Comment by latexr
10 months ago
> Sometimes I’m so frustrated, and thinking of my options - it’s either move to Android, or go get hired at Apple with a mandate to fix bugs in various products…
Those aren’t options, they’re fantasies. Like dreaming of suing out of existence a company that wronged you, or fixing the world by ruling it, or winning the lottery without playing.
Android isn’t perfect either, it’s a different set of frustrations. And why would Apple ever need to hire you for that specific task, do you really believe there aren’t engineers inside just as frustrated as we are?
The way I see it, the yearly release cycle is to blame. No one inside the company has time to do anything properly anymore. Features are announced and rushed every year, and we’re reaching the point where by the time something which was announced at a WWDC is out of beta, we’re preparing for the next one.
What these companies need to do is slow down and stop chasing every shiny thing. You know, like Apple used to do with macOS. Tim Cook needs to go.
While I agree that it's Tim Cook's responsibility to set the course and influence the culture, I doubt a new CEO will be able to so.
I'm not saying nobody can be like Steve Jobs, but Steve Jobs was an anomaly when it comes to C-Levels, and even when it comes to management in general, at least from reading things like www.folkore.org and interviews with people who worked with him.
And I'm not even talking about talent or vision or whatever, it's just about saying no to pointless features that are there for someone's ego or so that someone can get a promotion.
Tim Cook overrides the advice of high-ranking employees in the name of greed and profit, even when warned such decisions will sour long term relationships.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/26/testimony-on-external-pur...
I’m not saying anyone will be better than Tim Cook, I’m saying he’s actively bad. Will his successor be actively bad too? Maybe, but the sooner we find out, the better.
Why is this stuff not reported in the mainstream media?
The general publics opinion of Apple is that they are golden and untouchable, the best tech company out there. The reality is much different.
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Tim Cook strikes me as a bean counter.
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Steve Jobs wasn't an anomaly because he was Steve Jobs; he was the anomaly because he was the founder and CEO. Founder C-suites can foundationally get away with actual innovation in a way that the board refuses to permit for their successors.
Back in the 90s, Apple seemed to have a lot of these same problems. Software quality was declining and they had real trouble executing on anything strategic. They aren't there yet, but they certainly seem to be headed down a similar path.
I have been saying this for years: consistent deterioration of ACs/DoDs. There is no limit to scrum and especially the constant refinement to ACs/DoDs.
Yes, you may implement a solution more efficiently by not overengineering it. But at some point constant seek to reduce "complexity" so that more features fit into sprint (funny how story point measure complexity, not time, but sprint is sized in both time and SP capacity) is bound to hit feature completeness. Once you cross over that metaphorical Rubicon it's game over - quality starts to slowly go downhill.
You will not notice it immediately. That edge case that was ignored may not surface for months or years. It may take several idiosyncrasies to line up for a feature to be declared FUBAR. At some point that technical debt does bite you back, but at that point the process (tm) has already optimized away most if not all opportunities for deep refactorings fixing previous rushes to deliver.
First off - it's a sprint forecast, not a sprint commitment. A sprint is timeboxed in the sense of guaranteeing some delivery of incremental functionality for a product on a regular basis. It's aim is not to backdoor the mapping of time to points.
Furthermore, Sprint Planning/Refinement are just innocuous ceremonies whose only aim is to facilitate productive discussion between a Product Owner/Manager and an Implementation team as regards delivery timelines and priority ordering thereof. Done properly, it allows a pragmatic approach to achieving a predictable software delivery cadence via mutual compromise.
If the process turns into 'fit as many features into the sprint as possible' at the expense of Performance/Stability/Functionality or Technical Debt accumulation, you're really just doing the 'fast' version of Cheap/Fast/Good Waterfall Project Management.
Most consumer electronics companies are like this. It's not only a yearly release cycle but a Christmas release cycle. New Shiny Thing has to be in the stores by late November so all development has to be done in August so the factories can start producing the first trial batches.
I never buy products when they are first released. I prefer to wait at least 3-4 months so that production has had time to tweak all the settings and weed out the funky first component deliveries. Also the software devs will have fixed the worst bugs by then.
I am entirely sure that a notes app can be updated in january.
> The way I see it, the yearly release cycle is to blame. No one inside the company has time to do anything properly anymore. Features are announced and rushed every year, and we’re reaching the point where by the time something which was announced at a WWDC is out of beta, we’re preparing for the next one.
At many places where I've worked, the mentality is: "If that bug didn't block last year's release, then why would it block this year's release?" So it survives one release, it never gets fixed.
> The way I see it, the yearly release cycle is to blame.
I don't see a connection between yearly release cycles and a broken notes application. They shouldn't be doing anything that is particularly affected by such changes and the problem they are trying to solve has been mostly solved for 40+ years now.
While it certainly applies to some things, there's a different, bigger issue happening as well.
My understanding is that Apple outsources loads of software not seen as "critical". I think that's the first place for them to look.
The release cycles seem to lead to an annual reshuffling of teams to meet deadlines causing quality issues for anything that is not an advertised feature.
Some of this could be resolved by open sourcing their less important apps like Files, Notes or Home which barely ever get touched, yet are full of quirks and bugs. Those apps should be public examples of good SwiftUI coding.
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> What these companies need to do is slow down and stop chasing every shiny thing
Who is dealing in fantasies now, friend? :)
Apple's software really isn't in crisis. It's just very low quality relative to what people who've written software for a living know to be possible.
But it doesn't matter - Apple is a prestigious jobs guarantee program for rich kids first, entity that delivers value to consumers second.
It's not that they're chasing shiny things. They're cosplaying competence and they genuinely don't know it. They think they're actually competent, elite really, because they attend 'elite' schools, get good grades and go work at the 'best' places.
They have it ingrained in them that anything a poor person says can be disregarded because poor people are losers, because they're poor. They're an unintentional suicide cult. They genuinely don't know it. You can't convince them of anything because they are rich. If you complain - go see a therapist, there's something wrong with you.
You can youtube search Garys Economics. It's a poor kid who slipped into the rich kids club and defected. It's quite eye opening.
> Who is dealing in fantasies now, friend?
I said they need to, not that I think they will. But they have in the past. There is a reason Snow Leopard is still lauded today.
> It's just very low quality relative to what people who've written software for a living know to be possible.
No, it’s low quality relative to what Apple users came to expect. There was a time when “it just works” was an aspirational goal which permeated their decisions and you could see the results.
> Apple is a prestigious jobs guarantee program for rich kids first, entity that delivers value to consumers second.
What a bizarre conspiracy theory. No company gets to that stratospheric level of success by making hiring incompetent rich kids their primary goal.
Feel free to tell me where I said it was a primary goal.
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