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Has iOS become buggier since Jobs died?

C

cnev3

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 13, 2012
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I’ve been using iOS since I got an iPod Touch at Costco in 2010. Maybe its because iOS has to handle so many more things in 2018 than it did in 2010, but I can’t help but wonder if all these bugs I experience now are the result of Apple being under new leadership.

With Steve Jobs, employees feared making a mistake, because he didnt hesitate firing them. They were also starved to get some of his approval. Then he had that reality distortion field, which motivated his teams to accomplish almost impossible tasks. Engineering problem solving. Meeting ridiculously short deadlines. The original mac team did amazing things.

Tim Cook is a warm, empathetic, well tempered manager. But I believe that his staff loosened their belts and relaxed when he came on board, and now it shows in their work. I think the fact that the departure of a few key players is also a factor.

I encounter so many little mishaps. Siri doesnt respond. My set timer disappears. My screen wont reorientate. Apps crash more often. Updates are pushed out more often, resembling Windows critical updates.

Apple certainly had their share of blunders when Jobs was CEO, but those occasional issues were resolved in a timely matter. This handful of small issues I have persists. Even after new iOS versions, and even after my phone was replaced with a new one.

Anyone else feel the same way?
 
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cnev3 said:
Tim Cook is a warm, empathetic, well tempered manager. But I believe that his staff loosened their belts and relaxed when he came on board, and now it shows in their work. I think the fact that the departure of a few key players is also a factor.
Click to expand...
If Steve dying had any sort of effect then personally I believe it comes down to this, rather than your explanation.

Steve was a check on Jony Ive's excess. Now that check is gone and Ive only answers to Cook. Cook is a manager, not a designer so Ive pretty much gets his way - even if it's crap.

Since Ive was also placed in charge of iOS development then we get garbage like dancing poop emojis and unicorns that are marketed as features rather than focusing on fixing bugs or implementing real features.

In short, I blame Ive, not Cook.
 
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I've actually found the opposite in my experience. I had more bugs in the early iOS days that were extremely problematic. Since about iOS 8, I have had very few (if any) issues that made a difference in my usage of iOS.
 
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Yes. His death led to the firing of Forstall which led to the downfall of iOS in terms of stability, polish, performance and overall execution. It’s been a complete cluster-cluck ever since.
[doublepost=1538629126][/doublepost]
Absrnd said:
IOS has become much bigger, and way more complex, and therfore more bugs to solve, simple :)
Click to expand...

I’m pretty sure iOS became bigger and “more complex” from iOS 1-6 but it didn’t detoriate in terms of quality, it got better. The excuse of “well Apple is a much bigger company now than when Steve was alive” is a BS cop out excuse just because you still like buying their products.
 
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The better question would be if iOS has gotten buggier since they started doing public betas?

I haven’t had bad experiences with iOS though, only speaking on what I see online.
 
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I've been using Apple products since 2010 and I can honestly say that I didn't experience any bug until iOS 7 came out. So my answer is yes based on my own personal experience.
 
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It’s become less intuitive to use and less concerned about integrating hardware and software. For example, the way notifications are laid out they look and work great on the bezel-less iPhone, but are atrocious on the square screens. Nobody cares though.
 
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Yes it became buggier, but it also became more inclusive of older devices. In the jobs era, iOS upgrades often made old devices unusable. I had an iPhone 3G IIRC, which when on iOS4 became unusable. It couldn't even play music without stuttering. Whether or not it was on purpose didn't matter - the jump in resources required to run iOS each time meant your phone was out of date quicker than ever.

Under Tim, we've seen older devices get a lot more support, and iOS12 really doubled down on that. Even the S0 Watch, which was slow, was still usable on WatchOS4. Under Tim, Apple has produced buggier software without a doubt, but overall it has produced better software.

I do think the design of the interface has become less consistent with Jony in charge. There are icons and fonts that change sizes depending on what you do, which are clearly oversights. Unlocking a phone from the lock screen changed the font size of the carrier, for example. Jobs wouldn't have had that.
 
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Companies change, even when the leadership doesn't. If companies don't change, then they get left behind as the market moves forward. In the early years of the smartphone, Apple had the apps and a reputation for working better than Android. As Android improved, and caught up in terms of available apps, Apple suddenly had a lot more competition than before. The smartphone market became a race to see who could come out with new features first, and who could come out with bigger and/or better displays, cameras, batteries, etc. Combine that with improvements in hardware and cellular data, and it's easy to see how smartphones grew to become more complex and feature-rich. The smartphone market has even had a huge impact on older more established technology. Suddenly everything needed to work on a mobile device, and you had companies like Microsoft pouring efforts into mobile versions of popular desktop applications, and all kinds of businesses making sure their websites and web apps could work on mobile.

I can't speak to how Apple has changed internally since they lost Jobs, but they continue to be successful, despite some high profile bugs or stumbles here and there. The Apple Watch has been a huge success and is a brilliant piece of technology in my opinion. I also think Apple deserves some credit for continuing to take risks, but also being willing to admit when they need to slow down the new feature pipeline and focus on stability and bug squashing.

Ultimately the question that matters is: Have bugs in iOS affected you in ways that makes it worth checking out the competition? Personally I have not been impacted much by iOS bugs (knock on wood). I have certainly read about bugs on this site and others, but have rarely encountered any issues on my own devices that were problematic for me. For now I am voting with my wallet to stay with iOS (and watchOS). That could change in the future, but the competition has their bugs as well.
 
Jobs screwed up as much as anyone. This is a much more complex and difficult environment than it was back then.
But then again, this thread comes out with every release, etc. I guess some people have nothing better to do than open this topic every year
 
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CTHarrryH said:
Jobs screwed up as much as anyone. This is a much more complex and difficult environment than it was back then.
But then again, this thread comes out with every release, etc. I guess some people have nothing better to do than open this topic every year
Click to expand...

Jobs was just the guy at the top of the totem pole. Ultimately its the work of hundreds of engineers and designers. But how hard those employees work is dictated by the upper management, and how hard the upper management is dictated by the CEO.
[doublepost=1538769309][/doublepost]
sean000 said:
Companies change, even when the leadership doesn't. If companies don't change, then they get left behind as the market moves forward. In the early years of the smartphone, Apple had the apps and a reputation for working better than Android. As Android improved, and caught up in terms of available apps, Apple suddenly had a lot more competition than before. The smartphone market became a race to see who could come out with new features first, and who could come out with bigger and/or better displays, cameras, batteries, etc. Combine that with improvements in hardware and cellular data, and it's easy to see how smartphones grew to become more complex and feature-rich. The smartphone market has even had a huge impact on older more established technology. Suddenly everything needed to work on a mobile device, and you had companies like Microsoft pouring efforts into mobile versions of popular desktop applications, and all kinds of businesses making sure their websites and web apps could work on mobile.

I can't speak to how Apple has changed internally since they lost Jobs, but they continue to be successful, despite some high profile bugs or stumbles here and there. The Apple Watch has been a huge success and is a brilliant piece of technology in my opinion. I also think Apple deserves some credit for continuing to take risks, but also being willing to admit when they need to slow down the new feature pipeline and focus on stability and bug squashing.

Ultimately the question that matters is: Have bugs in iOS affected you in ways that makes it worth checking out the competition? Personally I have not been impacted much by iOS bugs (knock on wood). I have certainly read about bugs on this site and others, but have rarely encountered any issues on my own devices that were problematic for me. For now I am voting with my wallet to stay with iOS (and watchOS). That could change in the future, but the competition has their bugs as well.
Click to expand...

I think Apple continues to be successful because they’re coasting on the wave of really good products Apple made during Jobs second tenure.

The Apple watch is a lukewarm success. It was one of the only products that Apple did not disclose sales figures on. Maybe that’s changed. I bought an Apple Watch recently, and I enjoy it, but it has some real issues. Even though it was released only a year ago, most 3rd party apps take so long to load that they are simply not worth trying to use. So many features do not even work at all. Raise to speak to siri never worked once. The auto stop and start workouts has never worked. The app selection is surprisingly tiny. But I still like it and use it for probably the same reasons as others. Its still a good fitness watch and its useful for checking notifications. But I think Jobs would not have released it unless all the features worked.
 
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Math was always my worst subject in school. But I had an algebra teacher who everyone was afraid of. He would put kids on the spot. He was very intense and in your face. I would be so nervous, that I would always run the mile in PE class faster, which was my class before algebra.

I was so scared of him that I put in the extra time and effort to do well, and I turned my test grades around. He said it was the most impressive improvement he’s seen. That meant the world to me. But I think he gave me a psychosomatic illness. I never did that well in another math class again.

But he was fired the next year after too many students and parents complained about him. He was like the math teacher version of that movie Whiplash.
 
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cnev3 said:
I’ve been using iOS since I got an iPod Touch at Costco in 2010. Maybe its because iOS has to handle so many more things in 2018 than it did in 2010, but I can’t help but wonder if all these bugs I experience now are the result of Apple being under new leadership.

With Steve Jobs, employees feared making a mistake, because he didnt hesitate firing them. They were also starved to get some of his approval. Then he had that reality distortion field, which motivated his teams to accomplish almost impossible tasks. Engineering problem solving. Meeting ridiculously short deadlines. The original mac team did amazing things.

Tim Cook is a warm, empathetic, well tempered manager. But I believe that his staff loosened their belts and relaxed when he came on board, and now it shows in their work. I think the fact that the departure of a few key players is also a factor.

I encounter so many little mishaps. Siri doesnt respond. My set timer disappears. My screen wont reorientate. Apps crash more often. Updates are pushed out more often, resembling Windows critical updates.

Apple certainly had their share of blunders when Jobs was CEO, but those occasional issues were resolved in a timely matter. This handful of small issues I have persists. Even after new iOS versions, and even after my phone was replaced with a new one.

Anyone else feel the same way?
Click to expand...
I think iOS has a lot of useless features. It’s too complicated.
 
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eyoungren said:
If Steve dying had any sort of effect then personally I believe it comes down to this, rather than your explanation.

Steve was a check on Jony Ive's excess. Now that check is gone and Ive only answers to Cook. Cook is a manager, not a designer so Ive pretty much gets his way - even if it's crap.

Since Ive was also placed in charge of iOS development then we get garbage like dancing poop emojis and unicorns that are marketed as features rather than focusing on fixing bugs or implementing real features.

In short, I blame Ive, not Cook.
Click to expand...
I’m with you. Jobs placed Ive on a pedestal and often sided with him, but there’s still Jobs as a checkpoint. Now that there’s no Jobs, Ive is like an unchecked power. We get silly things from the stupid holes on the iPhone 5C cases, to the thick white lines on the iPhone 6/6S. iOS 7 put too much emphasis on transparency and motion that Apple itself started to reduce those in newer versions, showing Ive going overboard.
 
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