Bug Reporting - Is Apple even reading our reports ???

[PsykX]

Hi,

So I have Yosemite and iOS 8 since day 1. I have reported nearly 20 reports now through Apple's Bug Reporting system, and I must say I am not surprised at all by the work done by their engineering.

Sometimes, it's as if they're not even reading my reports and don't even click on the pictures I join to show them the problem.

Just an example : I ask for a Feature Request, and a week later they're asking me for crash logs.

Another example that just happened : I report a bug, upload all the crash logs and everything, and then they send me a message asking for the crash logs. All I can do is submit it another time...

Makes me wonder how they do to come up with awesome software like this. Does that also happen to anyone in these forums ? What do you think of the feed-back given by their teams ?

 

[2984839]

They may have multiple people working on it and one of them doesn't know that you already submitted a crash log. They may have other reasons for it too.

Read this guidehttp://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html for filing bug reports effectively. Not only does it make the developers' lives easier, it gets you better software more quickly.

 

[mrapplegate]

Or read Apple's own suggestions.
Either way sometimes things don't attach. It's been known to happen.

 

[Watabou]

Most of the radars I've filed are marked as duplicates. Some of them have asked for more information like a Sample of the process or a full system diagnostics report. Only few of my radars have not gotten replies to and they are the ones where I'm asking for a feature or an enhancement rather than actual bugs.

So they do at least look at most bug reports, which is pretty great, considering the number of bug reports they would get in a beta period.

 

[PsykX]

They may have multiple people working on it and one of them doesn't know that you already submitted a crash log. They may have other reasons for it too.

Read this guidehttp://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html for filing bug reports effectively. Not only does it make the developers' lives easier, it gets you better software more quickly.

I'm following the form on their website, it's all centralized, so I doubt someone would miss a part of my request. I never spread my stuff across different places...

But sometimes their answers are really as if they have only read the title of the bug, it's driving me insane...

I just got a new example, since this is through NDA, I won't reveal the complete bug (even if it's far from being critical). But I did notice a UI detail that could be improved in French localization, because text labels auto-shrink when the text is too long, but it looks like the font is different when it's compressed. So looking at it carefully, if they change the new line feed position in their strings, they can avoid the text from being shrinked. All they tell me is "It's behaving as intended, it shrinks. Closing the report". Hell I even proposed a very simple solution in 20 words explaining exactly where to put the new line to avoid it.

I would never guess that Apple cares so much about the details if I judge by the engineering only. I do see it in nearly every final product they manage to pull out - but it's as if they only want to do what's up their mind at this point during the beta phase.

Most of the radars I've filed are marked as duplicates. Some of them have asked for more information like a Sample of the process or a full system diagnostics report. Only few of my radars have not gotten replies to and they are the ones where I'm asking for a feature or an enhancement rather than actual bugs.

So they do at least look at most bug reports, which is pretty great, considering the number of bug reports they would get in a beta period.

Yes, I have a few duplicates too. I don't mind, I understand this. I'd like if I could make a search before posting anything though - but I understand that they don't want to open their OS X bugs database to everybody. It has to remain close, it ensures OS X' security and stability somehow.

I think when the ones with no replies are read, it could be nice if they had a little flag just to tell us that it has been read and will be analyzed in an undermined amount of time. I've asked for a huge Feature Request in iOS 9, and I can understand that I have gotten no reply, but it could be nice to see that they actually read it.

 

[PsykX]

Oh yeah, another thing that's machine-related this time : every time they take action on one of my bugs, I get an email like 2 days after. Way to lose some time...

They could do some work on that department. This could be a job for me (yes - this is my domain), but unfortunately I don't live anywhere near California, and house prices are robbery around there. For $600,000 all I can have is a shed
DAMMIT !

 

[Watabou]

A reply 2 days after really isn't that bad, think about the number of bugs they have to sift through and delegate it to the right department!

If you really have some bug that is preventing you doing some tasks, then:

A. You shouldn't be running a beta software
B. You shouldn't complain about bugs.

Oh and I think it makes sense that they don't reply to feature bugs because they don't comment on future releases do they? So I think they do look at every bug report but don't comment on every single one.

If a bug is fixed in the next build, you know they read your bug report!

EDIT: Oh you meant an email about their reply. Yeah it's not instantaneous for some reason. That does suck. I get mine a day later, I think it may be a daily notification email setup they have.

 

[PsykX]

EDIT: Oh you meant an email about their reply. Yeah it's not instantaneous for some reason. That does suck. I get mine a day later, I think it may be a daily notification email setup they have.

Yeah, a reply two days after is completely acceptable on my side. They must have a bunch of reports, must analyze if it's bogus or a duplicate, etc. It's a hard task.

It's getting the email two days after they took action that bugs me.