Wesley Hilliard
After continuous frustration with what seems like a system that was built to fail, Apple developer Jeff Johnson wants developers to band together and get Apple to notice Feedback's failures.
Anyone who pays attention to the developer community will likely have noticed a slow increase in complaints about Apple's bug-reporting system. Feedback Assistant is pitched as a way to communicate directly with Apple engineers, but developers feel they've sent a report to a wall instead.
According to a blog post from developer Jeff Johnson, creator of apps like Stop The Madness, he intends to stop filing reports with Feedback Assistant altogether. The boycott would be carried out with three simple steps.
- File a new Feedback about Feedback Assistant (in Developer Tools & Resources) that lists the issues below and states that you're boycotting Feedback Assistant until the issues are addressed.
- Don't file any other new Feedbacks unless and until Apple addresses the issues.
- If Apple requests a response to a previously filed Feedback, respond only by saying that you're boycotting Feedback Assistant, and refer to your Feedback number from step 1.
Johnson hopes developers can make each Feedback as unique as possible to force Apple to address the boycott. If a flood of Feedbacks rush in about Feedback Assistant itself, Apple would supposedly be forced to respond.
The thinking behind this boycott also suggests Apple gets free labor from developers for finding bugs. While developers can find workarounds for a bug, Apple benefits most from users bug hunting for them.
Johnson lists several reasons why Apple's Feedback Assistant is a broken and hostile piece of software. Bug reports often go without any comment for months or years, Feebacks are closed unceremoniously without comment to the developer, and Apple demands invasive sysdiagnose reports, often without reason.
The boycott isn't meant to be a complaint directed toward individual Apple employees and engineers. In fact, that community would benefit from an improved Feedback Assistant system.
Apple employees have previously been vocal on social media or in interviews, suggesting the system would be difficult to improve due to the incredible number of reports filed every day. Johnson believes Apple is in control of its own priorities and should hire more personnel if that's the issue.
Feedback Assistant is an app that appears on iOS, macOS, iPadOS and others when developers are participating in a developer beta. The app automatically installs itself during the beta and can't be removed.
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6 Comments
Noble, but zero chance for a response or improvement. The developer experience sucks so much, tooling is borderline ancient.
Apples Feedback Assistant is the worst software imaginable in itself. The non support behind it is nearly as bad as the software. The only reason I can imagine, why this is since over a decade is, that Apple tries to stop, decades long working for free, Apple Beta Testers like me to tell Apple the errors, mistakes and baddies of Apple software, so that Apple can beliefe, there own software is top notch!!!
Can you believe? Decades ago, it was possible in predecessors (bad, but still better than the current one) to choose "Mac crashed" as a problem. Not possible anymore since years, Apple changed it to 4 possibilities, the closest would be either "App crashed" or "doesn't behave as it should or not", none of which is similar to a Computer crash. And all other things are similarly bad and, as the article suggests, hostile to bug reporting.
For Beta testers like me, it's no wonder at all, that Mac software gets worse and worse and worse over the decades. Apple is really not interested in doing good and bug free software anymore.
An article in the best computer magazine on earth, a German on (c't) years ago, where a former Apple software developer was interviewd makes this all round. He told the interviewer, that, when he worked at Apple over a decade ago, Hairforce One allowed him from time to time to take time to get rid of old bugs in macOS. But then this stopped, he got no time after projects for this (for users) important deed. He said to this, that the aim then become to make new software all the time, bugs are no longer important. Perfect match. :(
I think it is unrealistic to expect Apple to respond to all bug reports. There has to be a better way, and some of it is simply Apple needs to make sure the app actually works. I've had problems where the app is unusable due to using large fonts. Then there is bug reports, I know others should have also submitted and showing no other people, even for bugs reported on the news. I submitted a bug report about submitting bugs for what was iWorks apps(Numbers, Pages, etc). How many people know Numbers, Pages, etc used to be park of a package called iWorks? Yet under Feedback app on the Mac, there is no Numbers, pages etc, but there is an iWorks choice. On the phone, there is no option for iWords, Pages, Numbers, etc? I submitted suggestion that months ago. Why is this a problem??????
as a new developer into the world of Apple, my journey started by actually joining into the developer programs to directly speak with feedback assistant regarding vulnerabilities and bugs that I was having on my normal operating software as the standard Apple Support line around dealing with customers issues is very limited and like with feedback assistant hit a dead end. It is crucial now more than ever the Apple. Take note of any bugs, or vulnerabilities the issue I see developing overcoming years if Apple doesn’t address this issue. They will be back in dated with not only developer issues and bugs customers coming onto the platform, reach out for support and assistance as the current climate around cyber vulnerabilities and crime is on the rise and the other growing rate of technology and its pace. There is also a massive knowledge gap between the young generation and our elder generation needs to be addressed by having i’m more timely, swift and Thora Support network as previously mentioned above Apple is gaining a lot of value from our feedback as many of us spend many sleepless nights I’m going through bugs and reporting to find the workaround and fixtures the lease. Apple can do it start paying attention more
How does anyone get anything done in construction, engineering, software design, if you sat around and fixed every little bug (and most bugs are not mission critical), would you ever get anything done humans and perfection is impossible, yes you wanna catch mistakes particularly the big ones, but you also try to design in such a way that you have some cushion/limit so that you don’t cause a catastrophe, but in the long run you can’t hold up everything for one little item you would never get anything done. On the automobile production line, yes you can pull that stop switch maybe once or twice a month but you can’t pull that switch every minute of the day.
It sounds like this person wants a instantaneous response, how many people does he think Apple should dedicate to that task 20,000, 50,000? Or is he looking for payment for his bug report?