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

[scrapesleon]

Software these days is much better and more reliable than in iOS8-11 and OS X El Capitan, Sierra,... days.

You can’t be serious did u even used those software because they were way better than now

 

[Mr. Dee]

When I think about the fact we have a device in the palm of our hands that can do HD video calls anytime, anywhere from around the world, record cinematic videos, run Microsoft Excel, capture high resolution photos, do online banking, make purchases, assist navigation. We have it super good. That’s just the phone, the desktop computers, tablets, watches and other accessories are second to none. I’m rooting for the Vision Pro and think it will be the next leap in computing.

 

[souko]

You can’t be serious did u even used those software because they were way better than now

Yes, of course.
My MBP13” 2015 was crashing with El Capitan.3 I think. Animations were not fluid. Sierra got me some kernel panics. AirDrop was pain back then. Sometime working other times not. Not ideal times.
I did not have any kernel panics and no airdrop issues with Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma. I had some memory leaks and I had to restart computer once in 1-2 weeks because of that. But later versions were solid every time. (After .2 and after .3-.4 for me mostly bug free.)

iOS8 In the firste versions on iPad Air apps were crashing regularly. iOS 9 animations not fluid (really choppy) on iPhone 6. iOS 10 problems with screen rotation, some other. I do not remember exactly. I remember that I was really unsatisfied with that. Later versions were good. iOS 11 was the worst iOS for me by long shot. (iPhone 6S) Every time I had wet/dirty hands and touch id did not work with my fingers. And I needed to use passcode I did not see numbers I could not click them. I had to restart phone. It was almost every day for like half a year. I thought I would end with iOS… It had another problems like app crashes. Once when I tried printing Safari crashed. Have not used it again in iOS 11.
iOS 12, 14, 15, 16, 17 are mostly bug free for me. Sometime some lag, choppy animation,.. but much better than in the past.
Even iOS6 that is remembered as great, had problems. For example some app crashes for me.

So I would say it is idealization of old times and not remembering. Basic things now work. Yes, sometime problem with new featire that is usually sorted out after some time. But in iOS 11 especially, it was that basics did not work.

edit: Even dumb phones I had, I remember completely froze many times. Much more frequently than my iPhone today. And it was basic technology compared to current iPhones.

And I use my Mac much more and more heavily today than in El Capitan days.

 

[rumorguy]

Is Apple the same? The comments in MacRumors certainly are worse. Oh, and those are the ones trashing Apple. Seems circular.

 

[Lizzard899]

This was a interesting thread to read. I just got my new phone Tuesday. I went from iphone 8 which Ive had since 2018 or beginning of 2019 to the se 2022 model. I always update my ios. I was surprised when I was in the store and the new se phone didnt have ios 17.0.3 on it already. I told them I didnt have it on my 8 because it didnt get ios 17. Im noticing this se is different. All of my settings from icloud didnt roll over to the new phone. Like for instance it said I couldnt use some of the features unless I had 2fa on which I NEVER use. So Im still learning how to use it. Every ios has bugs in it. Usually they dont get fixed or stable until .3 or .4 Some things fix itself others dont.

 

[Matsamoto]

I’m not sure if the software or the hardware gone worse.
Maybe it’s both?

Been using iphones the last 8 years, and the last couple of years the software/hardware has been mediocre at best.

My previous iphone was the 12 PM and the phone before that was the XS Max.
Both phones had serious issues with disconnecting Bluetooth connection between iphone, Apple Watch and Airpods. Happened a couple of times a day.

Same with Wi-Fi signal.
Both the Xs Max and 12 PM disconnects from Wi-Fi and a start using LTE instead. Even if my cellular signal were weaker and slower connection.

It’s not because of a weak wifi signal from the router, because my work phone, a Samsung A40 has no issues with wifi disconnecting or Bluetooth disconnections.

So I sold my iphone 12 PM and now using a Samsung S23 256, and I’m very happy about it😊

 

[TallManNY]

Nope, haven’t noticed a decrease in quality. I’m aware that I own more Apple devices and more frequently interact with them since the days when I owned an iMac and an iPod and that was it. But as a percentage of time when the products fail me during a use of them, nope I haven’t noticed a decrease. The only thing that regularly doesn’t work great is Siri, but I can’t say it is worse than it used to be. In fact, Siri is better than it used to be. But yes with a dozen devices in the house between me and my wife that can call up Siri, yes we get some more random stuff. And we use Siri more than we did when Siri was launched.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

You can’t be serious did u even used those software because they were way better than now

I used every version of Mac OS except for the ones I skipped. And I strongly agree with souko's comment: "Software these days is much better and more reliable than in iOS8-11 and OS X El Capitan, Sierra,... days."

 

[Squillace]

Cool. You misquoted me. Where did I say it was a majority?

Come on, don't be that guy. The way you wrote your sentence leads that way and you know it.

 

[MBAir2010]

Im excited i can purchase a macmini m1 and a ipad gen that does exactly what i need.
instead of the upper tier products.

other computer companies cant provide the same quality.

 

[XboxEvolved]

Is Apple the same? The comments in MacRumors certainly are worse. Oh, and those are the ones trashing Apple. Seems circular.

That’s a good point but there are also many more people under the tent. When I joined these forums in 2004, obviously it was just people that were amazed that every single thing that Apple made even existed because we didn’t see stuff like that before. In a way it’s Apple’s fault for doing so good for so long, and I’d say probably 70-80% of the people in here didn’t even have Apple on their radar until after 2007. I would say a lot of us older folks are critical of Apple in a way that they are critical of a family member that no matter what they will still love.

Apple still to this day has a cult around it, even if that cult has been kind of deafened by Apple’s own success.

 

[HiVolt]

I've never had any major hardware issues with Apple stuff. I seem to have avoided the duds like the butterfly keyboard laptops or the ones with bad gpu's.

never had any issues with iphones/ipads.

but the software side is another story. they essentially release beta software on September iOS release, with missing features that trickle down in the next 5-6 months.

 

[SDRLS]

I also have the impression that their software quality has been in decline in the last few years. The meticulous polish of the Jobs era is just not there anymore. There are many examples of inconsistencies and persistent bugs.

Hardware on the other hand is top-notch. Best in the industry, by far. Excellent industrial design, material, and manufacturing teams. And their silicon division is the best on the planet.

there's something to be said about the older hardware they deemed "obsolete" too tho. My A1466 runs Sonoma just as good as my m2 does. It runs almost every part of the SW. and since I don't use it for games and I don't really need handoff, it's holding up pretty well for an 11 year old device.

 

[Abazigal]

I think the reason is because iOS used to do a lot less, so maybe the code was simpler and easier to keep relatively bug-free. It was probably around the iOS 7 era that Apple decided they needed to catch up to Android, functionality wise, and with the breakneck speed at which new features are being added to iOS and iPadOS, it's natural that there are going to be bugs, because the code is probably so much more complex now. Nor did you have complex algorithms performing millions of calculations in the background.

I remember iOS 7 being rough on my 5s (it would randomly re-spring a few times every day until 7.1?). iOS 11 was particularly harsh on my 9.7" iPad Pro in terms of battery life and performance, to the point where even the iOS 12 beta improved it significantly.

It's just the price of progress. The only way iOS is stable is if it doesn't get any more new features, and stays that way, and we know that will never work in today's breakneck pace of technological improvements.

 

[transpo1]

Nah. I remember iPhone 4-5S.

iPhone 4 was fantastic, not sure why you included that one. Overall, Apple software quality has gone downhill in the past 5 years. Too many glitches, not enough quality control. Tim really should realize how much this hurts the reputation of the company.

 

[transpo1]

I think the reason is because iOS used to do a lot less, so maybe the code was simpler and easier to keep relatively bug-free. It was probably around the iOS 7 era that Apple decided they needed to catch up to Android, functionality wise, and with the breakneck speed at which new features are being added to iOS and iPadOS, it's natural that there are going to be bugs, because the code is probably so much more complex now. Nor did you have complex algorithms performing millions of calculations in the background.

I remember iOS 7 being rough on my 5s (it would randomly re-spring a few times every day until 7.1?). iOS 11 was particularly harsh on my 9.7" iPad Pro in terms of battery life and performance, to the point where even the iOS 12 beta improved it significantly.

It's just the price of progress. The only way iOS is stable is if it doesn't get any more new features, and stays that way, and we know that will never work in today's breakneck pace of technological improvements.

I agree— it used to be simpler and so it was easier to control quality. But something needs to change, because of how bad it’s getting. They really should just use one major release to optimize, stabilize and fix glitches in the OS. That’s the best thing to do for the customer.

 

[Abazigal]

I agree— it used to be simpler and so it was easier to control quality. But something needs to change, because of how bad it’s getting. They really should just use one major release to optimize, stabilize and fix glitches in the OS. That’s the best thing to do for the customer.

I don’t know. Are customers really okay with iOS updates taking an “off” year every other year for Apple to prioritise bug fixing, or would they be willing to accept some degree of bugs and instability for new features to play around with every year?

With more than one billion active iPhone users (and with bugs impacting each user differently), I feel the correct answer may not be that apparent.

 

[mrmister]

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.

I think when people write this, they should be required to say which of the many eras of Apple they are looking back fondly at, because I was there for all of them, and there has always been bugs, bad products, strange products and more.

I love the company, but believe me, it's not all roses.

 

[mrmister]

The ONE product that I would agree is crap are the first gen Airpod Pros. They fail like Xbox 360s with RRoD. At least for me. I’ve had to get these damn things replaced at least 4 times already. They are terrible. And now my AppleCare coverage has ran out and I haven’t tried to get them replaced again but I doubt that Apple will replace them for free.

These are absolutely crap, but let me say—if you go in person to a store, and they are failing in the way that they do, they will replace them again. I know because I have had to.

 

[bice]

I don't know about quality going either direction, but the attitude towards proven concepts seems to have taken a big hit within apple.

For example dashboard, that likely worked very well for a lot of users was removed and everything what came after that has been bling-bling toys.

System settings might have had an outdated look, but the concept with an overview of categories and structured preference panes was fine. Replaced by something with zero overview and no structure.

Airdrop has had the same quality issues since inception - sometimes it just stops working and reboot of all devices are needed. That's is far from "it just works".

For every version of macos stuff gets moved around and changed/removed for no apparent reason. Some see it as the os getting tweaked, but to me it looks like changes for change's sake.

I, and people around me, use a mix of apple and android phones.
Text messages (and I mean SMS, not imessage / RCS chats) getting lost is an quality issue for me, but I guess it is a "feature" for Apple, it is not ment to work universally anymore.

Another issue I've seen is iphones running out of memory that can't easily be fixed. ios complains "no more memory, buy more icloud" and when user do, the phone can't sync to icloud becuase it is "out of memory", ie there is not enough space for even basic ios operations to run. In that situation, ios has already automatically removed all uninstallable apps and there is nothing more that can be delete to make space. (User removing images/vidoes does not help, as the speace is not freed up).
Having the OS handling low memory situations is a basic thing, and I don't think I've seen any other device getting into a non-recoverable memory situation in this millenium.

 

[OneSon]

Yes, I would say I've noticed an increase in problems in the last 5 years or so as well as a general frustration with Apple's software design. My first Apple products were the iPod touch, original MacBook Air and a 2012 iMac. They all worked brilliantly and in fact they all still work to this day. In the past 5 years I've bought the following;

iPhone XR: no problems at all with the hardware but I find iOS increasingly annoying.
MacBook Pro: had problems with connecting peripherals; eventually suffered a terminal hardware fault after 3 years.
24" iMac: generally fine although it suffers from the buzzing noise when screen brightness is below 70%.
iPad Air: generally fine although again I find the software very irritating. We've had new monitors installed at work and I'm having problems with screen mirroring on this iPad.

 

[myhaksown]

Oh stop with that nonsense already!! I hear this ridiculous argument way too much.

I totally disagree with you. Software was always very reliable with Apple. You could trust it wasn’t like windows vista where a software update could break things. Since around macOS Mojave you can’t quite rely on that. Features that worked bug out or the whole computer slows to a crawl for no reason. I could go on but I’ll move on to iOS. Since when did a new release start needing 3-5 updates to get new models to work. If it takes only a day or three to fix it why didn’t they catch it and fix it BEFORE release? Most of the bug fixes are experienced by a large number of users so it isn’t hidden from Apple. They just have much worse quality testing. On hardware I’d say they’ve stayed the same. It hasn’t really gotten better or worse quality wise.

They are worse than they used to be but somehow not yet worse than the competition.

 

[BMJT]

You must be new, Apple has had bumps in the road consistently for years, if not during their entire history.

 

[No_comment]

My iPhone 8 feels brand new. I can browse, podcast, call people, play music. Way better than a Blackberry Pearl.

I am starting to want a better camera though. ;-)

Stick with your 8 for the camera. The new iPhones with computational photography that distorts and oversharpens images with no way to turn it off is a real let down.

 

[No_comment]

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

You describe it so well there! Many times lately I find myself thinking ”why did they make it work this way, it is so stupid” when it used to be ”wow, they made this work so different from the average approach and this is so much better”.