I really don’t understand the criticism of Apple’s software.

I think we need to keep in mind a couple of things:

1. It’s software designed for the masses. It’s not intended to be a power user’s playground.

2. There’s no such thing as perfect software. If you really look hard for alternatives to the Music or Photos app (to use your examples), it’s actually extremely difficult to find anything that is without compromise, bugs, or other downsides.

As someone who has moved off of many of Apple’s apps, like my move from iCloud Photos to Ente, I’m really still accepting a decent amount of compromises. It’s better in some ways, worse in others.

And then there’s some other apps where I just can’t find a good alternative. I’d love something like Apple Notes but is cross-platform with a Linux app specifically. There’s just basically nothing like that out there, certainly not at a good price, and most of them end up over-complicated or with a strange UI.[1]

And when we step back and look at how many apps Apple makes it’s mind-boggling, and really, most of them are at least a mild “good.”

[1] Closest I’ve found are Craft and Zoho Notebook. Zoho gets the price right, it’s dirt cheap, and has a Linux app (though it’s basically a web app). Zoho bothers me for being ugly though. Craft is slick on iOS with a web app only on desktop, but it’s pricey if you leave the free tier. For my criteria it’s important that the apps support sharing, collaboration, and notifications when the other person updates a note. I’m honestly not sure if these two alternatives hit every requirement because I gave on both pretty quick and accepted being stuck in Apple Notes for now. Going to iCloud.com on my Linux system isn’t horrible.

I disagree. They deserve the criticism. Among things software is one of the few things we should get correct.

I don’t think anyone is asking for the world I just want software that dosent crash and makes sense to use.

Just a couple weeks ago Apple Music was leaking GBs of memory.

Apple used to have maintenance releases. They used to be known for their taste.

They should absolutely cop the criticism. It’s not like they don’t have the resources to make their software better.

They could go a long way if they 1) slowed down the major OS releases (I mean, like stop them altogether, actually?) and 2) give priority to all bugs and not keep kicking bugs down the road because: we-already-shipped-with-those-bugs-so-they-must-not-be-that-big-of-a-deal.

I'd add 3), more pair-programming between senior engineers and junior engineers—to hopefully make junior engineers better engineers.

I have to say though, when I knew I was heading out of the company (Apple) within a year, I tried to be a "mentor" to the junior engineers at Apple. And they wouldn't have me. I suppose I was too old… To be sure, they knew Swift better than I did, ha ha.

(Oh well, I tried. I did push back very publicly against management during some of the team meetings—I was told by a few of the junior engineers as I was retiring that they appreciated that example.)

From an Apple employee culture perspective, software team is second or third class to the hardware group.

A friend on the App Store software team wasn't invited to a private iPhone Duo preview, because she wasn't in the hardware division. She felt so disrespected and is considering leaving.

My sister (on the hardware team) shared that its a constantly cycle of non-hardware folks getting shafted and then they complain loud enough until they get 'equal' treatment until the next unfair thing rolls out.

As a user, I'm much closer to 'the masses' than to the power users and still I have to say that Apple's software keeps getting worse.

Dude, my M5 MacBook Pro gets too hot to touch while idling, and it's all background system processes. You don't understand the criticism of their software because instead of listening to the criticism, you've dismissed it as power user fantasy without even understanding the problems.

And friend, I didn't pay for an eight thousand dollar machine for software "designed for the masses" instead of serious professionals and computer enthusiasts. "The masses" are not spending eight thousand dollars on a premium laptop marketed towards professionals. This is an expensive machine and I should be in the driver's seat, not Apple. It should not take arcane, brittle incantations to turn off Siri and dozens of background "AI" services that melt my computer and literally burn my fingertips in exchange for recommending filenames in Pages.

And that's not even mentioning the multitudes of extremely serious system and driver bugs piling up over the last several major versions, nor the grotesque and inconsistent Liquid Glass malarkey.

My main problem with modern Apple software is I feel the design has been on a near constant gradual decline trend overall (except for the huge dip with Liquid Ass of course) and it has gotten buggier too. I'm just never going to update my iPad because I updated my other Apple devices and I deeply regret it.

I actually have felt this way for a fairly long time but Apple always baits me. Like the twelve or fifteen different times Apple OSes have finally supported some parts of WebM on certain devices sometimes when it works. Oh my god, I gotta update so I can have another couple WebMs load successfully only in Safari and not in any other app that doesn't decode it itself. Or back when I used an iPhone, third party keyboards - I use a lot of jailbreak tweaks but I gotta give that up so I can upgrade for third-party keyboard support that is so ass that nobody would ever use it. Heck, I wish I had updated my iPad even less. One fewer major version and I could've made use of the virtualization support that was dormant - but Apple fixed the glitch that let you use it on Apple Silicon iPads, so now you can't. Thanks! This is important to do because it helps... Uhh, security, probably? Something like that.

Since Snow Leopard or so, most of my Apple software upgrades have been bitter sweet at best, but usually just bitter, like I've been baited into having a worse experience.

Of course, it is probably apparent that I simply don't like Apple very much, especially not anymore. And I hate to have to justify myself by doing this, but we lack the maturity needed for me to avoid it, so... I am going to point out the obvious that this is hardly limited to Apple. GNOME 3 may be the single biggest downgrade any desktop system I've ever used has been. It has improved over time, but GNOME 3 has never been even close to as relatively good for its time as GNOME 2 was. Same for KDE 3 -> KDE 4 although I think as a rare standout KDE Plasma 6 is genuinely getting better continuously over time and remains one of the things I am excited to update. Windows 10 -> Windows 11 was so bad that it seemingly durably made several of my friends switch to Linux full time and just simply give up on things that absolutely can't be made to work on Linux - that is a powerful statement, and months later it seems they were indeed not fucking around. Android has been enshittifying at an alarming pace, too, although I don't feel like the Android experience from a software perspective is degrading or getting worse, but Google really knows how to blow their own leg off and by god they're going to do everything they can to make sure that all of the advantages they have over Apple are rendered meaningless so they can drag themselves kicking and screaming out of accidentally having succeeded at something.

I don't feel like it should be necessary for me to justify this, because Apple's recent growing incompetence in shipping working software and release engineering stands on its own regardless of industry trends. I'd SSH into my Mac Mini, but I can't. I have to go reset it, because it's been on for 60 days and can no longer open new network sockets. (I am not making this up. macOS genuinely has/had that bug and mine genuinely is in that state right now.) It's not that everyone else is doing great. When it comes to Linux systems it's easy to give them a lot of slack because they simply have no goddamned money, but still, things could be better. It's just that Apple is richer than ever and yet worse than ever at shipping software. I struggle to square the circle.