Why do things break?

[GrumpyTrucker]

I'll start with the obvious. I'm not a developer, so my interactions with beta software is public betas only. I'm aware that there will be bugs in the betas and I don't get too cranky about that. However, why does an iOS update bring bugs into the beta for the core system functions? I'm not talking new features, or things where old features might have new hooks that cause their own issues, but just things that suddenly don't work quite right in parts of the OS that have been around for ages.

For example, on my phone (and I realise all installs will be different) I've had the following:

1) Snooze not being able to be cancelled, just keeps counting to minus times. This might be related to the new widget integration so I'll give this one a slight pass
2) Volume slider in control centre does nothing sometimes
3) When using text replacements that include an emoji from the quick type bar in any app the app crashes
4) Animations choppy and/or the whole phone just freezes temporarily while scrolling or typing.

And a couple of others. All issues have been filed using Feedback Assistant.

On my iPad I've had an odd one where at random intervals the rotation lock appears to be active (I can't rotate the screen) even though it isn't. Only a restart will fix it. For a while.

I have no issues or complaints when new stuff doesn't work in a beta, but can't get my head around how stuff that has worked for ages sometimes doesn't. I'll happily take an explanation that I can understand, and just crack on.

 

[lagwagon]

Simple. Many of those areas in which you mention are areas that are being redesigned. So code is changing. Which can introduce new bugs.

 

[EJ8]

As lagwagon said. Most of these are due to redesign and to be expected.

 

[lagwagon]

Also another thing to consider too on top of areas being redesigned. Apple is slowly rewriting portions of iOS in Swift (to eventually be fully written in Swift.) As portions get rewritten, it can introduce new bugs that previously weren't there.

 

[eoblaed]

Also, it's quite common for code change in area 'A' to have unintended consequences in area 'B'. This is especially true where there are not-so-obvious dependencies or integration points between areas.

 

[entropi]

The way some features just disappears puzzles me. What happened to audiobooks in iOS 7? And why was it not brought back until iOS 8/9?

For me, it's just obvious that they bring it back in another version just to force people to upgrade! just like the fact that I can't take a photo while playing audio in iOS 9 - like I always did in iOS 7 - but that will suddenly be possible in iOS 10 again... just like magic.

 

[lagwagon]

The way some features just disappears puzzles me. What happened to audiobooks in iOS 7? And why was it not brought back until iOS 8/9?

For me, it's just obvious that they bring it back in another version just to force people to upgrade! just like the fact that I can't take a photo while playing audio in iOS 9 - like I always did in iOS 7 - but that will suddenly be possible in iOS 10 again... just like magic.

Weren't audiobooks moved to the podcast app? Or something like that.

As for not being able to play music when taking a photo. That was due to Live Photos on the 6s/6s+ and SE. It was just corrected in iOS 10, more than likely due to feedback.

 

[XTheLancerX]

Also, it's quite common for code change in area 'A' to have unintended consequences in area 'B'. This is especially true where there are not-so-obvious dependencies or integration points between areas.

Yeah I'm new to learning Python and I can already see how tweaking a variable here could cause detrimental effects there, cause an important while loop or if statement to simply be broken for example. Computers are picky. Not sure if it even works that way in something as huge as an operating system at all but still. I'm sure the general idea still applies even across different programming languages. Perhaps for third party apps, certain APIs or ways the OS handles things may get just slightly tweaked, so if that API or certain protocol is in use on an outdated app, it will totally crash or specific features will completely break. For graphical things, I'm assuming very small changes can completely change the way a computer "sees" something and they way it calculates it. This must have been happening a lot with iOS 9 as the entire graphics framework was reworked for Metal. Remember how devices that had Metal support for iOS 9 were really laggy at first when the same tasks were perfectly smooth in iOS 7 and 8? I'm sure a TON of tweaking had to happen to fix a lot of that, and now I bet it looks way different "under the hood" in the graphical department.

 

[lagwagon]

Yeah I'm new to learning Python and I can already see how tweaking a variable here could cause detrimental effects there, cause an important while loop or if statement to simply be broken for example. Computers are picky. Not sure if it even works that way in something as huge as an operating system at all but still. I'm sure the general idea still applies even across different programming languages. Perhaps for third party apps, certain APIs or ways the OS handles things may get just slightly tweaked, so if that API or certain protocol is in use on an outdated app, it will totally crash or specific features will completely break. For graphical things, I'm assuming very small changes can completely change the way a computer "sees" something and they way it calculates it. This must have been happening a lot with iOS 9 as the entire graphics framework was reworked for Metal. Remember how devices that had Metal support for iOS 9 were really laggy at first when the same tasks were perfectly smooth in iOS 7 and 8? I'm sure a TON of tweaking had to happen to fix a lot of that, and now I bet it looks way different "under the hood" in the graphical department.

I bet there is very little code left from iOS 7 days. With all the new things, changes they've made. And all the foundations they've built for future use/expansion.