I think this personification of companies as people is misleading. Whose "focus?"
Do you mean you think that the same people within Apple are working on both hardware and software, and are focusing more on hardware? Or that you think many people who write software have been re-educated, re-assigned, and are now working on hardware?
I assume that the size of Apple's teams working on iPhone are limited by more than resources, and the recruitment pools are totally separate, so it's not like they're spending too much on hardware engineers and can't afford enough software engineers, right?
I just don't really know how you can conceive of such a massive company as having an obviously zero-sum "focus" like a person has.
Quality comes from feedback control systems. Quality of design comes from management oversight and correction. Fan-in is a concern. Orphaned teams become a concern at a tenth Apple’s scale. Informal networks and approval based on trust of people rather than examination of product is a concern. Executive attention is expensive.
The hardware engineering is much more deliberate and well planned/orchestrated than the software.
IMO it’s less “focus” and more having to rely on third party manufacturers who will push back due to liability.
iOS 11 is a beta quality product. One org that I’m familiar with has a 5x increase in help desk calls and replacements, mostly around the voice phone components failing.
Most iOS updates are smooth and trouble free. Still the far best mobile platform in terms of actually receiving software updates and new features. In the case of iOS 11 I would guess all the software changes required for the iPhone X has caused a temporary a dip in quality. I don't think it's representative of the quality of iOS updates overall. Things could be a little bit rocky going forward though as Apple will continue support pre-iPhone X era hardware for the next 3-5 years. I believe this is the first time they've had to support two distinctively different flavors of iOS UI in this way at least since the iOS6->7 days.
A company absolutely has a zero-sum 'focus' just like a person. You dismiss the idea that resources are the limiting factor, but that is absolutely what the limiting factor is.
You really think that with unlimited money they couldn't have better software? They could, but they don't because it does not have enough of a return on investment. They 'focus' their resources on areas that will return them profit.
You're casually insulting everyone who is working hard on the software. Consider that the team sizes are surprisingly small. Consider that throwing more people at a project does not scale, and famously just slows things down after a certain, fairly small threshold. Consider that software is still really really freaking hard to do. Unlimited money does not solve all problems, contrary to what you may think. You can't easily buy your way out of technical debt, time limits, or legacy architectural decisions.
Ascribing the bugs to malice or carelessness rather than the fact that this shit is difficult is very unkind. Source: know many people who have spent last few months feverishly working nights and weekends.
Wait, what? How was I insulting the people working on the software? I am saying they aren't getting the resources they need to do everything they want to do.
I am a developer on a team, too, and I know that sometimes you can't do everything you want because you simply don't have enough time, money, and developers to get it done.
I know it is hard, that is why I was saying it is a company resource issue, not a 'bad developers' issue. Even the best developer in the world can't complete a huge project by themselves in a short amount of time. You need company support, which means ample developers, QA, support, and time.
Not sure where you ever got 'malice' or 'carelessness' from.
I am sorry if I misconstrued your comment. I thought that you said that bugs and issues are caused by the people working there caring more about return on investment than quality, and not caring about fixing issues, which implies carelessness. By extension, people developing slap-dash product to rip off users without care for how things impact them implies malice.
It felt insulting because people I know personally do deeply care, and do spend a lot of effort for things that do not necessarily have a lot of return on investment (just for one example, iOS accessibility features for visually and hearing impaired are designed deep into the system and still have no equal). Aside from that, fixing bugs and improving stability does offer return on investment by building customer loyalty (case in point, after each major release I still see people mentioning Snow Leopard, an OS release dedicated exclusively to stability and performance improvements).
I’m not saying that things couldn’t be better, they always could, but I don’t think that all problems are as easily solved as you think. To take a classic counter example, Microsoft employs at conservative estimate twice the number of engineers compared to Apple, but still has not yet made a product twice as good or with half the bugs, imho. At a certain point, the system complexity just gets too great, and we need better architectures, tools and processes to get beyond that level.
Again, I am not saying you were intending to insult anyone, and apologies if I misunderstood something in your post. It’s just how it came across to me.
I think it would be easier to have a conversation that cares about human emotions and get results, than to insult others and lose perspective of those involved. The recent flak over Node COC is a extremely good example about how "having an honest conversation even if it hurts people," is extremely destructive. [1]
This bug has been annoying me, my family and friends for several days now. Nearly everyone I️ know with an iPhone. And the suggestion is to break predictive text to fix it. I️ really wish I️ would have bought an Android.
It'll probably be fixed in a week or two at most and you'll forget it ever happened except when recounting stories of the good ole days of technology 20 years from now.
