Apple’s Software Quality Has Become A #EpicFail
Over the last little while, Apple seems to have gone from a company who can put out quality software to one that at best struggles to do so. While yesterday’s absolutely colossal macOS security hole which allows anyone to pwn a Mac with very little effort is the issue that’s bringing this to the forefront, there are other examples that indicate that Apple’s software quality has been slipping for a while. For example, around the time that macOS High Sierra shipped, there was a zero day bug that was discovered that allowed for password theft. Shortly after that another horrible security hole that Apple had to quickly patch appeared. Both of these flaws should have been caught in Apple’s QA cycle. But clearly that didn’t happen.
iOS users haven’t escaped this as iOS 11 has been a bit of a buggy mess with updates coming out every couple of weeks or so to try and address issues in their mobile OS. But bugs still persist. And some glaringly obvious ones. I’ve personally noticed issues with the mail application where it can misreport the number of unread emails at times, and it gets stuck in a particular orientation (ie. it’s in landscape when you’re holding the phone in a portrait orientation). There are others that I’ve along with others such as Gizmodo writer Adam Clark Estes have noticed. He went on a bit of a rant recently about how bad iOS 11 was. And the thing is, he’s right. Everything he lists are things that should have been caught in the QA cycle. But they weren’t.
In both the examples above, you’ll see that the thing in common was that Apple’s QA cycle isn’t catching some glaringly obvious bugs before they go out the door. That’s shocking as Apple used to be a company that got the details right. At present, they can’t seem to do that. Now I could go on and list other bugs in other Apple products that fit the above pattern of stuff that should have been caught in the QA cycle instead getting out the door. But I won’t. Instead I will encourage you to do a search using the search engine of your choice for terms like “watchOS 4 bugs” or “macOS High Sierra bugs” or “iOS 11 bugs” and you’ll see the volume of things that people are coming across. I’ve been a long time Mac user and I have never, ever seen Apple’s software quality be this bad. Clearly Tim Cook and company have been spending too much time building Apple Park to focus on what got them to the position where they could build Apple Park. Which is putting out quality products that people love. Right now, it seems that Apple has forgotten about the quality part, and that is an #EpicFail on their part.
November 29, 2017 at 11:37 am
[…] Now, as I stated before. This should not have happened. Apple has made the news for all the wrong reasons. And by that I mean that the mainstream press and not just people like me are talking about this. I really hope they have learned from this and they pull up their socks and improve the quality of their software as it is really lacking in that department as of late. […]
December 7, 2017 at 8:21 pm
[…] this point you have to ask yourself what has gone wrong with Apple’s QA as this highlights what I said about it being an #EpicFail. It never used to be this bad and we’ve now had over a week of solid security issues that are […]
December 30, 2017 at 9:01 am
[…] not to mention numerous other high profile and embarrassing bugs in a variety of Apple products that seems to highlight that their QA process is in free fall. Oh yeah, Apple was caught slowing down iPhones with aging batteries which they tried to explain […]
January 10, 2018 at 12:49 pm
[…] what is clear is that clearly Apple has once again shown that it’s QA processes suck. Bugs like these should be caught really early on in the testing process and should never make it […]
January 11, 2018 at 9:30 am
[…] not to mention numerous other high profile and embarrassing bugs in a variety of Apple products that seems to highlight that their QA process is in free fall. Oh yeah, Apple was caught slowing down iPhones with aging batteries which they tried to explain […]
January 12, 2018 at 3:10 pm
[…] Sure, right. this really inspires confidence. I say that because it suggests that Intel rushed these fixes out the door to mitigate not only the threat, but the PR disaster that is in progress. Of course if that’s true it is not good. My advice to Intel is to get to the bottom of this quickly and do whatever is required to get working patches on the street that have been fully QA’ed. Because if you don’t, you’ll look like Apple and their ability to QA their products. […]
January 13, 2018 at 2:32 pm
[…] people said that that Apple dropped the ball when it came to letting that bug slip out the door. I know that I did. But Apple dropped everything and fixed it quickly, which meant that once people installed the fix, […]
October 26, 2018 at 9:33 am
[…] a year ago, I called out Apple because their ability to QA their software was so horrific, that macOS shipped with an extremely […]
January 10, 2019 at 8:59 am
[…] people from accessing WiFi and mobile data, it’s clear that Apple’s software quality has been a dog’s breakfast going back at least two years. And clearly their hardware quality isn’t up to the standards that the late Steve Jobs would […]
January 14, 2019 at 9:29 am
[…] you have one year to get off Windows 7 and onto Windows 10. Or flip to another OS such as macOS. Not that Apple’s QA is any better at the moment. But consider yourself warned that your days on Windows 7 are […]
January 29, 2019 at 6:51 am
[…] Not to mention that their QA team which clearly isn’t worth the money that Tim Cook pays them as Apple software is a bit of a mess at the moment couldn’t […]
August 20, 2019 at 8:54 am
[…] been saying for a couple of years now that Apple’s QA is an #EpicFail as we’ve seen example after example after example of high profile bugs with significant […]
October 29, 2019 at 8:45 am
[…] user experience when it comes to their products. Clearly they are still dealing with the issues that I’ve raised in the past. If they were smart, they’d take my advice as to how to fix that as the current state of play […]
November 1, 2019 at 9:03 am
[…] been saying for years Apple has a serious software quality issue that they cannot seem to fix. And its reared its head […]
November 22, 2019 at 9:23 am
[…] been saying for a very long time that Apple has a problem with its software quality. And iOS 13 is proof positive of that as I have also argued that it is the buggiest version of iOS […]