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IOS Operating Systems Software Apple

iOS 11 'Is Still Just Buggy as Hell' (gizmodo.com) 258

Posted by msmash from the reviews dept.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that iOS 11, the current generation of Apple's mobile operating system, is riddled with more issues than any previous iOS version in the recent years. Two months ago, in a review, titled, "iOS 11 Sucks", a reporter at the publication wrote: I'm using iOS 11 right now, and it makes me want to stab my eyes with a steel wire brush until I get face jam. Gizmodo today reviews iOS 11 after living with the current software version for two months: It's been two full months since Apple released iOS 11 to millions and millions of devices worldwide, and the software is still just buggy as hell. Some of the glitches are ugly or just unexpected from a company that has built a reputation for flawless software. Shame on me for always expecting perfection from an imperfect company, I guess. But there are some really bad bugs, so bad that I can't use the most basic features on my phone. They popped up, when I upgraded on release day. They're still around after two months and multiple updates to iOS. Shame on Apple for ignoring this shit. Now, let me show you my bugs. The worst one also happens to be one I encounter most frequently. Sometimes, when I get a text, I'll go to reply in the Messages app but won't be able to see the latest message because the keyboard is covering it up. I also can't scroll up to see it, because the thread is anchored to the bottom of the page. The wackiest thing is that sometimes I get the little reply box, and sometimes I don't. The only way I'm able to text like normal is to tap the back arrow to take me to all my messages and then go back into the message through the front door. [...] Other native iOS 11 apps have bugs, too. Until a recent update, my iPhone screen would become unresponsive which is a problem because touching the screen is almost the only way to use the device.
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iOS 11 'Is Still Just Buggy as Hell' More

iOS 11 'Is Still Just Buggy as Hell'

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  • It's you (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:28AM (#55569709) Journal

    You are holding it wrong.

    • Re:It's you (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:05PM (#55569959)
      No it's Apple. That's Apple trend since a couple years ago. Little by little the iPhone is becoming a Potemkin village. Nice outside, questionable inside. No more attention to detail, obvious bugs that should be found and fixed easily, rough design ; either the CEO makes bad choices, or he is unable to manage his staff.

      • Re:It's you (Score:5, Funny)

        by Hal_Porter ( 817932 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:34PM (#55570195)

        Apple are closet Nazis too.

        Look at their OS names

        Yosemite - clearly an attempt to disguise the famous Nazi expression 'Yo, Semite!'

        El Capitan - another attempt to disguise the Nazi SS rank SS-Hauptsturmführer by translating it into Spanish, the language spoken by Franco

        I could go on.

        And look at their stores. It's a bunch of white people, stylishly dressed in mostly in black designer clothes. You know who else was mostly white people dressed stylishly in black designer clothes? The fucking SS, that's who.

        And they had a cult of personality around a charismatic leader who was a complete bastard. And after that leader died it all started to fall apart.

        • I mean Snow Leopard? Couldn't be an ordinary leopard, could it? With its yellow and black pigmentation that would be tantamount to admitting the actual true scientifically proven historical FACT that the Chinese and Africans invented computing as we know it and Babbage, Dickens and Mozart stole it literally at gunpoint.

      • Re:It's you (Score:4)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:52PM (#55570321) Homepage Journal
        I guess it is all too "touchy-feely" at Apple now.

        It appears that Tim doesn't know how to crack the whip like Steve did.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • For some reason though, the more powerful and larger iPad pro costs less than the phone.

            I've got a larger and more powerful wall clock that costs much less than a wrist watch. Sometimes the expensive part of something is the miniaturization.

        • Jesus, have you been watching the news? There's a big clamp down on "touchy-feely" in the tech and media industries.
      • It goes back way longer than a couple of years. Remember the Daylight Saving Time fiasco? The "holding it wrong" stuff? The comical Apple Maps bugs? Just do a google search on any "iOS x bugs" and you'll see a whole litany of stuff.

      • More features crammed in to add "Wow" factor to announements has been the drive for a while now. Modern UI look is valued above intuitive usability.

        In the early days people marveled how 3 year old kids could figure out an iphone without any help. Now it has been bloated and obsfucated, gestures have gotten too numerous and complex. It has become too complex for what it is.

        Lost in all of this is "It just works." Sadly, it doesn't. My itunes library is a mess thanks to automagic crap that randomly duplic

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • If I can be forgiven a little trolling -- given how many different hardware platforms iOS runs on vs how many different platforms Windows runs on, it seems fair to say Microsoft is having fewer bugs per platform than Apple.

      • Oddly, the summary gives a link to a two-month old critique of the fonts and style, but fails to link to the actual story being summarized.

        It's here: https://gizmodo.com/ios-11-is-... [gizmodo.com]

  • An OS is not a throwaway phone app! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:32AM (#55569747)

    I know all the cool kids are doing Agile and sprinting away, and I think that's fine for development. But one of the things I really don't think is doing companies any favors is the super-fast iterations of operating systems. I'm a Windows guy and we see this with Windows 10 a lot...features just feel unfinished even when they're part of an official release. On the Windows Server side of the house, the pace is a little slower and it shows...server operating systems need to be more stable and not have surprising feature changes.

    I'm an old fuddy duddy, but I think that core things like operating systems should have a slightly slower pace of development that allows for more testing and more careful planning. I see this in iOS 11 too...I just upgraded and was very surprised how many of the built-in apps have serious design flaws and appear to have been changed just because. (The Podcast app is unusable while driving anymore because you can't have it automatically play through a list of podcasts, as an example.)

    Going super-fast and doing the DevOps thing is fine, but honestly a lot of this thinking came out of startups, where the product was an app whose only client is a smartphone, and whose only customer is a consumer who is getting a free service. Failures of this can be tolerated if you can quickly patch up the back end...but an OS deployed on a machine is a different story.

    • Re:An OS is not a throwaway phone app! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:43AM (#55569825)
      I don't think it's the short release cycle that is the problem (it works well for the Linux kernel), so much as it is that cycle in a commercial, proprietary environment. The latter puts a focus on getting out a certain amount of new and shiny, which can result in lower quality releases.

      • Re:An OS is not a throwaway phone app! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:26PM (#55570129) Homepage

        The latter puts a focus on getting out a certain amount of new and shiny, which can result in lower quality releases.

        Well I think this ties into another relevant criticism: There's no reason that an OS needs a lot of these "features".

        Is the OS stable? Is the filesystem good? Does the UI allow you to open applications? Yes? Ok, cool, then you're done. Pretty much everything else should be done on the application level, not by the OS.

        I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I just don't think things like web browsers, Dropbox competitors, Music stores, and AI assistants needs to be integrated into the OS. Tying these items to OS upgrades means that they have to push out a whole new OS upgrade when they want to release features. Kernel-level changes shouldn't get scheduled based on when they want to release new ad-blocking in the browser.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        Also, companies don't see QA as important these days. :(

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I don't think it is an iPhone app at all, or at least not older iPhones.

      Apple is getting into the situation of supporting too much hardware, which was never it's forte. Apple is good at supporting a small number of models, think mac air, iMac, MacBook, mac pro. Sometimes it has successfully supported multiple platforms, such as when they transition from PowerPC to Intel, but that is short lived.

      The iOS works really well on iPad pro. I know the iPhone 8 people have few problems. It does not work so w

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      I've been using Windows 7, Linux Mint (which still runs Linux kernel 4.4.0), and a Cyanogenmod with Android 5.1.1 and I can't remember the last time I had a significant OS-level problem.

      People massively overrate "new" and "shiny". Stuff that's old and aint broke is pretty good.

      • The biggest issue this person cites is the messaging app. This is not an 'os-level problem' but it is a big deal on a phone.

    • Apple has improved iTunes so much it's unusable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I don't think you understand how Agile is supposed to work, not that you'd apply it to something like an OS. But the underlying principle still applies: focus. Focus really is the secret sauce, agility is almost a side effect.

    • Agile has nothing to do with making someone finish task #1, #2 and #3 faster. Please get that out of your head. The only thing agile does is include task #1, #2 and #3 in an interation and push it to the next if they are not completed or done done like I like to call it.

  • CEO Responses (Score:5, Funny)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:37AM (#55569779)

    CEO responses to this kind of release:

    Steve Balmer: Throws chairs while shouting "developers developers developers!"
    Tim Cook: "LOL but look how much cash we have."
    Satya Nadella: "Huh? We sold a phone?" Quietly high-fives himself in the mirror.
    Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong". 3 days later several senior product positions at Apple open up for hiring. Spouses report their loved ones missing. Police find no trace but are baffled by reports of a severe thunderstorm located exclusively over Apple headquarters just after Jobs' announcement. Perfect iOS software released a few days later.

  • They're not bugs, you're just holding it wrong!

  • This shit behavior is omnipresent on my fiance's old 4S, which IIRC runs some flavor of iOS 9.

  • buggy MFi (Score:4, Interesting)

    by doginthewoods ( 668559 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:43AM (#55569831)
    I have a profound hearing loss and depend on the iPhone MFi to hear conversation through my aids during phone calls. It is a buggy mess- it will drop one or the other side (L/R) during a call, take seconds to decide how to handle to audio (between speaker and MFi) when a call comes in, and sometimes will route notification sounds through the aids. There is such a thing as inconvenience. But when your ability to hear on the iPhone through MFi is compromised, that is a huge problem.

    • I have a profound hearing loss and depend on the iPhone MFi to hear conversation through my aids during phone calls. It is a buggy mess- it will drop one or the other side (L/R) during a call, take seconds to decide how to handle to audio (between speaker and MFi) when a call comes in, and sometimes will route notification sounds through the aids. There is such a thing as inconvenience. But when your ability to hear on the iPhone through MFi is compromised, that is a huge problem.

      Can you give some more in

  • Tip of an iceberg (Score:3)

    by 0xdeadbeef ( 28836 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:51AM (#55569875) Homepage Journal

    This isn't counting the clusterfuck that is the ugly iPhone Ecks knob and corresponding "safe area" hack.

    Thousands of app authors have had to modify their code (and worse - other people's code) to work correctly with that nonsense, and the cumulative cost of all those wasted person-hours is probably in the millions.

  • Article is trash (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zifn4b ( 1040588 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:52AM (#55569877)

    This article (more like a blog post) sounds like a teenager ranting in the most irrational way not providing coherent evidence for their claims many of which are ambiguous. Any review that uses terminology like "sucks" or "monkey armpits" and juxtaposes Samsung vs. Apple without any real comparison of the two products sounds like an article that isn't interested in providing useful information to consumers. They either 1) want to just rant and listen to themselves talk or 2) want to get ad revenue from sensationalism or both.

    Why does this trash keep getting posted to slashdot?

    • Re:Article is trash (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:34PM (#55570191) Homepage
      It's written by someone who used to write for Gawker and Gizmodo. Yeah, that explains a lot. Hate dripping with condescension is their stock in trade.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      It's anti-Apple, that's why. Apple used to be cool on Slashdot but then they remembered they needed to be profitable and started making decisions that Slashdotters don't like but (judging by their financial results) a lot of people do.

      Apparently some things don't line up the way the author likes so he's having a rant.

    • Also forgotten in the article - Software can be updated, if the hardware is solid (and other than the one generation with questionable antenna choices, the iPhone hardware has been about the best constructed and designed devices on the market).

      As long as the hardware is working, the software can be addressed, updated, fixed.. And most likely will, and driven with automatic updates which aren't governed by carrier device lifecycles, which have made most other brand's handsets stuck with bad software after

  • That's an Apple user alright (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @11:58AM (#55569921)

    It's been two full months since Apple released iOS 11 to millions and millions of devices worldwide, and the software is still just buggy as hell. Some of the glitches are ugly or just unexpected from a company that has built a reputation for flawless software. Shame on me for always expecting perfection from an imperfect company, I guess.

    This perfectly defines an Apple user. You get rawdogged all the way to the bank, and you blame yourself for getting boned! If this was Windows, you'd be blaming Microsoft, if this was Unix, you'd be blaming open source, if this was the Republicans, you'd be blaming the Democrats (and vice versa), but when it comes to Apple, it's not their fault the software is buggy, it's yours for expecting Apple to deliver on their promises.

  • Certainly More Problems Than Prior Releases (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CycleFreak ( 99646 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:13PM (#55570027)

    I have an Android phone (my personal phone) and an iPhone 6 (work provided)

    There are aspects of iOS that I think are superior to Android. But it does seem that Apple rush-botched iOS 11.

    Notifications: There is no way to clear all recent notifications at once. This only becomes available after they have "aged" enough. I like to keep the notifications clean, so this really bothers me. I have to clear them one at a time. Why take away the "Clear" function from the top of the notification list?

    Battery life is noticeably worse than it was with iOS 10. The first unpatched iOS 11 was just awful. Once-a-day charging was the norm, then I could not get past 5pm without having to charge the phone. Patches have since made this better, but iOS 11 still sucks battery faster than iOS 10.

    The swipe-up panel is terrible. Definitely a case of changing for the sake of change.

    Auto-brightness. Which genius decided to bury this setting under "General --> Accessibility --> Display Accomodations"? Why isn't it under "Display & Brightness" from the main settings page? And if you manually change brightness from the swipe-up panel, auto-brightness is disabled. Then begins the lengthy PITA that is finding the Auto-Brightness option and enabling it again

    To list some that come to mind. But there's more ... At least it seems that Apple is responding and issuing iOS 11 patches fairly quickly. But, really, these things should not have been released into the wild initially.

    • The swipe-up panel is terrible.

      And I really wonder how that works with the iPhone X's "swipe up for home"... but that's not an iOS 11 issue, so...

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Corporate T00l ( 244210 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @12:19PM (#55570065) Journal

    I've just spent the last 5 days coordinating a trade show, messaging like mad across iMessage, Hangouts, and e-mail, both from inside the apps and from the home screen. The problems described simply do not occur on my phone. I'm not sure why, but maybe the situation is just not as bad as this reviewer describes and the problem does not afflict every phone equally.

  • But there is one bug that's been very annoying for my wife. Apparently none of her custom ringtones work in iOS 11. They just revert back to the system default ringtone, which is bad because she ignores calls from anybody who doesn't have a custom ringtone set. The worst part is that the ringtone files are still there and can be set and previewed in the address book, but when an actual call comes in the phone refuses to use them.
  • Operating system developers have a long history of making drastic changes that replace stability with bullshit. The fact that we're still seeing them rewrite iOS for every release is an outright shit show.
  • The true iSheep will put up with anything.
  • On the newest version of chrome, Version 62.0.3202.94 (Official Build) (64-bit), if you scroll down on that page to the video section the browser window goes blank, just a white screen... lol
  • If the worker slaves are getting burnt out.

  • X.0 was buggy, the rest not (Score:4, Informative)

    by mr100percent ( 57156 ) on Friday November 17, 2017 @02:14PM (#55570963) Homepage Journal

    11.0 was buggy. 11.1 fixed most of it. Iâ(TM)m on 11.2 beta and itâ(TM)s much improved.

    People griped the same about 9.0 and 10.0. This isnâ(TM)t much different

  • ... oh wait.

    Maybe Scott had a legitimate reason not to sign the letter.

  • I don't know how many times people have to keep bashing their heads against this nonsense from ANY vendor and NOT GET IT. No vendor of *commercial* or *consumer grade* software is going to ship a major new release without bugs. Even developers that are held to higher standards, e.g. software systems that could affect human life (think aircraft control systems and so on) also release bugs despite extensive test plans, external audits, high CMM levels and every other relevant quality checking standard and bes

  • "I'm using iOS 11 right now, and it makes me want to stab my eyes with a steel wire brush until I get face jam."

    A statement like that makes me wonder about the writer's sanity and qualifications. Perhaps he is the problem.

    Our family has iOS11 on one device, being cautious of new upgrades, and so far no problems but we're probably just not pushing the wire brush far enough into our orifices.

  • a company that has built a reputation for flawless software

    Oh come on. Nobody remembers Macos? The Macintosh bomb? [aolcdn.com] Pretty much anything developed by Apple in-house? Flawless software... don't make me chuck my cookies. Reputation, yes, a reputation built by pure spin and outright lying. Flawless and Apple do not belong in the same sentence.

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