Apple statement:
> We discovered a bug that prevents us from making HealthKit apps available on iOS 8 today. We’re working quickly to have the bug fixed in a software update and have HealthKit apps available by the end of the month.
I’m sympathetic, but Apple should never have allowed this to happen. This isn’t good.
An extra 11 days? Oh, the humanity
At least they caught it and didn’t release it so we don’t have another maps fiasco.
While not important to end users, those 11 days could be pretty harmful to a development shop that was relying on HealthKit.
I agree it shouldn’t’ve happened, but it did. And Apple’s doing the best they can, I imagine.
I was reading through their recent letter to developers about TestFlight the other day. You can have up to “25” beta testers. 25? I wonder if that is the limit they are using for these kinds of internal things too? The number of bugs, and more importantly, the scope of the bugs, do seem to be on the increase. Accidentally spelling the text of a button wrong…wait, iOS doesn’t have buttons anymore…whatever they are, is one thing…
Starting in a few hours there are going to be millions of new phones sold. Probably a good portion of the buyers were very interested in this sub-system. It’s kinda late in the development cycle to be finding out this kind of thing (guessing it was some kind of security-related bug).
After doing this for a few years, I think there are definitely ways to reduce the number of defects you introduce in an app. 25 users (with many devices!) should be a reasonable test for most apps, if you’ve learned how to code to reduce issues.
I’m relying on much fewer users for one of my apps right now. And it works. (And yes, I want to get more testers. These things take time, though.)
eh, not that big of a deal.
it wasnt ready, but the phone had to ship — what are ya gonna do?
bugs increase because the complexity of our systems is ever increasing. if you want fewer bugs, it means reverting to a more primitive system. do you want to go back to Apple Phone OS?
This is not true. You can have 25 internal beta testers. This means 25 people on your development team who you create iTunes Connect accounts for. Currently, the external beta testing thing has not been added yet, but when it is later this month, it will allow for 1,000 beta testers that you can add just by sending them an email.
Absolutely agree with you and Steven 100%. Just generally, for MILLIONS of people, it won’t make a shred of difference if they have to wait an extra 11 days.
For developers and for Apple kremlinologists, it’s a problem and a red flag. For the general public it’s a bit of a bummer. But hey, these things happen— even at Apple.
Nobody bats 1.000
You are seriously wrong. It was absolutely the right thing to do.
What’s worse? bugs in the field (especially considering the category), or clean code for everyone?
Since there’s no promised ship date, there is no detriment to anyone by waiting.
Of course this is just ME, but I just turned off the predictive typing feature, I can’t think of any time I have EVER not finished typing an email on my iPad and wished I could continue it on my MacBook, I’ve never needed so much time to finish reading a web page on my iPad that I needed to finish reading it on my MacBook, if they would just straighten out the Shift key on their keyboard I can’t think of any reason I’d need a 3rd party keyboard on my iPad, ummm, I’m sure there is more. How much complexity could I have saved them? Their Big Things are just becoming smaller and smaller to me…personally (I get that part). Plus I’m really trusting them (and everyone) less and less. Put a copy of Little Snitch on your Mac and see how much is going on without your knowledge. I wish I could do that with my iPad.
OOhh. OK. That’s better. I’ve been a TestFlight beta tester for an astronomy app for a couple years, and I was thinking 25 wasn’t very many. Thanks!
You could set up a VPN server on your home network and route all your traffic from your iPad through it via a VPN profile. Of course, that’s way overkill and far more work than just installing Little Snitch.
But, if you were to develop an easy solution, you’d make some decent money.
I believe you’re misunderstanding Jim’s statement. It’s definitely the right thing to do. What Jim is saying is that Apple never should have allowed a critical HealthKit bug to go unsquashed before iOS 8’s launch day. Obviously, bugs get through all the time, but HealthKit is a big deal for users and developers alike. It should have been more thoroughly tested so that it could launch properly alongside iOS 8 and the new phones.
That said, I’m curious how the bug was found. Most of the developers weren’t able to do much testing of HealthKit unless they were developing an app that took advantage of it in some way. So did Apple find this bug themselves or did one of the third-parties testing HealthKit report one at the last minute?
This demonstrates a lack of robustness in s/w testing and QC.
The sky is blue.
Any developer who doesnt expect issues the first month of a new iOS and expect less income because of them is a tad foolish
I don’t see this as that huge of a deal. I would much rather they found it and had the balls to admit there is an issue now before things launched and someone found it and tons of private data was potentially exposed etc
Is this a calamity? Is there a HealthKit competitor out there that developers need to scramble to beat a deadline for?
Let’s try this. Imagine a number, X. Now imagine you cut that number significantly. Sure, you might stay in business. But it’s going to HURT. Obviously.