Hi, bigcorp employee getting showered with tickets here.

I don't have enough time in the day to deal with the tickets where the reporter actually tries, let alone the tickets where they don't.

If I tell you to update your shit, it's because it's wildly out of date, to the point that your configuration is impossible for me to reproduce without fucking up my setup to the point that I can't repro 8 other tickets.

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NetMageSCW 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Please tell us where you work so we can avoid all of your company’s software. Unless it’s Microsoft, because we’ve already seen the results of that attitude there.

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ryukoposting an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't see how it's an unreasonable request. If you demand that I work with some ancient version, I then have to install and uninstall said program every time I work on your ticket specifically. You will be prioritized last, because my effectiveness is measured by how many tickets I close.

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PunchyHamster 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

You missed the point entirely.

I also ask to say what company you're working for so I can avoid your bullshit attitude.

And hey, you will have less bug reports that way so please tell us

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cxr an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is psychotic. Literally. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_psychosis>

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lapcat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> If you demand that I work with some ancient version, I then have to install and uninstall said program every time I work on your ticket specifically.

You completely missed the point of the blog post. Apple was in the process of developing macOS 26.4 beta 4, and they wanted me to install the beta just to "verify" the bug.

Apple could test my bug with 26.4 beta 4 a heck of a lot easier than I could. Nobody was asking Apple to install some ancient version.

> my effectiveness is measured by how many tickets I close.

That was one of the points of the blog post: this is a perverse incentive from management.

Note what you did not say: "my effectiveness is measured by how many bugs I fix." So engineers are incentivized to close tickets even if the bugs they report are unfixed. This is how a company ends up with crappy, buggy software.

	▲	ryukoposting an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm with you on the Apple thing, that's asinine. The parent comment is talking about the broader practice of people telling you to update and then repro again. That's a completely legitimate thing to ask, given both the perverse corporate incentives and the basic reality that version toggling makes a tech far less efficient at solving all tickets, not just yours.

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breppp 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes that's a thing, but never with external customers in public betas

	▲	ryukoposting an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think that's entirely dependent on the workload the company is placing on their support staff. If Apple decides the techs should be handling 10 tickets at once, then the techs have a choice: 1. Tell everyone to update their shit, and close tickets if they don't. 2. Waste several hours per day uninstalling and reinstalling 10 versions of the same program. One of these will allow you to close lots of tickets immediately, and handle the remaining ones as efficiently as possible. Yay! Good job, peon! You get a raise! The other approach will result in a deep backlog, slow turnaround times, and lower apparent output from management's perspective. Boo! Bad job, peon! You're fired!

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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CoolGuySteve 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Back when I worked at Apple I would just try it in whatever I had installed. If it didn't reproduce I'd write "Cannot reproduce in 10.x.x" and close it. Maybe a third were like that, duplicates of some other issue that was resolved long ago.

Anyone that attached a repro file to their issue got attention because it was easy enough to test. Sometimes crash traces got attention, I'd open the code and check out what it was. If it was like a top 15 crash trace then I'd spend a lot longer on it.

If the ticket was long and involved like "make an iMovie and tween it in just such and such a way" then probably I'd fiddle around for 10-15 minutes before downgrading its priority and hope a repro file would come about.

There were a bunch of bug reports for a deprecated codec that I closed and one guy angrily replied that I couldn't just close issues I didn't want to fix!

Guess what buddy, nobody's ever going to fix it.

The oldest bug like that I ever fixed was a QuickDraw bug that was originally written when I was 8 years old but it was just an easy bounds check one liner.

But the mistake OP is making is assuming this one thing that annoyed him somehow applies to the whole Apple org. Most issues were up to engineers and project managers to prioritize, every team had their own process when I was there.

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lapcat an hour ago | parent [-]

> But the mistake OP is making is assuming this one thing that annoyed him somehow applies to the whole Apple org. Most issues were up to engineers and project managers to prioritize, every team had their own process when I was there.

Except this same shit keeps happening with multiple teams.

Judging from your mention of QuickDraw, which was removed entirely from macOS in 2012, perhaps your Apple experience is now out of date.

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CoolGuySteve an hour ago | parent [-]

Nah, you're just making shit up.

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lapcat an hour ago | parent [-]

What specifically do you claim I'm making up?

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CoolGuySteve an hour ago | parent [-]

That the ~50000 engineers at Apple are conspiring to close your tickets in the exact same way. It's ridiculous

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lapcat 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Not my tickets specifically. I don't think they're out to get me individually. On the contrary, this is a common practice, which affects many developers. I just happen to be relatively loud, as far as blogging is concerned.

	▲	CoolGuySteve 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes I understand that. ~50000 engineers aren't conspiring to close all tickets that way. It's a stupid line of thinking. More than likely your steps to reproduce are too laborious to receive attention. That's why they're asking you to do it. Seems pretty simple right?