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Have you noticed the quality of Apple has gotten worse compared to years ago?

I’ve found the hardware has been solid and kept me buying Apple for 20 years. My first hiccup was with the Pro Display XDR this year where I went through 4 units and all were not meeting the standards I’d expect from a £4500 display but also from Apple. I went through the 5 stages of grief, simply because I’ve owned dozens of Apple products since the early 00s and figured I was unlucky. Dead pixels on every unit. Glass not attached correctly. Glue sticking out the sides between glass and body. Marks on the casing. Dirty screen effect.

I’ve been trying to work out whether they moved factory for the Pro Display XDR this year or something, because it seemed quality control was just not catching these issues. I remember Steve Jobs saying ‘our competitors buy the panels we reject!’ when announcing the aluminium cinema displays. Maybe not these days…

Anyway, I gave up and dusted off an old ACD 30” and 20” to get me through until they -hopefully- update either the PDXDR or ASD.

However, I will say that everything else I’ve owned or overseen recently has been great. I set up a lot of devices for my workplace and haven’t had any issues with hardware.

Software always seems pot luck per iteration, depending on whatever the engineers are being pushed to focus on I guess.

My main gripe with software (iOS in this example) is when stock apps won’t scroll. Happens every other day. Music app. Can’t scroll through songs. Contacts. No scroll. Just freezes randomly.
 
The one piece of hardware that ALWAYS leaves me hung up is the keyboard. Not only the terror we call Butterfly keys, but also the new regular Magic Keyboards for Macs. Invariably the keys become sticky or unresponsive.
Otherwise, the hardware as made by Apple still holds up a very high standard compared to what else is on the market and is a benchmark for other brands. They try to cut costs, of course and it becomes noticeable (as with most products, sadly). Software has been a nightmare during Covid and we can all imagine how Remote Work and other stuff interfered with a regular workflow – Sonoma and 17 have been a good experience for me so far, except for the new Screensavers killing my beloved WordClock by Simon Heys, like all legacy Screensavers. . .
 
Yes and no:

Apple has expanded services and total number of products way beyond what I could have imagined 10 years ago. Some great, some bad.

On top of this, all things tech and Apple have "matured" to a point where we take more and more for granted, and have started to nitpick the finer details of software and hardware.

Of course, Apple is partly to blame for this as they keep refining/over-engineering more and more aspects of their products, which leads to more and more points of failure, more and more "promises" that they might not live up to.

But overall, I don't feel things have gotten worse.

Day-to-day, I go through just as many phases of being frustrated with a bug or limitation of an Apple product to being elated over how well something works. It's always been like that.

And for contrast, I also own consumer electronics and home appliances from other brands and find myself, on average, being much more frustrated with those compared to the average Apple product.

By large, I'm satisfied with my Apple products.

The only big issue I have with Apple right now is the aggressive product segmentation that's not giving us better products, but more and more very low-value, feature-cut budget versions of great products.

Examples of these terrible products are Beats headphones, Apple Pencil (USB-C), iPhones SE (2022 & 2020), MBP 13", Watch SE, iPad (10.9") 10th Gen.

Apple keeps doing too much product segmentation, making too many "new" products with old, outdated, low-end specs and parts.

So, yes, Apple has gotten worse. But I can easily stay "ignorant" of it if I don't let myself get fooled into buying any of its terrible "SE"-efied products.
 
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Not at all. Hardware quality is still the best, compared to other manufacturers. Software is still much better, in general, than on other platforms. The OS is still much better.

There was, I believe, a bit of a slump in hardware quality with the first flat-panel iMacs and MacBooks. I saw quite a few Macs of that era, in poor shape. But Apple did pick things up and improve. There have been hiccups, like the latest iPhone 15 range, but Apple generally sort things out over time. Compare Apple hardware to most other comparable products, and the Apple stuff is just that bit better. Sony earpods just aren't as nice as Apple Airpods, for eg, and you tend to have to spend quite a lot to get anything matching Apple quality. I think a lot of other manufacturers tend to rush products out just to be the first to get something to market, but Apple prefer to wait and get things 'right'. This is a better strategy imo. Seen plenty of crappy Samsung products. And it's intersting that when anyone does make something decent, it's invariably a copy of an Apple product, which is testament to Apple's superior design and manufacturing quality. And it's no cheaper, either. So...
 
You can tell the post Apple Watch users. Pick up an old iBook or PowerBook G4 and let me know how reliable it is compared to what we have today.
 
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Spooner83 said:
Remember years ago when Apple was thriving and couldn’t be matched? They had this unspoken slogan of “it just works.” Now, I have so many issues with just about all of my Apple devices from speed, to bugs, to reliability, to Siri. It just seems like Apple has lost quality and charm. Some examples include how the iPhone 15 pro models have basically given us no major changes than the previous model.

HomePod minis are the worst device Apple has ever released. We have switched internet providers several times and have so many issues with HomePod minis. Siri is always unreliable, gets requests and queries wrong almost every time, does random requests that we didn’t ask. I’ll never buy a HomePod mini again.

My reminders app hasn’t worked correctly since iOS 7. It’s the slowest, laggy app I’ve ever used. Yes, I constantly clear the completed reminders, it doesn’t help.

My Apple watch now displays a white stripe on the date and I have restored it several times but it still hasn’t been fixed. Apple says I have a beta installed but I’ve never installed a beta 🤷‍♂️

I have troubleshooted all of these issues with Apple for years and there hasn’t been a fix for any of them. It’s so strange that they can’t fix these issue that I haven’t caused. They’re all bugs.

So, I’m still an Apple fan but their quality has gone so downhill in recent years that it’s depressing. Their answer for a lot of things is to “reinstall” but that never works and their products should work properly without us having to reinstall and lose all non-iCloud settings just because they can’t figure out how to fix their bugs.

I’m not asking anyone to agree with me, it won’t make me feel better to know that others agree. I’m just venting about the quality of Apple. Hope they restore their old image but it’s doubtful they will. You can do it if you actually care, Apple.
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That's bonkers.

If you tried to implement the complexity of modern software and devices 10 or 20 years ago it would have been an enormously difficult thing to do.

It's not quality that has gone down. It is complexity that has gone up.

You can't today to a time when the operating system was much simpler, there were far fewer operating systems and far fewer devices. What existed a decade or more ago was child's play compared to all the sensors, wireless technologies, synching devices, APIs and cloud services we have now.

There were plenty of bugs back then too. Probably proportionately higher.
 
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Apple’s software nowadays is over an order of magnitude more complex than it used to be.

For example, iPhone OS 3 included 452 binaries.
iOS 17 includes 6030 binaries.

When Steve was still at the helm, the list of new features for iPhone included basics like copy and paste (iPhone OS 3) or having a wallpaper on the Home Screen (iOS 4).

Sure, the quality of Snow Leopard seemed great. But what does it imply about the quality of a software project like Mac OS X Leopard if you find yourself in the position to have to announce a major OS release with “0 new features” in the first place and have the vast majority of customers applauding a complete standstill of feature development?

iCloud nowadays is mostly working very well, syncing tons of things silently in the background. MobileMe or .Mac were laughably bad.

Apple’s software engineering is in a much better place. They have more extensive automated testing in place, new languages like Swift that eliminate entire classes of bugs etc.

But its system landscape is also unfathomably more complex than it used to be. It’s puzzling people don’t seem to understand just how massive the difference in complexity is.

Not saying Apple is perfect and there aren’t glaring issues sometimes, but some perspective is needed here.
 
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A
eicca said:
Absolutely. They used to be all about getting out of your way and giving you all the easiest, most efficient tools to run your workflow the way you wanted.

Now they are all about defining the workflow for you. You do things their way because they decided it’s cool that way, but it’s often not.

Apple has gone from “it just works” to “we have decided how it works.”

The Mac Pro 5,1 is a prime example of good old Apple. I can do whatever I want with that machine and it’s STILL reliable. Most rock-solid piece of hardware I’ve ever used.

The M2 Mac Pro is a prime example of arrogant stupid modern Apple. They decided it was cool to make it highly limited in flexibility and shortchange pro users on what they actually need.

iPhone hardware has always been great for me though. But the software certainly has become bloated and bug-riddled as the years go on.
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I really agree. Although I have to say that Shortcuts has become a really great „non Apple“ thing, as they basically gave us the ability to create our own features and functions. It’s a shame that automations are still limited and not available on Mac but I still think it’s a great step forward away from the „we know best what you want“ attitude. iOS feels a lot more mature even compared to 2 or 3 years ago, when it still felt more like a start-up system trying to catch up to Android, in my opinion.
 
Spooner83 said:
HomePod minis are the worst device Apple has ever released. We have switched internet providers several times and have so many issues with HomePod minis. Siri is always unreliable, gets requests and queries wrong almost every time, does random requests that we didn’t ask. I’ll never buy a HomePod mini again.
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I've noticed funny things with our HomePod Minis. Siri is often unreliable if we make appropriate request, like Hey Siri turn on the lights. It just does not react reliable, sometimes it works right away but often no matter how clearly you articulate request even again it acts as if it did not hear you. But the funny thing I've noticed is that if I say Hey Siri eat **** (or anything vulgar) it never misses to reply it, no matter if I even whisper it. You always get response something like I don't know what to say to that.
 
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As much as I hate this, I have to admit this is true. But not just Apple, all other brands too as well.
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Now I may sound like n Apple apologist here, but no. I think the underlying cause is that every companies seems to cut costs everywhere by lowering their quality to some degree. Why? Because they "learnt" their lesson back in 90s era: build products with quality that so good they last for eternity, then customers will stop upgrading. So they lower their build quality in order to keep us upgrade as often as possible.
This phenomenon becomes more and more apparent these days. And seemingly in all areas, not just tech. I'm sure if they allowed to cheap out their products, cutting out features, introduce bugs everywhere while raising the price significantly to keep us upgrade and buying their product every single month, they all will do it with glee.
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TL;DR: Capitalism.
 
Decrease in quality is becoming noticeable, but it's not just the hardware. Like another poster mentioned, Apple products used to just work. I can't think of a single Apple product I've purchased the last few years that didn't have some sort of issue.
 
MrMojo1 said:
iTunes for Windows says "a new iphone software version 17.1 is available for your IP 13PM.."
Then checked directly in the iPhone 13PM Software Update.. "16.7.2 is available".
That inconsistency needs to be fixed.
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Software Update on macOS Monterey won't tell me which version of Sonoma is available, just that it is available. Then, in less important script at the bottom "Other updates".

They need to have someone in charge to check each area for consistency. However, after all these years, they probably don't have a document for software update guidelines.
 
eicca said:
Absolutely. They used to be all about getting out of your way and giving you all the easiest, most efficient tools to run your workflow the way you wanted.

Now they are all about defining the workflow for you. You do things their way because they decided it’s cool that way, but it’s often not.

Apple has gone from “it just works” to “we have decided how it works.”

The Mac Pro 5,1 is a prime example of good old Apple. I can do whatever I want with that machine and it’s STILL reliable. Most rock-solid piece of hardware I’ve ever used.

The M2 Mac Pro is a prime example of arrogant stupid modern Apple. They decided it was cool to make it highly limited in flexibility and shortchange pro users on what they actually need.

iPhone hardware has always been great for me though. But the software certainly has become bloated and bug-riddled as the years go on.
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1,000 times this. When I see macOS screenshots from the High Sierra era, I’m reminded of when your Apple devices (especially Macs) were the go-to tools of creative professionals and brought those capabilities within reach for a lot more people. The MacPro5,1, as you mentioned, is an example of a powerful and flexible product with tremendous utility and longevity.

These days, Apple is all about taking away your options and forcing their expected method/workflow on you (which granted, is extremely polished with significant “wow” factor, but may not be ideal for all cases or may simply not always work). Many of their products (hardware and software) lately seem to get away from enabling the individual, as well as in many cases being solutions in search of problems.
 
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