How come nobody really complained about how buggy iOS 15 was during the beta phase?

[Jayson A]

I'm just wondering. Where were all these issues during the iOS 15 betas?

...or did people just go "meh, it's still in beta, so bugs are expected, guess it will be all set when it releases"

The whole point of betas is to find the bugs and report them! Beta firmware isn't just some early access preview software to play around with.

I'm glad I haven't updated yet and I don't know if I ever will until new hardware forces me to (has nothing to do with CSAM or privacy concerns).

I'm happily on a stable, mostly bug-free iOS 14.8. Sad that my Apple watch no longer auto-unlocks though.

 

[ioerror.exec]

Not all are covered during beta phase as there are little users who are using beta.

Consider that each users have different way of using the phones. It may be bug free from one and opposite on the other.

So these kind of things are expected during the first few versions of the update.

Example is iOS 14. How many revisions were made until its mostly stable? Up to 14.8 …

 

[Jayson A]

Example is iOS 14. How many revisions were made until its mostly stable? Up to 14.8 …

Not sure, I can't say I really ever had an issue with iOS 14. The only thing I can think of is when it first came out, sometimes typing would be laggy in messages. I don't recall any other issues. Seemed pretty stable to me since release. Although, like I said, just recently they broke the ability to let the iPhone unlock my Apple watch.

 

[Cobold]

As it seems at the moment, most of the issues people are having are with iPhone 13 series. So it was impossible to test (outside Apple).

On my 12, my X and my iPad Pro 2018, I have zero issues with iOS 15 (with final build as well as during the betas).

 

[Samdh90]

Along what @Cobold stated about the 13 specifically, a lot of the issues manifested at beta 8, by that point, it was just too late in the game since the RC was the next build. Also, Apple has generally prided themselves with a September public launch. If development was pushed back, we would have had the same fiasco we did last year.

Personally, software development should not ever be rushed but tell that to a company, haha.

 

[sparksd]

Along what @Cobold stated about the 13 specifically, a lot of the issues manifested at beta 8, by that point, it was just too late in the game since the RC was the next build. Also, Apple has generally prided themselves with a September public launch. If development was pushed back, we would have had the same fiasco we did last year.

Personally, software development should not ever be rushed but tell that to a company, haha.

"software development should not ever be rushed " - lol, schedule is money and king. (I'm a retired s/w & h/w engineer & manager, started in '71)

 

[Jayson A]

Along what @Cobold stated about the 13 specifically, a lot of the issues manifested at beta 8, by that point, it was just too late in the game since the RC was the next build. Also, Apple has generally prided themselves with a September public launch. If development was pushed back, we would have had the same fiasco we did last year.

Personally, software development should not ever be rushed but tell that to a company, haha.

Yeah that makes sense, but I'm also hearing about iOS 15 being just generally buggy on devices that aren't the 13 models and new releases.

I wonder why they wanted to give people the option to stay on iOS 14....

 

[w5jck]

I’m wondering what effects from working at home during the pandemic has had. I would not be surprised if many of the developers were not putting in the time they should have been, and many were probably dealing with a family also at home and underfoot. If working at home proves to be a major cause in the increased bugginess of the past two iOS/iPadOS versions 14 and 15, then maybe it is time to rethink that process. Clearly something is going wrong within the Apple development process, whatever it is they need to address it and get busy squashing all the bugs.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

Not sure, I can't say I really ever had an issue with iOS 14. The only thing I can think of is when it first came out, sometimes typing would be laggy in messages. I don't recall any other issues. Seemed pretty stable to me since release. Although, like I said, just recently they broke the ability to let the iPhone unlock my Apple watch.

I had bugs all the way to the last version of iOS14 that were never fixed. iOS15 fixed some of them but introduced some new ones. They're all minor (just like 14.8) and really doesn't bother me.

 

[sparksd]

I’m wondering what effects from working at home during the pandemic has had. I would not be surprised if many of the developers were not putting in the time they should have been, and many were probably dealing with a family also at home and underfoot. If working at home proves to be a major cause in the increased bugginess of the past two iOS/iPadOS versions 14 and 15, then maybe it is time to rethink that process. Clearly something is going wrong within the Apple development process, whatever it is they need to address it and get busy squashing all the bugs.

Yeah. As I mentioned above, I'm retired now but on my last program I had technical oversight over 170 S/W & H/W engineers on a multi-billion dollar contract with a tight schedule and a lot of technical challenges. I don't know how I could have done the job under current conditions and from what I hear, it's really tough back on the old job these days.

 

[Jayson A]

I had bugs all the way to the last version of iOS14 that were never fixed. iOS15 fixed some of them but introduced some new ones. They're all minor (just like 14.8) and really doesn't bother me.

What bugs did you have in iOS 14? I'm just curious since I use it all the time and hardly ever notice any issues.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

What bugs did you have in iOS 14? I'm just curious since I use it all the time and hardly ever notice any issues.

Unlock phone with watch (wearing mask), battery use issues on different releases (14.2, 14.6, 14.7 was fixed on 14.7.1), predictive text would not enter the entire word (random bug), incoming call bug (random) those are the ones off my head

 

[bluecoast]

I seem to remember that many said that Safari was terrible from the outset on both iOS 15 and Monterey betas.

And is it really to do with the pandemic?

ios 11 & 13 were terrible and buggy on launch too - 11 was pretty bad throughout it’s entire lifespan imho - and everyone was in the office back then.

So WFH doesn’t explain it.

A three month beta period and then tying your new iOS release to your most important product probably does explain why they so often get in a mess.

And why general software quality is tracking downwards YoY at Apple.

Time for a huge huge rethink of your software release schedule, Apple. This can’t keep on happening.

 

[gwhizkids]

Yeah. As I mentioned above, I'm retired now but on my last program I had technical oversight over 170 S/W & H/W engineers on a multi-billion dollar contract with a tight schedule and a lot of technical challenges. I don't know how I could have done the job under current conditions and from what I hear, it's really tough back on the old job these days.

I’ve been saying this over on the speculation and 15.1 b2 threads. You can do a lot with Zoom/Slack/Teams/ FaceTime, but you cannot replicate being in an office and collaborating in person. Plus there are probably additional security protocols in place to prevent leaks, intentional and accidental. All of this adds up to a lot of friction and likely a far less cohesive development process.

And as you said, schedule is king. The product WILL ship on time.

 

[sparksd]

I’ve been saying this over on the speculation and 15.1 b2 threads. You can do a lot with Zoom/Slack/Teams/ FaceTime, but you cannot replicate being in an office and collaborating in person. Plus there are probably additional security protocols in place to prevent leaks, intentional and accidental. All of this adds up to a lot of friction and likely a far less cohesive development process.

And as you said, schedule is king. The product WILL ship on time.

Yeah, I really found it critical in my job to be able to sit down face to face with people, both in the office and when I had to go out and talk with our customer to discuss difficult issues. I hated every teleconference I was in.

 

[Tagbert]

I'm just wondering. Where were all these issues during the iOS 15 betas?

...or did people just go "meh, it's still in beta, so bugs are expected, guess it will be all set when it releases"

The whole point of betas is to find the bugs and report them! Beta firmware isn't just some early access preview software to play around with.

I'm glad I haven't updated yet and I don't know if I ever will until new hardware forces me to (has nothing to do with CSAM or privacy concerns).

I'm happily on a stable, mostly bug-free iOS 14.8. Sad that my Apple watch no longer auto-unlocks though.

I'm not sure that these bugs are showing up for everyone. I have not really run across most the bugs that have been mentioned. either because they aren't happening or the use case is not something I would ever do. If the beta pool is not large enough, you may not see enough instances to be noticed.

It's hard to know what the actual instance of bugs is, if we only go from the comments on this site.

 

[Abazigal]

I'm just wondering. Where were all these issues during the iOS 15 betas?

...or did people just go "meh, it's still in beta, so bugs are expected, guess it will be all set when it releases"

The whole point of betas is to find the bugs and report them! Beta firmware isn't just some early access preview software to play around with.

I'm glad I haven't updated yet and I don't know if I ever will until new hardware forces me to (has nothing to do with CSAM or privacy concerns).

I'm happily on a stable, mostly bug-free iOS 14.8. Sad that my Apple watch no longer auto-unlocks though.

I ran the public beta on my iPad Pro but not my iPhone (and the unlocking bug seems to be specific to the iPhone 13 model, so it wouldn't have been an issue that would have cropped up either way). I can vouch that the quality of the software betas had improved steadily from the first iteration all the way to the public release, so it's not that the software engineers at Apple had been resting on their laurels. I guess there were simply too many issues to fix and they prioritised the more major ones.

 

[moyjoy]

I'm just wondering. Where were all these issues during the iOS 15 betas?

...or did people just go "meh, it's still in beta, so bugs are expected, guess it will be all set when it releases"

The whole point of betas is to find the bugs and report them! Beta firmware isn't just some early access preview software to play around with.

I'm glad I haven't updated yet and I don't know if I ever will until new hardware forces me to (has nothing to do with CSAM or privacy concerns).

I'm happily on a stable, mostly bug-free iOS 14.8. Sad that my Apple watch no longer auto-unlocks though.

Those threads are still up there. Have you read through them? Apple may have simply decided it was good enough to release in spite of the reported bugs.

 

[marzfreerider]

I had iOS 15 beta since day 1 and reported quite a few bugs, some got fixed and some didn't. Most of the bugs had a lot of tickets in to report but just haven't been dealt with. I reported connectivity issues, CarPlay, Maps and Weather app issues (some of them were reported more than 4 times). Things are prioritized as what Apple deems necessary not the beta testers. We all do our part by installing/using the betas and report the issues we have to Apple. Most of the betas weren't bad, the last few kind of got worse. I still have open feedback from beta 1 that hasn't been fixed.