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Has iOS become buggier since Jobs died?
- Thread starter cnev3
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I certainly could have used him when I was in high school. Algebra was the only class I ever failed.
It’s the natural progression of software. Are they supposed to just stop adding stuff and say “that’s good enough!”?
If Apple slows their roll and ONLY adds features everybody considers useful people will say their innovation has died. Even then some will consider the features gimmicks because not everybody has the same needs.
It all comes down to “you can’t please everyone”.
One could argue that ALL software that has become more feature packed on a yearly deadline has gotten buggier since Jobs passed.
The problem with any product or service is you can only make it to a set quality if you add a deadline regardless of what you do or who you are.
Divide the work amongst a lot of people and it makes a disconnect that is difficult/impossible to get everyone on the same page. Have a bunch of people working on the same thing and there are too many hands in the pot. The key to a good product or service is good management, having the best people in the best position and everyone being involved being accountable for what should be a valuable contribution. This in itself is impossible because sometimes the best person is the best at multiple jobs or in our society (thankfully) that person is due for a promotion to something they might not be quite as good at.
Imagine your job (anyone) and a specific task you are working on. Dividing it 2 ways maybe beneficial but dividing it 50 ways may become chaos. Just like adding employees, add 2 people to help you and you get done faster, add 50 people and again its pandemonium. That hypothetical may not apply to everyone but I think you get the point.
Deadlines, while a necessary evil with the iPhone, iOS or similar products is also what hinders quality and its also something Steve Jobs was renowned for. You wouldn't tell your surgeon he has till 5 to get your quadruple bypass done before 5pm because...? Perfection takes time....
Jobs would omit things that weren't to his vision of perfect leaving iOS stable but otherwise lackluster. Perfection is the enemy of progress....
Jobs was a great visionary, and I think he was good at implementing but one man can only do so much. Businesses that lean on one person far apart and/or fade away when that person is gone however Apple has thrived. Their products have saturated the market so deep becoming a household name they are making things like Watches and Mini iPads just to continue to grow. A lot of people call any tablet an iPad even if it is much like Kleenex.
I think the question today would be, "where would Apple be today if Jobs was still around?" and honestly its hard to realistically imagine them doing better than they've been doing.
The problem with any product or service is you can only make it to a set quality if you add a deadline regardless of what you do or who you are.
Divide the work amongst a lot of people and it makes a disconnect that is difficult/impossible to get everyone on the same page. Have a bunch of people working on the same thing and there are too many hands in the pot. The key to a good product or service is good management, having the best people in the best position and everyone being involved being accountable for what should be a valuable contribution. This in itself is impossible because sometimes the best person is the best at multiple jobs or in our society (thankfully) that person is due for a promotion to something they might not be quite as good at.
Imagine your job (anyone) and a specific task you are working on. Dividing it 2 ways maybe beneficial but dividing it 50 ways may become chaos. Just like adding employees, add 2 people to help you and you get done faster, add 50 people and again its pandemonium. That hypothetical may not apply to everyone but I think you get the point.
Deadlines, while a necessary evil with the iPhone, iOS or similar products is also what hinders quality and its also something Steve Jobs was renowned for. You wouldn't tell your surgeon he has till 5 to get your quadruple bypass done before 5pm because...? Perfection takes time....
Jobs would omit things that weren't to his vision of perfect leaving iOS stable but otherwise lackluster. Perfection is the enemy of progress....
Jobs was a great visionary, and I think he was good at implementing but one man can only do so much. Businesses that lean on one person far apart and/or fade away when that person is gone however Apple has thrived. Their products have saturated the market so deep becoming a household name they are making things like Watches and Mini iPads just to continue to grow. A lot of people call any tablet an iPad even if it is much like Kleenex.
I think the question today would be, "where would Apple be today if Jobs was still around?" and honestly its hard to realistically imagine them doing better than they've been doing.
I disagree. I was an early adopter of the Apple Watch in 2015... when things were very slow and buggy, and I'd see only a few other Apple Watches in the wild. Today I can't swing a cat without hitting an Apple Watch, and it has been a huge success for Apple whether you view it in terms of the wearable market or the broader watch market. Yes there are some third party apps that don't work so well, but I've had no trouble finding third party apps that perform well on the Apple Watch. I've been using Siri to set reminders, make phone calls, and more on my Apple Watch for years. It sounds like it hasn't personally worked out for you, but it works well for countless others. The Apple Watch is the only reason I stayed with iOS and didn't switch to Android a couple of years ago. Perhaps Jobs would have delayed the release of the Apple Watch and required more internal testing first, but the Apple Watch was released just as the wearable market was heating up. If it had been delayed, a lot of iOS users (including myself) might have switched to Android. I'm quite sure I would have switched if Apple had not announced that the release of the Apple Watch was just around corner.
Personally I think the iOS ecosystem has only gotten better and more useful over time. Today there is very little I can do on my work computer that I can't do from my iPhone or iPad. That includes accessing a lot of system administrator tools and project/incident management software I use for work. That has been a huge benefit to me. The increase in utility has also made these devices more advanced and more complex. That creates more opportunities for bugs. The technology industry has changed from the days when companies like Apple and Microsoft would release giant software updates spaced months (or even a year) apart. Today software is continually updated on the fly, and new features are added before they are fully baked. It seems that being first, or quickly trying to catch up, is the emphasis... because they can always push a bug fix or an improvement out when it's ready. This is why we frequently feel like beta testers even though we are not installing the beta versions. Every day I use software by Apple, Microsoft, Atlassian, and Google. They all operate this way. Perhaps Jobs would have put his foot down, but there are also risks in taking too long when the market is so competitive.
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I've heard exactly the same thing said about virtually every technology that has lasted more than a few years. Technology almost always gets more complex the longer it sticks around. There is consumer demand for new features, and also the need to keep up with the competition. Because different people have different needs and wants, technology gets complicated because the manufacturer/developer wants to make everyone happy. Of course this also leads to success for companies that turn out simple products aimed at doing one thing really well. I know a lot of people who were attracted to smartphones and smartphone apps precisely because they were more focused and stripped down than similar desktop applications. But over time, as more people adopted smartphones and tablets as their preferred or only devices, we have seen mobile technology approach desktop technology in terms of complexity and computing power. The current crop of iPhones can do things that we couldn't have imagined 10 years ago... or even 5 years ago. I personally welcome these advances. Yes, I agree there are features that are useless. It's okay for something to be useless as long as it is still enjoyable, but there are even features that I would say are neither useful nor enjoyable for me (but others might like them). Fortunately I can easily avoid those features and focus on what I do value.
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I’ve had every iPhone since 2007. Actually, wait, let me read your whole post before responding. I’m driving.
These threads about the effects of Steve Job's death on Apple are annoying. For one thing, it's all just speculation what goes on inside Apple, and how that may have changed over time. How the heck can any of us know anything about what it's like within the organization, especially at the senior management level? Do we really think we can assess that based on the public personas of Ive, Cook, and others?
As for newspaper articles about former employees suing the company, these surely must be taken with a massive grain of salt. They are disgruntled ex-employees with an axe to grind and a lawsuit they hope to win.
As others have pointed out, iOS is an order of magnitude more complex than when Jobs was around. The feature list is many many times longer. iOS has its bugs, but I've continued to be very happy with their products, and iOS 12 with its focus on performance and reliability was a good move on Apple's part. It needs a few more patches, but it's pretty darn good already.
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I completely agree with everything you said here.
As for the Apple Watch, it's true that third party apps can be extremely frustrating to use, though that is really an issue for Series 2 and older models. I just upgraded from a Series 2 to a Series 4 and I can happily report that this issue has completely been eliminated for any well-written third party app. I understand the Series 3 comes reasonably close on performance. I guess Apple's silicon team just needed a few generations to get the CPU up to snuff. But first-party apps and functions have performed much better on the older watches, and they are near-instant now.
As for newspaper articles about former employees suing the company, these surely must be taken with a massive grain of salt. They are disgruntled ex-employees with an axe to grind and a lawsuit they hope to win.
As others have pointed out, iOS is an order of magnitude more complex than when Jobs was around. The feature list is many many times longer. iOS has its bugs, but I've continued to be very happy with their products, and iOS 12 with its focus on performance and reliability was a good move on Apple's part. It needs a few more patches, but it's pretty darn good already.
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I completely agree with everything you said here.
As for the Apple Watch, it's true that third party apps can be extremely frustrating to use, though that is really an issue for Series 2 and older models. I just upgraded from a Series 2 to a Series 4 and I can happily report that this issue has completely been eliminated for any well-written third party app. I understand the Series 3 comes reasonably close on performance. I guess Apple's silicon team just needed a few generations to get the CPU up to snuff. But first-party apps and functions have performed much better on the older watches, and they are near-instant now.
Bugs have affected me. As soon as they did I didn't abandon the company. I just never updated iOS again while still buying newer products (6s and 9.7 Pro on iOS 9, 7+ on iOS 10)
Ive can't design. It's horrible, compared to iOS 6 and older. Just my humble opinion. I will still use Apple - and never update - but I would rather have iOS 6 in every single device.
Apple just doesn't create emojis. There is a consortium that designs and approves them.
I guess having Jobs meant a tough boss to please, more of a perfectionist, and micromanager.
My iPhone 6S Plus was not happy until iOS 9.3, and iOS 10 was an improvement. But then every iOS version, and Mac OS suffered thru early half of year.
I think shipping new phones on top of new iOS is basically flawed and frougt with issues. From OS X 10.3.0 to present.
Yes new drivers are needed but have they learned from any iOS rollout and beta seed?
My iPhone 6S Plus was not happy until iOS 9.3, and iOS 10 was an improvement. But then every iOS version, and Mac OS suffered thru early half of year.
I think shipping new phones on top of new iOS is basically flawed and frougt with issues. From OS X 10.3.0 to present.
Yes new drivers are needed but have they learned from any iOS rollout and beta seed?
Yea, obtuse threads like this are a JOKE. Jobs died and Apple/iOS/iPhone continues to evolve and change. Correlation: NONE
It’s the black box phenomenon. People have no clue what a massively different world Android and iOS are from even 3 years ago (we’re talking current releases). To the normal person (read: non tech forum dweller) phones are outrageously expensive because they’re just a screen and some pixie dust rather than supercomputers if yesteryear in a handheld format.
Yes. Maybe Notes in iOS 12 changed (long tap to bring up on screen keyboard now?), but sometimes Notes won’t respond at all while I am writing (cue me violently poking my iPad to try to highlight a specific word or the space in between where I want the cursor to go. I have to quit and relaunch Notes in order to select the word or space).
And I still have that spazzing Safari browser that won’t let me scroll up or down, but jitters in placed, unless I reload the page. This happened on my iPad Pro too, so I do not think it is the 2018 iPad’s 2 gigs of memory.
I won’t even go into iOS 11.
And I still have that spazzing Safari browser that won’t let me scroll up or down, but jitters in placed, unless I reload the page. This happened on my iPad Pro too, so I do not think it is the 2018 iPad’s 2 gigs of memory.
I won’t even go into iOS 11.
Yes and no...
I think that Apple does suffer still from the same tendency that it was said to have under Jobs - that it couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
So we’ll have cutting edge software and hardware advances, whilst iCloud just sort of sits there with arguably its last major advance being iCloud Photo Library in 2015 - with its overall design (iCloud.com) being stuck somewhere in 2013.
So in the end.. yes and no. Apple under Cook is still as inspiring and infuriating as it was under Jobs.
And one final note - those of us who had to live with brushed metal in Finder, Safari and iTunes etc for many many years in OS X don’t exactly look back at the Jobs era as a gold standard in user experience!
- As many have said, iOS has become way more complex with more features.
- Yes/no? It’s hard to see how this would’ve been any different under jobs.
- Apple’s initial lead started to be significantly challenged by android phones after Job’s death, leading to the pressure to ship ever more features, year on year. The consequence are the bugs and problems that we’ve all had to live with for about the last 4 years. There is hope that with iOS 12 onwards we’re entering an era where stability, efficiency and speed will be prioritised as much as new features.
- Yes/no? Again, it’s hard to imagine that this would’ve turned out differently with Jobs
- iOS UI. It’s certainly becoming inconsistent and this is probably due to Ive not having the time to look at it. At the same time, iOS 4 and 5 had inconsistent UI patterns with each hallmark app having a skeumorphic theme. iOS now is more consistent.
- Yes/no? Hard to say. Would we have kept the skeumorphism under jobs or would he had ditched it? We’ll never know. Certainly that approach was feeling old by 2012
I think that Apple does suffer still from the same tendency that it was said to have under Jobs - that it couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
So we’ll have cutting edge software and hardware advances, whilst iCloud just sort of sits there with arguably its last major advance being iCloud Photo Library in 2015 - with its overall design (iCloud.com) being stuck somewhere in 2013.
So in the end.. yes and no. Apple under Cook is still as inspiring and infuriating as it was under Jobs.
And one final note - those of us who had to live with brushed metal in Finder, Safari and iTunes etc for many many years in OS X don’t exactly look back at the Jobs era as a gold standard in user experience!
I guess it's the old management question of is it better to scare your employees or inspire them to do their best?
Personally, I'd rather work where people are inspiring, I feel valued and I feel that I can progress - that then makes me want to do my best.
Yes, because iOS is now much more complex - current complexity has nothing to do with Mr Jobs or his passing. Also, after the 6/7/8 series, hardware is also changing rapidly, namely neural engine, 7nm SoC, GPU, camera....
So, rapidly changing hardware and increasingly complex software... Bugs? Yep we’ve heard of those.
Kudos to Apple for making iOS 12 much better - eh, after the shakedown period.
So, rapidly changing hardware and increasingly complex software... Bugs? Yep we’ve heard of those.
Kudos to Apple for making iOS 12 much better - eh, after the shakedown period.
I think in Apples case, it was both. Jobs drove his employees to do well, but the employees also knew their work was helping to create game changing products. And aside from Jobs being kind of a jerk, he was a brilliant products person who had a keen sense for great ideas and superlative designs.
iOS has always been buggy. So many bugs in the early days, and they were often more serious... kernel panics or resprings. I don't remember the last time I had one of those happen.
And while I'm tempted to say the bugs that exist now are usually more user-facing and obvious, I can remember bugs that were just as "how did they miss this?" back then.
I think the only difference now is that I have more iOS devices than I used to have, so I'm more likely to run into a bug just through greater use across more devices.
And while I'm tempted to say the bugs that exist now are usually more user-facing and obvious, I can remember bugs that were just as "how did they miss this?" back then.
I think the only difference now is that I have more iOS devices than I used to have, so I'm more likely to run into a bug just through greater use across more devices.
IOS has become much bigger, and way more complex, and therfore more bugs to solve, simple
Funny, few years ago compairing android and ios together, you couldnt have said ”android has become much bigger (=more functionalities than ios has today), and way more complex, and therfore more bugs to solve, simple
”But now when ios is ”bigger”, phones and ipads added more ram, it is just fine and ok to have bugs and extra ram needed. With android it was bad android, bad coding and poor ram management.
No, with ios and iphone/ipad i just can not understand how an earth there are so many simple bugs when a company does both the hardware and the software by controlling everything. And what comes to android i only can wonder how it is even possible to make a software handling so many features running on thousends of variants without major errors. Some knows how to code, some cant even pass the simple bugs...
iOS is dated and childish, the richest company on earth can only come up with this, lol pathetic. My jailbroken 4S had more features. I still can’t even properly copy and paste.