14 DAY TRIAL // Whether or not this has anything to do with Tim Cook’s more relaxed internal policies, one thing has become increasingly clear in the past few years. Apple can’t be bothered to issue urgent fixes anymore. And that includes two major flaws that we discovered in both iOS 8 and Yosemite, the company’s newest OS releases.
To make one thing clear, this isn’t the first time I’ve reported on these issues. However, I’m now highlighting these two particular flaws as examples of bugs that Apple should’ve addressed by now. Both these flaws are critical, in my opinion. Especially if the planned software updates fail to fix them because the company wanted to kill an entire flock of birds with a single stone.
iOS 8: Power Management issues
After carrying out battery tests on three separate devices running iOS 8 – an iPhone 5, an iPhone 6, and an iPhone 6 Plus – I’ve been able to isolate a power management flaw that prevents the phone from reporting the actual power levels inside the battery. To cut a long story very short, the phones died long before the meter gauged 5%, even 8% in some instances.
The last time I experienced this, the phone powered off at 9% charge. An OS whose diagnostics can’t be trusted can’t possibly be called “the most advanced” out there, in my humble opinion. Say you’re about to meet up with someone in a crowded place. That 9% sounds like enough juice to rely upon in case you can’t seem to spot each other, right?
This (among other things I’ve heard aren’t right in the power department) needs the utmost attention from Apple. This is not a flaw that the engineering team can just queue up behind Bluetooth issues and minor GUI tweaks. It’s the kind of thing that deserves its own dedicated patch.
Yosemite: Notification Center amnesia
Dubbed Yosemite, Apple’s new OS X release from this year has been – let’s not say riddled with bugs – less than satisfactory from some standpoints. Such as Wi-Fi connectivity, blurred fonts on some Macs, or reboot problems on SSD-equipped machines. Some flaws are more serious than others, but if you ask the user who relies heavily on that messed up feature, a software patch would mean the world to them right now.
I’m in the same boat, but admittedly my grievances are far less pretentious. I have two Macs that I work with, one at home and one at the office. They both work fine for the most part. All except for one small, but viciously annoying bug that has managed to frustrate me beyond belief. Notification Center is amnesic!
Every time I reboot the two Yosemite-installed Macs, I need to perform the same settings over and over again so as to not get bothered by Notification Center’s banners and alerts for certain apps that receive updates by the second. Granted, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s something that heavily impairs my workflow. It’s also the kind of thing that Apple used to keep an eye out for. Sadly, these days the company’s engineering team overlooks more and more bugs that sometimes take eons to address. Which conveniently brings me to my next point.
Resolution: speed up incremental releases
There was a time when each Mac OS would get up to 12 incremental updates before a major new version arrived. Granted, those were times when Apple took years to release a new OS. However, those were also times when each new OS release brought forth radically different things. That’s plural, mind you.
These days, the OS refresh is an annual affair, and the releases aren’t much different from one another. So, naturally, one has to wonder why Apple doesn’t just speed up these incremental rollouts already and deal with the urgent flaws as they poke their heads out? Is it better to just keep users waiting on the edge of their seats, each with their own nemesis bug, until point-one arrives and deals a blow to all of them in one shot? What if the update doesn’t do the trick for one bug? Two more months of agony as the point-2 release gets prepared?
If Microsoft can deliver these updates for Windows users on a monthly basis, why can’t you, Apple?
