On September 19, 2019, Apple released iOS 13, perhaps one of the biggest releases of its mobile platform. Since then in the span of ten days, iOS has gone from iOS 13 to iOS 13.1 to iOS 13.1 to, now, iOS 13.1.2. The rapid rate of releases isn’t exactly good news as only one (13.1) actually brought new features. In fact, having two maintenance releases within just three days may be cause for concern for iOS and perhaps even macOS users.
iOS 13 has started out on the wrong foot but Apple has hopefully watched Microsoft long enough to know what steps to take to prevent it from becoming its version of Windows 10…
Apple’s legacy has always been its design and its quality and those two go hand in hand… The past years, however, have seemingly been unkind to that legacy and things seem to be coming to a head in the latest iOS release.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, Apple is addressing these issues – which inexplicably did not come to the company’s attention during and extensive beat period – in much more rapid fashion that Microsoft ever did, would, or could.
iOS 13 is not Apple’s “Windows 10.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I’m confused… Would they rather Apple NOT fix bugs when they’re brought to their attention?
Nice strawman argument you brazen fool. People would rather that Apple actually FIND these bugs before release. You know, like they used to? I can’t believe rabid drooling fan boys like you defend this ridiculous level of quality, lack of quality, that Apple has now. 3 updates in a week? Unfrick’en real.
Sh!tcan Tim Cook!
iOS 13 includes major ground-up rewrites of many core apps, now written Swift. Of course there will be many minor bug-fix releases this year. Anyone who thinks this is a big problem doesn’t understand how software development works.
None of which are rocket science. Apple botched some easy things here that have nothing to do with Swift (which is not all new code either!).
iOS 13.1.2 includes bug fixes and improvements for your iPhone. This update:
Fixes a bug where the progress bar for iCloud Backup shows after completing a backup
Fixes an issue where Camera may not work
Addresses an issue where the flashlight may not activate
Fixes a bug that could result in a loss of display calibration data
Fixes an issue where shortcuts could not be run from HomePod
Addresses an issue where Bluetooth may disconnect on certain vehicles
Can someone explain how and why Apple broke the flashlight app, and couldn’t debug it before release of 13.0? Were these considered unimportant at Apple? Are mistakes on simple things an indication that we should be more concerned about the more serious stuff? Fanboy excuses are wearing mighty thin. Oh wait, that was the last update, where 3rd party keyboard apps got security permissions that the user did not allow….
Ok, let’s see MikeOS then and see if it ever gets to a 1.0 version, let alone a 1.1, let alone a 13.1.2.
Maybe you should shut your pie hole, Mr Oxmall? Or do you prefer to be called Michael?
Don’t ‘develop’ software after its distribution.
Any particular reason for being rude? Surely we all want live in a society where we are free to offer our opinion without being personally attacked.
Alan Greenspew, you really are a phickwit. Why don’t you go to Venezfarkinuela and fix their economy, you brainfed sack of spew.
Did you read the article? The author concludes that Apple has a history of quality and should be better positioned to maintain that high quality than Microsoft despite the recent number of bugs that had to be rapidly fixed in iOS 13.
Obviously if Apple is going to position itself as a premium company and charge premium prices, they are going to have to accept the displeasure of demanding customers who are not impressed with having to deal with several bug fix releases in a matter of days. Just like any other premium company.
Rapid “agile” release has its limits in terms of user acceptance. The vast majority of customers like to have regular hyped new-feature releases on a predictable calendar release. Some want security patches installed silently in the background, others want to know about those in detail before installing — obvious need for a user option there. Bug Fixes, however, it seems no company has a great means of implementation. Apple makes the mistake of throwing security and bugs in the same basket. I would contend that Apple would better please people by clearly decoupling and marking non-security related bug fixes as optional, and describe the fix specifically so that unaffected people don’t have to act. For example, if a user has an iPhone 8 Plus and Apple fixes a bug in its FaceID, then there is zero need for the iPhone 8+ user to ever get pushed that patch. It’s an annoyance that Apple should be able to handle better. Nobody likes to download hundreds of megabytes of poorly planned “updates” that they don’t need.
…and yes, Apple should have caught these major bugs when they released iOS 13.0 the first time. A world class company may make mistakes, but by the 13th time around, the team should have very polished software quality. We all forgive the first several years of any new software, but Apple should have mature processes and a very skilled team by now. It’s not like iOS13 reinvented the wheel.
Alas, some of us have learned that any Apple software version x.0 is as likely to be as buggy as Microsoft wares these days. Microsoft has improved quite a but. Apple, not so much. We saw strong signals of that when FCP X and iWork apps removed Mac features in order to dumb them down for the Cloud, which to this day doesn’t work seamlessly. Perhaps the real problem is that the tables have turned. Microsoft supports one basic platform, which is fat and ungainly but allows singular focus. Apple’s scattered teams are busy supporting a fragmented ecosystem of different OSes for different sized gadgets. Don’t pretend that the obvious slow trickle of improvements to the Mac over the last decade isn’t due to leadership pushing for cloud-chained subscription-driving OSes with monopoly storefronts. That’s the Apple leadership focus now – not objectively measurable superior product quality.
Don’t program the errors into the software in the first place. A multi-billion dollar company can obviously test software, so why is said testing at the required level immured? What’s actually going on?
All software companies are adopting agile methodologies resulting in smaller more rapid releases. The days of bundled up massive updates are going away, get used to it.
Smaller my ass. These were 1+gig updates!
Another rabid drooling fan boy making apologies for every last Tim Cook cockup.
Sh!tcan Tim Cook!
13.1.2 was 68MB.
Citizen X finally makes a great comment I can agree with. 68 megs is a tad smaller than 1gb.
It’s the only one though, his boastful, offputting nature is the reason why he’ll never be celebrated amongst the pantheon of greats like Jobs except in his own mind, on a YouTube video of his and his boasts at MDN where is as an anonym-ass hole.
Alan Greenphcuk’s Tim-h8 needs to be sh!tcanned, it’s predictable, boring and total BS, even more BS than Alan Greengronk’s abysmal career in frukking up economics, Alan will forvever be remembered as an economic wonk who failed miserably.
LOL… pathetic pile of excrement. You may not like history but you can’t change it.
I ever tell you abou tthe letter I got from the school in Unalaska, AK, in 1981? They wanted to buy an Atari Computer. I gave them a good price. Cost so that they could afford a disk drive.
The hard part was figuring out how to get it shipped there. We eventually had to ship it Greyhound to Anchorage, AK and they would pick it up there.
Ahhhhh yes. Good times, I remember well.
Unlike you. Whining about me. A life so pathetic that you have to try to denigrate me to feel better about yourself.
Want to hear about how our booth at the Computer fair almost made it into the Wargames Movie? They did film us but we didn’t make it into the final cut. Dammit.
They did have us “sponsor” the movie at the theater running a “simulation” of WAPR on an Apple II. We got a lot of free advertising from that.
I’ll take my real life experiences over your whines any day.
Idiot.
Oh. And fuck you.
Oh man. Really i]piss yo off.
one day these professors and student from the Nanking school of Forestry stop by The Byte Shop.
They actually want to buy an Atari computer for the graphics. Something the Apple II didn’t offer.
Well, damn. It is illegal to sell computers to China in 81. So I tried to get an export license but was unable to.
Those damn educators and students had to buy the unit and disk drive and give it to a ships captain to “smuggle” it out of the country to their school of forestry.
Oh yeah. A forward thinking society.
https://www.sciencealert.com/china-may-build-a-smog-eating-forest-city-filled-with-tree-covered-skyscrapers
IT’s a one trick pony. One trick is all it’s has.
Seems everyone has forgotten the long series of bug fixes issued under MacOS 9. This iOS 13 series of bug fixes is nothing new. Releases of 13.x.x should not bother anyone. Several 13.x releases in short order might be enough to start to worry people.
The real question is, “Is this ongoing, or is it going to taper off in the next couple months?”
LMAO! Going back to OS 9 to make a point? Epic fail by another rabid drooling fan boy.
Sh!tcan Tim Cook!
You have every right to “sh!tcan Tim Cook” and all the “ridiculous level of quality, lack of quality, that Apple has now” by simply throwing your iPhone in the sh!tcan and getting an android phone that probably can’t be updated at all, and is incredibly more insecure than even a six year old iPhone. Oh, and you can be “used” that way, since you seem to be needing attention, you will be sold and used by all the advertisement companies
There, problem solved. (that is if you care to just ducking shut the duck up here)
Did turning on your iOS 13 updated phone result in your wife leaving you, you were fired and then your dog died LOL? I updated but did not notice any bugs before I updated again. That aside, I usually resist being first out of the gate for updates unless there are problems I think could get fixed.
13.1.2 is still buggy. I tried tapping an image in Messages to see it and it refused to respond. Had to close out and restart to get it to work. Supposedly you can grab scroll bars to scroll a long document, which usually works, but I’ve found several places that it doesn’t. Sometimes while flipping between app home screens or while playing games the animations get jittery, like the processor is confused and can’t keep up. Dark Mode, which I used for about 10 hours, isn’t worth it for this; nor any of the other tweaks and improvements. I should have stuck with iOS 12 for a few months longer, but I thought 13.1 would clear up the obvious issues. Fingers crossed for 13.2 I guess. Or 13.2.4
Never ceases to amaze, Apple fixes issues in quick succession and the media whines, Apple doesn’t fix issues fast enough, media whines.. Reading some of these or reposting the commentary of media morons should be abandoned.
IOS 13 is working well for me, but there is always something that will bug someone because it did not get reported by a beta tester, and then it goes to wide release and there it pops up right away..
Perhaps the problem is no ‘schedule’ to create an expectation that if required patches/updates will be released. At present the irregularly timed updates are creating an impression that they are ‘putting out fires’ than recognizing that bugs will happen and roll with a possible patch once a ‘period’. The former though ‘safer’ projects panic, the latter an understanding that bugs will happen and fixes are planned which also helps people plan their updates.
“Obviously, Apple is addressing these issues – which inexplicably did not come to the company’s attention during and extensive beat period – in much more rapid fashion that Microsoft ever did, would, or could.”
Hilarious misspelling of “beta”, given the context.
Nice beta job Apple. Way to go finding all those bugs. You useless incompetent cretinous apes.
Sh!tcan Tim Cook!
Somebody’s off his meds.
Sh!tcan Alan Greensh!t
When the final release comes out, I treat it as I would any OS. I backup my documents, wipe the iPad and do a clean install. I haven’t had any major problems, just minor annoyances. I’ve gotten to the point where I use the iPad so much that macOS feels dated now. The whole mouse thing feels anachronistic.
iPAD OS 13 encourages you to work in a different manner. In Multitasking, being able to pair applications in multiple instances is very productive. I can have multiple pairs of Safari/Notes, for instance, that I can swap around for doing research on different topics.
I have a calendar/notes pair that I use for maintaining my billable hours and notes.
I have a set with Skype/Messages with a Vonage slide over and FaceTime slide over.
Of course pairing mail with itself is productive.
Using Safari with itself is useful, but not so much as using Safari with Safari with another browser like BRAVE. (If you haven’t tried BRAVE on Mac and iOS do yourself a favor and give it a try). These days I run into more and more and more problems with Safari getting screwed up on different websites so being to just bounce right over to another is helpful.
I’m going to spend a better part of the day doing a deep dive into shortcuts to learn just what I can and cannot do. There appears to be quite a lot I can do. I just don’t know how to use it yet. I’d like to build a shortcut for showing me all the email from a particular domain for instance, so I can make sure I haven’t missed anything.
Files is much better. I can VPN into a client, and locate SMB servers and AFP servers on the network.
Now as you do all this stuff, swiping left and right and up and down and so on, you start to get faster and faster at it. And I swear, it is counter intuitive I know, but you get faster than when using the conventional mouse and keyboard system.
So iPad OS is definitely getting there and the paradigm is maturing.
I just wish I could do FileMaker development there. And run network utilities.
This is what happen when Marketing and/or Accounting are setting release dates, instead of Engineering who is actually building and testing the code. This forces companies to release products with hundreds if not thousands of known bugs, Accounting and/or Markets says the main functionality appears solid so ship NOW and lets work in a bug patch schedule. It’s ugly inside the industry.
If I were superstitious I might have suggested that Apple go right to iOS 14. lol
I can answer some of these questions. First off, I have been an iOS beta tester. In ALL my testing, never once has Apple fixed bugs that I found and reported as a beta tester. I reported many. They never, ever, addressed one. The final version would rollout complete with bugs that I reported in the beta version.
So, the true beta test is the first public release. And iOS 13 is as bad as it gets. They just screwed so many things up. Simple elegant things. And now, it’s a mess.