I hate bugs. As in insects, they’re gross (especially spiders). Oh, I hate software bugs too. As someone in the tech industry I’m quite forgiving of the occasional bug, they’re inevitable. But bugs and a crippled platform are two different thing entirely, and really poor UI decisions are equally as bad to a users experience.
If you’re unfamiliar with “Beta culture”, it’s an increasing trend in software/hardware development and distribution, where devices or applications that are supposed to be in the software cycle testing phase are released to keep up with competitors and market trends. Although they have undergone the first step in the testing cycle, these beta versions still have a long way to go before final product release. Today, companies tend to deploy products that are still in the beta phase - in the hope that customers will embrace them, quirks and all. This is done with the belief that a product ultimately can be fixed through product updates for features or bug fixes. The risk is that beta product leaves customers unsatisfied and damages company credibility. Apple especially is notorious for this however because their reputation is hard to tarnish.
So on to iOS11. As someone in the industry and an (ex) Apple fanboy, I used to impatiently load Apple’s beta/test builds on to my phones to test new features. It always quickly became aparant that this was a mistake as it would cripple many of the features I relied on for day-to-day use. By the time release rolled around there were still some issues, but nothing too major. However Apple has gotten more and more ambitious as new versions come. After over a week of using iOS11 now I feel like I used to when loading pre-release builds on my phone.
iOS11 is not only not production ready, it’s a crippled operating system. I have an iPhone 7 which is still less than a year old, it’s specs are still solid from a hardware standpoint. I get constant lock-ups where my phone becomes completely unresponsive for 10-30 seconds. Apps freeze and crash consistently, and I’m not talking 3rd party apps which you could say “well maybe they weren’t fully iOS11 ready”, I’m talking Apple native apps such as maps.
Some of my other favorite bugs so far:
- When playing music in Spotify, adjusting the volume will stop spotify and start playing music from my Library. Wat?
- The volume buttons work, but don’t adjust the slider, they seem to function completely independently from one another, leaving you wondering where your volume is actually at. There’s no visual feedback of volume adjustment to be found when using the side buttons.
- Speaker phone? Nope, doesn’t work
- Bluetooth audio in general has been very inconsistent, even on phone calls.
- Touch ID is far worse now, sometimes not working at all
- My phone will still say it’s charging from my Apple battery case after it’s empty and the battery is depleted.
You get the hint, really obvious stuff that should have been ironed out beforehand.
Now on to the UI/UX. Seriously what the hell? The headers like “Messages” and “All Inboxes” are like the headers I used to put on webpages in the late 90s before proper web design was a thing. I mean look at these things:
Who thought this was visually pleasing or informative? Relax on your font size there bro. Bloated labeling for no reason whatsoever.
The only thing I can say that I do enjoy is the new customizable Control Center. Every time a new iPhone releases I tell myself that this is when I'll finally be switching to Android. Maybe this time around I'll actually do it?