TidBITS:
We’re heading into Apple’s annual upgrade season again, with the upcoming releases of OS X 10.11 El Capitan, iOS 9, and watchOS 2, along with innumerable associated apps. Every upgrade is touted as the next best thing, teasing us with hot new features and promising improved performance, reliability, and security.
Unfortunately, these constant upgrades fill many people with dread, or if that’s overstating the case, with weary resignation. As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but most changes foisted on us by technology companies are no longer aimed at fixing bugs or making everyday usage easier. Bugs are fixed, certainly, and security vulnerabilities blocked, but those under-the-hood improvements are part and parcel with checklist features from the perky twenty-somethings in Marketing and whatever visual tweaks were deemed trendy by the hipsters in Design.
I know many of you are tempted to scream, “Stop this bus! I want to get off!”
Adam makes some great points. I’ve long since stopped upgrading immediately, simply for the sake of upgrading. I wait to make sure the release, Apple’s or anyone else’s, is stable enough and provides enough value for my liking. Certainly, there are some updates and upgrades you must do right away but, for the most part, I wait until I need to update and know what I’m updating to and for.
Normally I would agree with your advice. The reason this time is different is that I have experienced such a tremendous number of bugs with iOS 8 and Yosemite that I can not wait to upgrade. In fact, my iPhone has been running iOS 9 beta for weeks and I have been extremely happy with that change and I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro running El Capitan. I do normally upgrade within a few days when the new OS is released but I never run betas of the OS on my main devices. This year is different. I have never seen Apple’s software as buggy as iOS 8 and Yosemite were in their most recent versions. My iPhone would simply start playing music when it felt like it (in my pocket or on my nightstand) but then when I actually wanted to play music I would often have to do a hard reset to get it to be able to play a song again.
The problem with this or any blanket advice is that you miss out on fixes. iOS 8.0 had issues for some people. Those issues got better with .1, .2 .3 and .4. Yosemite had well documented networking issues that finally got fixed in 10.10.4 with the reversion to mDNSresponder. If someone didn’t upgrade to that, they’d possibly be living with a problem that an upgrade would solve.
All that said, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask “what will this do for me?” and that’s all the article asks. Your summary isn’t really accurate as Adam clearly is in favor of upgrading, just not in a knee-jerk fashion.
I agree with you with the exception of iOS 8.4. That was actually a regression and had more bugs than 8.0.
Haven’t noticed any new bugs in 8.4. Are you using Apple Music? Those, pretty much by definition, are not regressions.
I’m going to skip El Capitan and iOS 9 altogether. I’m totally worn out from Yosemite (OS X Redmond) and iOS 8 (for hate) and their endless problems.
I know you are going to say, if Yosemite and iOS 8 have a lot of problems, then what you need is El Capitan and iOS 9! But then I would have to tell you: that is how I came to be running iOS 8 in the first place! Problems with iOS 7. And I only upgraded to Yosemite to work with iOS 8’s iCloud Drive, but then only a handful of my apps support iCloud Drive, so that was a bust.
The thing is, right now, I have learned to avoid and/or workaround many of the bugs in Yosemite and iOS 8, so I have reached a kind of detente. Sure, those bugs may be fixed in El Capitan and iOS 9, but there will be new giant bugs and I will have to learn to avoid and/or workaround those, and finally reach detente again at this time next year when Apple is introducing yet another rushed, buggy, Microsoft-like version of their operating systems.
My #1 reason for not buying Apple Watch is right now I have 4 buggy Apple devices (MacBook, iPad, iPhone, AppleTV) and I don’t want a 5th. It’s just purely a question of reliability and software quality. The reason the idea of computerizing everything around me was appealing in the first place was all these additional computers were supposed to have the reliability of an iPod, not the reliability of DOS.
Yeah but that is why I started using iOS 8 — to get away from bugs in 7. I imagined that 8 would be better, but it was just as bad or worse. What made it problematic was it was different. I had to adapt to a whole different set of bugs and problems and workarounds.
So I think you should stop updating altogether, and workaround the bugs you have rather than trading them for a whole new set of bugs to learn and adapt to and workaround while you look forward to iOS 10.
No. That is how it is supposed to work. It did not work that way. So your advice completely ignores the fact that we Apple users are in a software quality crisis right now.
For me, 8.4.1 is much buggier than 8.4 or 8.3.
What you have to do is stop updating and workaround your current bugs so that you reach a kind of detente where you are reliably doing your daily work/play with your Apple devices.
What we have coming out of Apple for the past few years is as though they hired the head writer from Techcrunch and put him in charge of shipping Apple system software, and he has shipped what Techcrunch readers want to see: lots of painting over everything to make it appear new, lots of hiding features so that you have to read Techcrunch to figure out how to do a task, so many bugs it seems there was never any testing done, and an unending flow of I-T tasks for every Apple user. Apple has been totally user-hostile. The only thing a user can do in defense is stop updating and next time you buy a new device, give a good long look to the competition, who may one day get their act together.
8.4 has been horrible for me, and I don’t use Apple Music. The browser crashes constantly, the text substitutions crash constantly and don’t restart, and there are pauses where the device just sits for a minute and doesn’t respond to any touch and then it is fine again.
Honestly, if Tim Cook announced next week that Apple is going to stop making software and has sold Mac OS and iOS to Microsoft and licensed it back from them for Apple devices, I would applaud. The operating system software would continue to suck after that, but at least I would expect it to suck. It wouldn’t be a disappointment. For the past few years I kept expecting the next version to finally stop crashing and flaking and interrupting my work, but it just never happened. My iPhone right now has a 15GB “Other” section in its storage that I have to Restore the iPhone to fix, and I just never have the time. That bug is years old. It should never be able to happen in the first place.
not having any problems with bugs. dunno what I’m doing wrong.
complete opposite experience, here. no bugs. no crashes. no longer have to do tech support for my family.
sounds like maybe your install is hosed for some reason. try a fresh one.
nobody in my household or anyone I know has the problems you’re describing. I think it’s safe to say it does not represent the norm.
I really can’t imagine what you’re doing to your stuff to wind up with so much broken gear. I have a Mini, iMac, rMBP, iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone 6, iphome 5s, and two Watches running in my household right now. no problems. no workarounds. I use them to write software and use them for fun.
Most of iOS8 has meant for me was more silly changes to the UI, and podcast-synch glitches that might be due to my misuse of iCloud settings. Or might not.
It is a regression when my podcast app starts playing while I am not even touching my iPhone.
No need to be so dramatic. iOS 9 is quite solid compared to iOS 8. I think most people will be pleased.
I did try a fresh one. I completely erased and restored my phone and before putting my apps back on it was not working and I was seeing the same bugs. The latest iOS 8 is bad.
It is not safe to say that. Have you not been paying attention to the Apple blogosphere this year? There have been many many stories about the increasing number of bugs, or at least user noticeable bugs.
I agree with him in terms of the big upgrades but when it comes to iOS once you are in be sure to at least upgrade to the highest level before the next one comes out.
if you are rocking say 8.0.2 come tomorrow if your phone goes buggy and it likely will given how old that version is you will have no choice but to upgrade to iOS 9 if they have launched it. Or stick with your buggy iOS 8 version. so upgrade tonight to 8.4.1. even how old that version is bit the bullet and backup, factory restore etc. have the cleanest install you can so you can lessen the likelihood of needing to restore and be forced into 9 before you are ready
yosemite is less of an issue cause they don’t force you to upgrade to El Cap etc like they do with iOS. If you are on something like 8.1 and something goes wrong you will have to upgrade to iOS 9 after the first few days cause even if you magically get the software file for 8.4.1 Apple won’t activate it. so unless you jailbreak now to save the blobs etc you have zero choices. which means like 99% of the viewing audience cause they have no clue what jailbreaking etc is
those with issues are always way way more vocal than those without. so even things like ‘go read the apple forums’ really doesn’t mean much.
It isn’t a matter of numbers. It is a matter of documented bugs. If the bugs are documented and repeatable then you denying their existence is a bit odd.
Gotta say I’ve had the “no touch” bug since 8.1 at least, probably 8.0. Yes, it’s really annoying. The browser crashes have been increasing on my un-upgraded devices, too, and I think are related more to the way the web is evolving (too much shit, same amount of memory!) than the OS release.
Generally, I’m not arguing that any of these bugs don’t exist. I just think these bugs have been around longer or have different causes than you realize. We’re dealing with a very complex system here.