to wait a few minutes to sync it back again.

rsync• 10 years ago

I have no dog in this fight, since I use neither itunes nor idevices, but ...

You could 'chflag -R schg' the entire music dir, thus making it immutable - even for root - without chflagging it back.

Then there's no more syncing risk. Just saying.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

Are you serious? Unless you're sharing different users' music across computers (which Apple has made difficult/unfeasible since day 1).

Sync is one-way - what could you lose?

linkregister• 10 years ago

My personal fear is losing my photos when performing a sync. iCloud tops out at 5GB, which you can't effectively manage.

It's far safer to plug your phone into a Windows machine and using the file system GUI to copy the photos to the folder you want. Using Preview to import the photos as if the iPhone is a scanner is another safe method.

The multiple user/multiple computer problem that you're referencing can probably be solved by logging in to the corresponding icloud account on the computer.

shmerl• 10 years ago

Apple should wake up and stop their lock-in retardation. But they are too busy continuing it.

clamprecht• 10 years ago

I never see anyone from Apple commenting in these threads - why not?

tachyonbeam• 10 years ago

Because they have a huge culture of secrecy internally. They're afraid of getting fired if anyone found out they commented.

tenpoundhammer• 10 years ago

I wonder if this is related to a problem hiring engineers, Apple seems to be in a full on war to employee software developers in silicon valley. They are competing with hot startups, self employment, and variety of other concerns.

Many of the issues that I'm hearing about Apples software quality appear to be caused by a company who is trying to do too much with too few engineering resources. They are getting stretched thin and having to make more quality sacrifices than their customers are willing to tolerate.

I bet that if they opened an additional engineering office in a less contentious area of the united states they would be able to staff teams more easily, with longer average tenures, and tap into the talent pool and skills that they are currently unable to hire at the volumes they require.

I would suggest Portland, Oregon as I'm a native Oregonian, and because we have some of the best software engineers in the world!

tasdev2• 10 years ago

I had a debate about this the other day with a friend. I am firmly of the belief the quality is bordering on poor and that if this was a decade ago, the Apple fanboys would be all over Microsoft for the same performance - remember the taunts about Windows performance and crashing from the Switch campaign?

I'm sick of constant random iOS reboots, out of date OpenGL, poor/reduced quality apps (Photos I'm looking at you), the growing monolithic nature of iTunes and the fact I feel like I'm running Windows ME all over again.

I wish they'd stop spending so much time on marketing new features -- who cares, really -- and spend a few years making stuff great.

tluyben26• 10 years ago

iOS reboots

Is that common? I have and use a 5s for years now and I have a spontanious reboot every 6 months maybe. And I am a very active user. Same for my wife (same phone). I have a new Samsung as well; it gets stuck every 2 days enough to have to reboot it.

tasdev2• 10 years ago

It hasn't been that common since the latest updates but particularly early iOS9 was very frustrating.

I see it most commonly when using Safari or AirPlaying anything, but have also had it happen randomly when using Settings, presumably because Springboard.app has died.

nostrademons8• 10 years ago

It's kinda weird to read commentators talking as if this was the end of a golden age of Apple.

From my perspective, their application software has always sucked. It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been identified and attracted companies that really want to make it their bread-and-butter.

XCode and occasionally FaceTime & iMovie are the only bundled applications that I ever use on my Mac. When I get a new computer, the first things I do are usually download Chrome, MacVim, Google Photos, and VLC. I use Hangouts over iMessage, Google Calendar over the built-in calendar, and Google Docs over the office suite. On my iPhone, getting Google Maps and Yelp is a top priority, lest I end up navigating off a mountain. This is not a new habit; I've operated like this since getting a Mac in 2009 after a 10-year hiatus from Apple products.

Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans, and the end of the brainwashing may itself be news with big consequences for product adoption. But IMHO anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time.

Eric_WVGG2• 10 years ago

Could you please express your opinions without using the term "brainwashing"? I think Safari and iMessages are vastly superior to Chrome and Hangouts and that doesn't make me an idiot.

pyre7• 10 years ago

Well, one thing about Safari is that upgrades seem to be tied to the OS. As a web developer, this makes testing things on different versions of Safari a bit difficult. Also, you have to upgrade the entire OS to get a new version of Safari, so if you were holding out on an OS upgrade you might be forced to upgrade if you need to test things on the latest version of Safari.

tracker15• 10 years ago

How do I iMessage or FaceTime someone on an iPhone from my Android device? Do you just drop any friends that don't buy apple hardware?

oksawe• 10 years ago

Thank you I completely agree. Chrome is garbage and I wouldn't trust google with my photos or calendar data.

knowaveragejoe• 10 years ago

Chrome might not be the best, but Safari is very far behind.

http://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/

wlesieutre3• 10 years ago

There are some Google products that I like, but I don't think I've ever had a good experience with Hangouts. Maybe it's rose tinted lenses, but it seems like multi-person video chatting with screen sharing has been getting uniformly worse ever since iChat AV.

More recently, there are online alternatives like https://appear.in/ that I've been happy with, and which don't require you to install a browser plugin like Hangouts.

nostrademons8• 10 years ago

The primary feature of messaging software is "all my friends are on it". As an ex-Googler, all my friends are on Hangouts.

I think that on a technical level, WhatsApp is the best messaging software on the market. It at least features reliable message delivery, something that both Hangouts and iMessage have yet to get down. But its usage is largely limited to my Indian friends here in the U.S, which makes it of limited use to me.

sn0v• 10 years ago

True that.

Plus using third party services is just smart in that it avoids vendor lock-in and makes it easier to switch out of the platform(s) should you choose to do so.

Skunkleton• 10 years ago

It was there because you need apps to bootstrap a platform and attract enough users to attract developers. But you can't really expect a consumer electronics company to have the best application for a given niche once the niche has been identified and attracted companies that really want to make it their bread-and-butter.

I have a hard time with this. Apple products tend to lock you into apple software. If you want to develop software, then you are pretty much stuck with XCode. If you want to send email on iOS, then you are stuck with the built in mail app (at least if you click an address from Safari, or Contacts). If I ask Siri to play some music, it launches the built in Music player. So if what you say is true, then why can't I set a default app made by a third party company?

largote2• 10 years ago

Clicking on an address defaults to fucking Apple Maps... Let me say that again: Apple Maps...

nostrademons8• 10 years ago

Oh, I certainly wish Apple would allow you to set third-party programs as defaults for integration. But unfortunately that's not my call. I just suck it up and manually launch the programs I want to use, because I like using them better.

rayiner5• 10 years ago

If you want to develop software, then you are pretty much stuck with XCode

There are like nine different versions of Emacs for OS X...

matzipan4• 10 years ago

There are plenty alternatives to XCode. AppCode is one high quality one. Setting up your own custom llvm toolchain is also an option.

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

Note that iOS and OS X are very different systems. On OS X, you can replace everything with your preferred software just as easily as you could in Windows or Linux.

jolux• 10 years ago

No, you're not locked in to using the default Mail app anymore. Since iOS 8, mail app developers can write a share sheet extension and you can access their mailer wherever you can access system share sheets.

And you're not really stuck with Xcode anymore than you're stuck with Visual Studio on Windows. You can use the command line tools to do everything yourself, it's just more difficult. You can also obviously write apps in Java or even Electron, which is very popular these days.

As for Siri not using your custom music player, that's unfortunate. But integration often comes at the cost of extensibility, and while Apple has the former nailed, they are still clearly working on the latter.

smoser• 10 years ago

I have a hard time taking anyone's opinion seriously about Xcode when they spell it with a capital 'c'. ;)

muddi900• 10 years ago

You can always copy the email address with a long press or a force press.

pjmlp5• 10 years ago

If you want to develop software, then you are pretty much stuck with XCode.

GNU/Linux and *BSD are probably the only OSes where there is no such thing as an OS vendor SDK.

Ezhik2• 10 years ago

While on OS X you can replace everything easily to craft the experience you need, on iOS, it's not as much of an option, sadly.

Also, I don't really like Google's desktop offerings - or the lack of them - everything is a webapp, and they just don't work as well as proper desktop software would have. I am so annoyed by the random reloads Chrome apps do, and the utter disrespect they have for multiple desktops.

pyre7• 10 years ago

The most frustrating part for me is that CMD-Tab'ing to, say, Hangouts will show me the Hangouts window. Now if I try to CMD-Tab to Chrome, it stays on the Hangouts window even though they are trying to treat them as separate applications (it's own application icon in the CMD-Tab bar, and a separate application menu from Chrome). This frustrates me on a daily basis.

addicted2• 10 years ago

Even ignoring the ad-hominen, your comment is basically pointless, because people who have been complaining about Apple Software usually compare the software to the period before 2009 (whether true or not, Snow Leopard is considered the pinnacle of OSX and so you basically entered once the software got bad).

Since you weren't even using Apple Software at the time, your judgment of whether Apple software used to be good or not is kind of meaningless.

nostrademons8• 10 years ago

My 2009 MBP shipped with Leopard and I upgraded it to Snow Leopard within a few months. It was on there for a couple years.

My first computer was a Mac LC in 1991, and I was a die-hard Macintosh fan all throughout adolescence. I learned to program with Think Pascal on a Centris 660AV. My whole family continued to use Macs after I gave them up in 1998, so I certainly used them during that decade, I just didn't like using them.

protomyth• 10 years ago

a lot of Snow Leopard's good reputation was about the fixes and about how bad Lion was. The whole "Save As" and alter documents not expressly saved (a behavior Preview continues) screws up a lot of use cases.

That being said, I remember Panther and Snow Leopard after the .0.3 updates to be the best versions.

orionblastar• 10 years ago

The whole point of buying an Apple device was that it was an alternative to Microsoft Windows PCs. It was supposed to be better and easier to use.

When iOS got invented Apple got into mobile devices. Microsoft has been making Windows Phones (way back to Windows CE) longer than Apple has been making iPhones, but the iPhone sells better.

Apple has sort of gotten into a trap they got into before bringing Jobs back, problems with software quality. Jobs solved it by merging MacOS and NextOS together to make OSX. Then OSX spawned iOS.

Apple got focused on bringing out new hardware, to have users upgrade every once in a while to keep the profits going. They focused on the hardware more than the software. That is the mistake that Apple once made during the PowerMac Era before Jobs came back to fix it. They were working on project Copland to fix it, but never finished that project.

It is not that Apple Fans are brainwashed, they like Apple because it is not Microsoft. They've been burned by Microsoft too many times and went to Apple as an alternative. But now Apple is starting to make mistakes like Microsoft did in their software. Apple Fans are starting to take notice of that.

Apple just needs to focus on software quality for a while, fix the bugs and CVS exploits. Instead of releasing new features, just fix the bugs and make the OS and apps stable. They've done it before and they can do it again.

roymurdock4• 10 years ago

From my perspective, their application software has always sucked.

I think the main problem is not the application software (aside from iTunes and Apple Maps) - the main problem is the OS level software.

During the "golden age" of apple, apps would just work. Didn't matter if it you were using Apple-provided software or "better" 3rd party stuff - crashing, lagging, stuttering was minimal.

Now, many users are seeing much more lag, beach balling, and kernel panicking than before, across all of their applications. [1] Combine this with some poor decision making in the UX/UI department of certain Apple apps and you get a lot of people who are unhappy with their entire software stack.

But the app is the closest piece of software to them, so instinctively it makes more sense to blame declining app quality, when it's actually more a function of OS stability.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11034071

camillomiller• 10 years ago

Really? This sounds way too empirical... And: have you ever used the first versions of OS X? Have you ever heard about MobileMe?

samastur2• 10 years ago

When was this golden age?

I've been a Mac user for about 10 years and it was never better than now, probably the opposite. Every edition had bunch of bugs I hated. Before then I regularly tested Mac for local computer magazine and it didn't look better either. I even managed to freeze Mac OSX 10.1 with first mouse click when it arrived in our lab.

Before then we had lots of fun looking at ways you could hang by that time absurdly obsolete old Mac OS....

bandushrew• 10 years ago

"During the "golden age" of apple, apps would just work."

nope. Ive been using apple software for 20 years.

apple software has ALWAYS been crap. its just also been less crap than the opposition.

hell, before OS X, a crashed app would force you to restart the entire computer....

I still remember long afternoons debugging a CodeWarrior application, and having to restart after every successful replication of the problem...

ocean32• 10 years ago

The last 2 versions are the worst for old systems. Before Yosemite beach ball was a rarity. Now its a daily occurrence.I have tested El Captiano on newer systems and its silky smooth. They are kind of forcing me to upgrade. But this experience has made be wary of buying Apple products.

goalieca• 10 years ago

There was a time during Windows XP when apple software was very well done. They were on a roll. OS X was a lot more stable, safari was introduced and was one of the best browsers at the time, etc. The 64-bit transition was flawless, the ppc to x86 was flawless. Safari was an excellent browser when it was first introduced. Mail.app used to be just as good as thunderbird (if not slicker). Itunes was THE app that everyone finally started using to organize their music in a proper database.

It's only since the "App-store" that apple seemed to screw things up. It's quite amazing that so did microsoft and so did linux desktops. I feel like the golden age of desktop computing ended with the dawn of the iphone.

honksillet• 10 years ago

The first version of iMovie was brilliant. Sublime, and easy to use. I used it on a Mac Cube and loved it. It has gotten worse with every new iteration.

dwg• 10 years ago

I do the same.

However, I guess that as Apple grows and attracts more customers outside of tech (especially as they have done with the iPhone), they will have also picked up a much larger share of customers who will use the built-in apps. If it's true that the quality is gong down as they say, well those people will form the opinion that you would expect them too which happens to be the one written about here.

Let's also not forget that the operating system itself has a huge impact on the experience. The difference between the OS and the apps is that problems in the OS don't just affect end users, they often affect app developers too. So regardless of how their apps are, they could easily get themselves into trouble here.

jlarocco• 10 years ago

It's quite presumptious to assume people who don't care about their apps as much as you are all brainwashed. I've always found many of the default apps to be "good enough" that I didn't mind using them, and I know I'm not the only person who thought so. Lately they've degraded to the point people are complaining.

Besides that, the software problems affect their entire software base, including parts that can't (easily) be turned off or removed, like iCloud, Music, the iOs task switcher, etc.

eva1984• 10 years ago

Their software tends to be intuitive sometimes ago, around OSX Lion and iOS 6, which should be a much more important priority than just flashy and shiny.

A lot of 'improvements' made after that, comes with little or none consideration to make things more useful. Rather it seems to focus more on atheistic, which, as a developer, I couldn't care less.

Mandatum2• 10 years ago

Agreed. I don't think Apple creates their applications for power users though. We switch to VLC because we handle a wide range of file formats, QuickTime is "good enough" for the average user (perhaps not anymore considering MKV files are very popular amongst pirated videos). Photos, Calendar and Safari are "good enough" for users who don't use a lot of third-party extensions/Developer Tools, or sync their Calendars across multiple non-Apple services.

XCode is a necessary evil for a lot of developers, FaceTime depending on your situation is also a necessary evil for users. iMovie is the best of a bad bunch for the average user.

However the OSX interface is still very slick in comparison to *nix, requires hardly any maintenance and still supports "all the things" because developers love the hardware and the UX and have built the applications needed for it.

I've always turned away from Apple because "you are paying for a brand" - however since being given a Macbook to play with I've really enjoyed using it for dev and personal use. I've uninstalled and removed pretty much all the "bloat" that people like us have a preferred alternative for, but the average user simply doesn't give a damn.

I still run away from iOS however. The requirement to find an exploit in the firmware to do what I want is a PITA.

jjoonathan4• 10 years ago

anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time

Ditto for anyone not using the Apple ecosystem. Better tested drivers installed by default, no OS license hassles, no issues created by malfunctioning (or maliciously functioning) antivirus, top download sites weren't infested with malware (no hunt for the real DL link), journaled FS in the consumer tier for instant fsck since 2002 (vs 2012), no-additional-cost professional-grade IDE since 2003 (vs 2015), one-click backup since 2007, decent integrated movie editing, some truly awesome platform-specific-at-first apps (subethaedit, quicksilver, textmate, coda), solid one-button-away desktop search years before it landed and stabilized in Windows, window navigation with expose (they've arguably been leapfrogged since then with window snapping), unix command line with a decent terminal emulator, emacs movement supported in every text field by default, built-in menu bar search, the list goes on.

I now have both feet in the Windows ecosystem but the transition was rough. If you have used Windows all your life, you have taught yourself to live with a lot of BS. Since you have made the investment it's now a sunk cost and no longer factors into your OS decision. Fair enough, but realize that wasn't the case for everyone. Also realize that you necessarily didn't miss what you never knew you could have.

I use the past tense because MS has caught up on most of these fronts, except for perhaps stable drivers and license hassles, where they are hobbled by their business model rather than technical shortcoming.

hackercomplex2• 10 years ago

Why compare it to windows ? Compare it to Ubuntu or Chrome OS. You have Aptana, textmate, emacs, and web based IDEs. Ubuntu's "one button search" works better, it's called /usr/bin/locate.

If you're buying hardware devices that linux can't support well then you're doing it wrong. Support open standards and eschew manfacturers that don't support open source.

nostrademons8• 10 years ago

FWIW, there are more options than just Apple and Microsoft. I was on RedHat from 1998-1999, Mandrake in 2000, back to WinXP in 2001-2002, Mandrake again from 2003-2004, XP again in 2005 but with Ubuntu running under VMWare, switched to mostly web-based apps from 2005-2007, but ended up going back to OS X Leopard (but again, with mostly webapps) in 2009. I had a System76 laptop running Ubuntu from 2013-2015, and of course all my workstations have been Linux (usually Ubuntu) since 2005.

I still have a soft spot for KDE circa 2003. It was as pretty or prettier than OS X, and also featured "No malware", but even moreso. Amarok is still probably my favorite music player ever, much better than iTunes. People in this thread say that Safari was one of the best browsers available when it came out in 2003 - well, it got that way by forking KHTML. Stability kinda sucked, but it was very usable.

cyphar• 10 years ago

Okay, so Windows sucks (big surprise). What about GNU/Linux? I've been using it for more than 5 years full-time and I've never had any show-stopping problems or problems that couldn't be solved with a 5-minute Google search.

greggman3• 10 years ago

no-additional-cost professional-grade IDE since 2003

You paid for that by spending $XXX more than a PC on your Mac. (posted from a mac but I make no delusion that I didn't pay for XCode)

alexchantavy• 10 years ago

truly awesome platform-specific-at-first apps (subethaedit, quicksilver, textmate, coda),

I've had the same thought in my head for a long time now but haven't been able to put it the way you did; completely agree. There was also a time when OSX supported things like .psd previews, built-in *.iso mounting, and unzipping capabilities right out of the box when Win XP didn't.

This is part of what initially got me to become a big Mac fan, but as time goes on it seems that there are fewer of these unique advantages as modern Windows becomes more competitive. This also makes me all the more disappointed to see Apple's apparent lack of OSX advancement and shortfalls in reliability/usability.

The interesting thing for me is that I never would have thought that Windows would ever be competitive with Mac again for my attention, but the feel of sloppiness in Apple software is slowly moving me back in the other direction. Once Windows has things you mentioned like better platform-first apps, emacs bindings, and a better shell, I think I might fully commit to that switch.

hvidgaard• 10 years ago

A lot of what you're saying is true, but arguing that MFS and later HFS is better than NTFS is just plain wrong. NTFS was a part of Windows XP (i.e. since 2001), and it was, and still is, vastly superiour to HFS.

pjmlp5• 10 years ago

If you have used Windows all your life, you have taught yourself to live with a lot of BS.

Since Windows 3.x.

Macs were too expensive for Portuguese purses vs what Amiga, Atari and PC systems were asking for.

Also as a gamer I could never convince myself to pay more for less technical specs.

As for better drivers, Apple's OpenGL and OpenCL support leaves a lot to be desired when one is into graphics programming.

jeena2• 10 years ago

Chrome, Google Photos, Hangouts, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Maps
Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans

I'm not quite sure who of you is the brainwashed one ... ;)

cmurf• 10 years ago

It's all about churn. It's new and shiny. Oh you actually depended on those features? You want document format portability? Those questions don't enter the equation. Eventually they dump everything and replace it with something else. The quality varies from useful to bad, but ultimately it doesn't matter to them, it all gets replaced eventually. Because new is better. Stability, backward compatibility, support for open document formats - these things don't sell in Apple's world view.

gertef• 10 years ago

Apple makes hardware and iCal. Google makes Search and Calendar. Neither company charges for their calendar app. (OK, Google sort of does for Apps)

Is it a priori obvious that which conglomerate would be better at some app than another?

BrainInAJar2• 10 years ago

Perhaps I was just less brainwashed than most Apple fans

And yet you use Google everything, despite privacy concerns...

nostrademons8• 10 years ago

I figure I have none anyway. My working assumption is that every major government on earth could access all of my net activity with a few keystrokes, my devices are already pwned, all of my credit card numbers have already been stolen, and pretty much anyone could pretend to be me with little trouble.

The only thing that prevents this from being a massive pain in the butt is that they have also stolen the personal data of 300 million other Americans, and by the time they work their way down the list (my last name starts with 'T', after all), all that information - credit card numbers, operating system installs, addresses on file, net habits - will have changed anyway.

jsz0• 10 years ago

But IMHO anyone who used the whole integrated Apple software suite and never looked elsewhere has been missing out on some seriously nice features this whole time.

I've looked elsewhere but I stick with Apple's software because I like the simplicity and privacy it offers. I don't want more than a handful of basic functions in my calendar app. I don't want a half a dozen new features to help me avoid reading e-mails. I don't need to install Google Maps to avoid driving off a mountain because Apple Maps works fine for me. I don't want to type the wrong thing into a Google app and see ads about it for the next 3 months.

Scarbutt• 10 years ago

What about office apps?

crazyboyz• 10 years ago

LOL you first download chrome, Dude In my experience of Mozilla and Chrome. Chrome is a memory hogger even if you have 1 tab open it eats the memory and drains the battery read about it its all over the internet. While mozilla can't handle lot of multiple windows and tabs. The only browser i have seen which is rock solid and power efficient is Safari. Also the mail app won't be having much advanced features like other mail apps but it certainly does the Job for people who don't want advanced apps. And i use Fantastical over the calendar app but only because of the UI and AI but also the calendar app on apple is decent and it used to do the job for me before i moved to third party app. Also if you use Pages it is way too much better than Google Docs and Microsoft Word. I don't understand what you like in Google Docs any ways i feel Microsoft Word is much better than Google docs. I used to be a Windows Power user from past 20 years and from last 2 years i have been using Mac and it is amazing. Try to use the Mac apps again i don't know what they used to make in 2009 but certainly they have improved the quality of apps in mac in 2014

makeitsuckless• 10 years ago

It's not just you. I've been an Apple fan for a long time, but the only Apple app I regularly use is Keynote. For everything else I use alternatives, and that has never been any different.

With the occasional exception, Apple has never been very good at application software.

pjmlp5• 10 years ago

An issue might be that many never used pre-Mac OS X software stack.

I loved the fact that they used Pascal as system programming language, but the mixture of Pascal, followed by C and eventually C++ with Powerplant wasn't that nice if I recall correctly from Mac programming manuals.

Also the fact that up NeXT's acquisition Apple's engineering failed to deliver a new OS.

zamalek2• 10 years ago

You make a fair point, you can mostly avoid bad Apple software.

The one choice you can't make is iTunes. Being forced to use that dreadful piece of software is why I gave my first iPhone away after little less than one week. It's abysmally incompetent as a music player. You could probably count the number of codecs it supports on one hand - a core feature of a music player is, well, playing your music. Last time I used it, it still didn't have a media library and dumped tens of thousands of songs into a flat list. You have to have that garbage installed on your machine if you own an iPhone. Not interested.

debaser1212• 10 years ago

iTunes has had a media browser since I started using it in the 10.3 days.

You haven't needed iTunes to use an iPhone for several years now. I still plug mine in once in a while for a local backup but I can't tell you the last time I've needed it. Apple's cloud backup is pretty good in my experience.

Don't get me wrong... iTunes is definitely getting worse. The media browser is too hard to find in the new version and the new default views don't handle large libraries very well.

charlesarthur3• 10 years ago

"Last time I used it, it still didn't have a media library and dumped tens of thousands of songs into a flat list."

In the "Advanced" tab, which I'd expect any self-respecting HN denizen to go to first, there's a checkbox for "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" which explains that it will "[place] files into album and artist folders, and [name] the files based on the disc number, track number and song title". Mine is a very hierarchical structure - and I've had it for a decade. No flat list here.

"You have to have that garbage installed on your machine if you own an iPhone. Not interested."

Not true, either - hasn't been true since the advent of iCloud in 2011.

As to the codecs - it does do MP3 and AAC, which probably covers 95% of available content, though it doesn't do Ogg Vorbis, Quo Vadis, or various others. For that sort of thing there's VLC.

271828182842• 10 years ago

Safari is a great example of this. Do a search for "safari is the new IE6" and there are lots of complaints about it falling behind other browsers. Off the top of my head, for example, it doesn't support the blocking of form submission with the required attribute, which makes the required attribute pretty useless and frustrates developers.

venomsnake2• 10 years ago

If iPhone was just able to be mounted as a flash drive, roughly 90% of the itunes complaints would have been nonexistent. Getting content to the iphone is absurdly, needlessly complicated.

gnicholas2• 10 years ago

Yep—Airdrop from iOS to Mac is still a mess, even with new hardware and latest software. And don't get me started on how iOS 7 broke BT from my iPhone to my car, and then Apple told me to get my car's firmware updated. Really Apple? You release a software update, it breaks connectivity with my car, and you tell me to get my car fixed?

captaindiego2• 10 years ago

I've never seen airdrop actually function. I remember when it first came out I watched some excited people try to use it and then it failed completely. Nobody I know with an iphone even bothers trying to use it anymore.

gnicholas2• 10 years ago

Yeah, it works only between iOS-iOS or Mac-Mac for me. Rarely works cross-platform.

I even called AppleCare to troubleshoot, and the level 2 tech I spoke with said that it "might not work reliably" on pre-2014 devices. I pointed out that Apple's website claims compatibility for post-2012 devices (my MBA is 2013), and he said I was being argumentative. He also couldn't cite any documentation for his 2014 claim.

I now use Dropbox instead of AirDrop, which is inefficient—especially given my slow upstream connection—but at least works reliably.

Ensorceled2• 10 years ago

What I really hate is that Googling for problems brings you to Apple Forum discussions from 2014, 2013 and sometimes even earlier. If they are not fixing serious bugs that have been around for a couple of versions now, just how much cruft are they accruing. Worse, issues that were fixed, like my iPhone playing a random song at a random loudness instead of returning to Audible, have returned.

My Fall 2015 Mac Book Pro has already crashed more often than my Fall 2013 did in two years. Apple support claims the logs show it is software, not hardware, so I'll take their word for it.

Our UX guy summed up the other serious issue with Apple software, they are focusing more on design now rather than UX. There is a great article on FastCompany about it http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi.... Stuff may look fine but it no longer functions in a natural, intuitive fashion; it no longer "just works". The font selection in iOS is a great example, it's almost like it's picked specifically to be hard to read. Killing misbehaving iOS apps has become a pain, the current app is never in focus, swiping is clumsy and swipe up to kill will often swipe left or right instead. iTunes as a whole is another example of this. It was never great but it's become increasingly difficult to find what I'm looking for and make it do what I want.

I find myself cursing my computer and my phone on a regular basis now instead of the once in a blue moon I used to.

makecheck2• 10 years ago

The thing is, design is supposed to mean "how it works" (and not just fonts, etc.); they're just not designing anymore. When Jony Ive once said in a video that things should look like they haven't been designed, I thought "yeah they sure look that way, they're crappy now".

I shouldn't have to turn on half of the Accessibility settings to return to what I'd consider a normal interface, either. (And the real problem with any non-default setting is that many apps clearly don't test with that; e.g. with the "bold" or "larger" font settings, a lot of things start to truncate or just not lay out as nicely.)

dplgk• 10 years ago

What I really hate is that Googling for problems brings you to Apple Forum discussions from 2014, 2013 and sometimes even earlier.

This is really the kick in the nuts while your down. You find those useless forums where the suggestion for every problem is "Reset your PRAM" and there 100 pages in the thread going back for years and you realize "Yep, I'm never going to fix this terrible problem".

sathio• 10 years ago

I can't believe nobody mentioned HFS

evanx• 10 years ago

i guess it's hard to write large stable apps in ObjectiveC? I wouldn't like to. Maybe Swift will change things, but it'll take a while, given their legacy.

X-Istence2• 10 years ago

I'm an Apple fan, and I am unhappy with the state of software, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I hate Apple software.

I am also not nearly disgruntled enough to even consider switching platforms to something else (like Linux for example).

No matter the platform people will always have gripes and issues with the software. It's amazing how much choice we all have these days, and it's simply not possible to cater to everyone's whims.

I feel like over the last couple of years the landscape has changed tremendously, and what once may have been a simple blog post that mostly got ignored the news can spread further and wider than ever before. Things that are simple complaints of "I wish this worked better" now get twisted and restated as "X hates Y".

tristor• 10 years ago

My experience has been that every new release of OS X is more unstable than the previous. I'd very much like to go back to Mavericks. It was the last release I used that seemed to be decently stable. Yosemite and El Capitan have so many problems.

* I've had to switch to a wired ethernet -> TB adapter and turned Wi-Fi off altogether because of Wi-Fi instability, despite having enterprise-grade WiFi APs in my house (Ruckus and Ubiquiti).

* Peaking out the CPU usage and GPU usage at the same time almost guarantees a kernel panic despite Apple's hardware diagnostics reporting no problem and my Fluke temperature probe not showing temperatures going above 90C (although to be fair, that's very hot... that's standard Macbook Pro temps).

* Crazy audio issues for SPDIF, despite it being a basic standardized protocol that's had kernel support since OSX was released, every time they come out with a new version they manage to make SPDIF output break in strange ways.

* Sleep/Resume/Hibernate no longer works reliably, many times instead of waking up the system will simply reboot.

* Bluetooth devices (specifically Magic Trackpad 2) will disconnect and then reconnect randomly for no apparent reason.

I don't even use any of the Apple provided software other than OS X itself, but I still have seen the product go rapidly downhill. I went from being an Apple hater to being a hardcore Mac user, to now back to being an Apple hater that's just waiting until I can find a decently reliable Linux ultrabook (Lenovo X1 Carbon maybe?). The repairability of a laptop isn't even a concern to me at this point, I consider buying a laptop a sunk cost of being in a technical job. I just need it to work reliably because I depend on it for my livelihood and it's currently unacceptable.

The other day I was working remotely and in a conference call with the CTO and had a kernel panic twice in a row because I was doing `vagrant up` in the background which kicked me out of the call. How does that look for my professional reputation when I have technical difficulties during a call and I'm supposed to be a senior level technical staffer? Totally unacceptable.

chrisblackwell• 10 years ago

OSX fan here: Everyone is completely misunderstanding our recent criticisms of Apple software.

We don't hate Apple software!

We have seen a steady decline over the last few years, and so we are expressing our concerns. This does not translate to us hating the software. We know what Apple can do when it really focuses on the quality of it's software (see OSX Snow Leopard).

I still think OSX is more stable and useable then any other OS out there. Yes there are annoyances, but they are trying to move the ball forward. The only piece I would agree has gone completely off the rails is iTunes.

OSX is still strong, and I believe Apple will right the ship. After all, Apple employees use Mac's themselves to build iOS.

ld00d2• 10 years ago

Even with the problems, I still prefer OS X to anything else. Apple claims a higher standard, and everyone wants to hold them to it. They're falling short of their standard, but they're falling to a higher point than the alternatives IMO.

Caprinicus• 10 years ago

Right, but I think it's still important to note because the user experience has gotten worse even if it is still the best.

Ensorceled2• 10 years ago

Exactly, moving my SO from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 and then, months later, to Windows 10 made me appreciate OS X despite it's recent downturn.

cowholio4• 10 years ago

Sure, we have dumb apps on our iPhone that we don't use and some of the preinstalled applications on OSX aren't that great.

But bashing Preview and touting the alternative Adobe Acrobat Reader!? Are you serious? Firstly, they are different products. Preview handles multiple file formats and Adobe Reader is meant for PDFs. Secondly, Preview allows you to edit, combine and covert pdfs all of which you would have to pay Adobe to unlock these features.

Preview is such an amazing tool and I would go as far and say it's one of OS X's killer applications.

tn13• 10 years ago

I think this is regression to mean. No one was expecting the Apple world to grow at the same speed did they ?

I think part of the reason why app's core apps such as Apple news or Mail client appears to be so horrible is not because they are worse but because everyone else (app makers) is getting better. Whether it is Flipboard's News app or Microsoft's Outlook they are specialist at building that and Apple is not.

I think it is time for Apple to focus on the platform and development tools rather than continuing to build other kind of software.

skrowl• 10 years ago

Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs would never have let this happen.

sxcurry• 10 years ago

Apple in headline - check. Apple bad - check. Mention Steve Jobs - check. Talk about your personal piece of software that "always crashes" - check. You are golden!

rubyfan2• 10 years ago

OSX 10.5 and maybe 10.6 were the last good OSX offering.

Similarly I'd peg iOS 5 or 6 as the last good iOS versions.

Both of these systems has been in steady decline. The iOS-ization of OSX killed it. Desktop user don't need stupid shit like an App Store, terrible default security options that mimic an iPhone, full screen mode default when you maximize, notifications (aka. productivity interruptions), etc. my list could go on...

There was once a time Next and maybe Apple had programmers and educational users (educated users) in mind in building some of their software. That seems to be gone.

What are we left with now Ubuntu - that's another ghetto just a different kind?

archildress• 10 years ago

All of these complaints seem to really be picking up steam.

Would be really interested to hear from an Apple employee what the inside talk is like.

LargeCompanies• 10 years ago

Personally, Apple better release something cool and jaw droppingly innovative either the iPhone 7 with needed features (waterproof & wireless charging), Apple TV cable TV service or something amazing as Im slowly losing interest.

Android isn't exciting either nowadays.

lurkinggrue• 10 years ago

"I dread opening the thing."

Hmm, that was my reaction to iTunes in 2003.

lumpybacon3• 10 years ago

After a few years of fiddling with Windows and Linux on a custom-built PC, I'm looking to get a computer that "just works", as this is a time in my life when I really can't afford to deal with any hassles (not that there was anything particularly bad with my setup; it's just the little things that add up). I had my eye on a Mac (mainly for OS X), but it's increasingly looking like a bad time to get one. Is it really, or are these complaints overblown? I'm having some trouble sifting through these conflicting experiences on my own.

andreyvit• 10 years ago

Depends on your definition of a hassle. I am a happy user of Apple software, I love iTunes. I do experience occasional issues — AirDrop not finding peers, iOS asking for a password when it's not supposed to, iMessage failing to sync SMS read states between the Mac and the phone. If you're okay with occasional problems like that, go ahead and try it.

lumpybacon3• 10 years ago

I suppose every operating system is going to have little problems like that, and if that's all there is, I can manage. It's just that I really liked OS X back in the Leopard and Snow Leopard days. I could almost describe it as a "magical" experience using them, but I'm worried that that magic's gone in these latest versions, as all this recent complaining seems to indicate.

Can you perhaps tell me how newer versions of OS X fare as a UNIX-based operating system for development, compared to Linux? I've heard that it's become more locked down. How about its app "ecosystem"? I remember that a lot of apps, by developers small and large, were of really high quality.

antidamage• 10 years ago

Nothing new here. We've all hated iTunes for years.

imron• 10 years ago

I'm glad to see Apple getting more and more flak for this. Hopefully they'll do something about it.

KillerRAK• 10 years ago

Loyal user for 10+ years. Apple is getting old and their apps, particularly iTunes, have transformed into an atrocity.

EvanPlaice• 10 years ago

I love Apple's OS and hardware. It's one less thing I have to worry about condtantly fixing.

With that said. Their consumer apps have always been overly simplistic candy glossed shit, Made worse by the fact that they can't be removed without lower level hacks.

I may not fall with their target demographic but I'd never buy into the platforms/services of a company who won't let me have a choice over something as simple as what Apps I have loaded on my machine.

pmarreck• 10 years ago

I smell a heck of a lot of Technical Debt in the new bugs I'm seeing. Simple example- I copy a URL in Safari, quickly switch to another app to paste, and it pastes the PREVIOUS clipboard, NOT what I just copied. That has to be a state-management bug.

rglover• 10 years ago

I'm quite happy with OSX.

andrewstuart2• 10 years ago

My iPhone 5 cannot run the newest version of Safari - too slow. I was forced to switch to Google Chrome.

Safari used to be fast two versions ago but something changed in a recent upgrade and now it is useless.

welly• 10 years ago

The only Apple software I use is the operating system. Everything else (including the core utilities) are third party. Google Docs for word processing/spreadsheets, BusyCal for calendaring, Chrome for web browsing.

I may occasionally fire up the core Calculator app but with Numi in my menu bar and Alfred a quick Option-Space away, I rarely even use that.

Having been burnt by Apple disregarding other software I've been a big user of in the past, I'm not going to let them do it again.

andrewstuart2• 10 years ago

Every third time I try to unlock my iPhone screen it will accept only the first letter pressed. To proceed I have to hold the button down to turn off the phone, and then cancel the poweroff, which seems to reset the screen lock keyboard input.

bwb• 10 years ago

Weird, I love apple software? it always works for me...

slantaclaus• 10 years ago

I'm glad this is a thing now in the media. The company surely has enough resources to get this handled

gaia• 10 years ago

Error. 53.

daveheq• 10 years ago

I've never run into so many bugs as since Steve Jobs died, Tim Cook and friends are just throwing things at the wall now and their own apps are just breaking like plates.

ksec• 10 years ago

Apple software was only good, or comparatively good in the era when Windows Software was absolutely crap. But that is no longer the case anymore. Windows Software still may not be as good, but the gap has definitely shrunken a lot. That is why it no longer feel good. And once you add the truly dreadful ones like iTunes which, again is the biggest pile of crap in Human computer history, and the services that is called iCloud lagging behind Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft.

kentonv• 10 years ago

(Rant warning.)

Apple products have always been buggy. If you do anything slightly unusual, you quickly find that everything breaks. It's as if they don't actually systematically test anything and instead only fix the bugs that the developers themselves happen to notice in day-to-day use.

Here's me ranting about it in 2011: https://jx4slc83qru3hgkkkt1v.oasis.sandstorm.io/

Here's me ranting about it in 2014: https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/FEUGQ7mxkUL

And here's me ranting about it in 2016: My wife's Macbook has a fun feature. It scans the network looking for audio receivers. When it finds one, it hijacks the receiver, switching it away from its current input and over to the Macbook's audio. This happens for example while watching movies, while the Macbook is in the other room with no one touching it, even though it has never been intentionally asked to use the TV room receiver for any purpose (though there is another receiver in another room that she uses regularly). As Denon receivers have no apparent access control, there is no way to stop this except to set up some sort of firewall between the Macbook and the receiver. (I do in fact use the receiver's network protocol, so disconnecting it is not a good option.)

mk3• 10 years ago

It's every year the same story... It's the end of apple this and this is the end of apple that. I think it's the new iPhone is doomed type of stuff.

diebir• 10 years ago

Well, Apple software does kind of suck in some areas (tragically broken package manager is one area!!), but it is not too unstable. I have got here a 2 year old MacBook Pro.

The uptime on this thing is usually around 60 days, at least. I have at all times around 40 tabs open in Chrome and do heavy Java development in IntelliJ IDEA.

I don't think this laptop has ever crashed in these 2 years. Just never happened. I reboot once in a while when something like audio goes crazy or just in case after running out of memory with IntelliJ and a handful of other JVMs a few times in a row.

I have no illusions on usability of Apple software. I think they are teeming with idiots (iTunes, already mentioned package management, photo import app, text editor), but the OS is kind of rock solid. Why wouldn't be, it's a POSIX OS and consequently is relatively simple and logical, at least from API standpoint.

There are two things that drastically help with stability:

1. My account does not have admin privileges and I never give admin password to any prompts, unless I know for certain why.

2. I never install any software as administrator. If something does not want to install into ~/Applications (you know, drag and drop), I take it apart and "convince" to install.

3. I guess there's #3, no updates. Only clean OS installs once in a few years. It's a little scarier than the same tactic on Linux, where I am sure that this is not a real problem, but in most cases it's not an issue on Mac OS X either.

sirmiller2• 10 years ago

Not sure about the "fans", but us mere mortals are quite ok with the quality.

lips2• 10 years ago

This decade, TL;DR: As Apple becomes the first computer maker to transition into a luxury goods company, they realize that the smoke and mirrors sufficient for keeping the pseudo-proles happy in other sectors aren't sufficient. Corinthian leather doesn't break your wi-fi.

erlend_sh• 10 years ago

Did the article title not bother anyone else? The title has 3 mentions of "Apple" and none of "Windows" in it, but the article is really a feature showcase piece for Windows 10.

Apple fans are coming to hate Apple software

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