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Comment by applethrowaway | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure about hardware and design teams, but I'm noticing that the entire software org is going downhill at Apple fast.

Budget cuts, delaying releases for arbitrary reasons, more and more technical debt on key portions of iOS seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Each subsequent release of iOS is more bloated than ever, and teams are reluctant to port their stuff over to Swift because of the aforementioned technical debt.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the software org at Apple is a third class citizen. In order for that to change, there needs to be a shift in resources toward the SW org. But I don't see it happening any time soon :)

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Actually, although I believe the hardware is overpriced, and personally have no gripes about new designs -- I just don't care about them -- I would agree this is where the core problem lies with Apple right now. Almost squarely in software. I could drone on about the reasons for this, but to me it feels like something fundamental is missing in that area now. Something that only Apple used to have.

I see this as a huge problem too. Apple just doesn't seem to have high level advocacy for software quality. This is driving me to Ubuntu at the desktop.

I am sticking with my Macbook but on my next laptop purchase it will be a matter of if Apple hardware quality makes up for their software failings. I haven't looked closely in 2 years but back then I didn't see any hardware close to Apple's laptop quality.

I do agree with those disappointed with the MacBook Pro (or whatever they call it now) but those disappointments are not as great as my disappointment with Apple software quality the last 5 years.

From experience (retina mbp 2015, 15"), I would highly recommend you do not try to run Ubuntu (or other Linux) on newer Apple hardware. Take the money you'll save by buying a "lower end" laptop/desktop x86 machine and put it toward buying more RAM, a better SSD, nice peripherals, etc...

2 other areas for Apple to boost SW: AppStore backend seems inflexible to change (why can't I buy AppleTV apps from iPhone?). And Siri is going downhill with each iOS releases (I think should be the competitors are gaining much more with each iOS releases).

In addition to the technical problems, the usability has gone downhill too.

My work iphone automatically sent balloons to a coworker when I messaged "happy birthday, send me the file". I also have to cancel out of "send with effects" screen each time I press the send button a fraction too long. If I turn my phone sideways, I get the handwritten message screen. All this in addition to the hidden buttons and other UI problems. Ugh.

Most of my career has been in Java and C and similar, but recently I was asked to work on an iOS GPS plotting application. The client provided me with a Mac laptop and an installed copy of XCode.

That was the most frustrating, poorest experience with an IDE and software development environment I have ever had, and I've dealt with most operating systems, Visual Basic, Pick, Cache etc. Even keyed in a 6502 assembler back in the day which was more fun.

Crashing constantly, bizarre "4GL" drag-and-drop of controls onto source code to link them, atrocious documentation, awful GUI builder/layout managers, random behaviour... ugh. I cannot understand how anyone would be enjoying iOS development.

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