With the latest Google Gemini deal to be the backend for Apple’s AI, I wish Apple could also do a deal for search (even though Google seems to be struggling more as time passes). Apple’s search being broken in Settings on iOS, macOS and iPadOS seem intentional — it can’t search in a relatively small and fixed list of items! Is it any wonder that Mail search doesn’t work with external data?<p>The AirDrop and Hotspot issues described are spot on. The success rate for these is like 40% to 65% (the latter if you’re lucky). These features require doing a dance of airplane mode, disconnect from WiFi, go to Settings and fiddle with the toggles, etc. When it works, it’s like magic. At other times, it’s a big joke on “it just works”.<p>Text selection and the trials to just move the cursor <i>quickly and accurately</i>: it’s like Apple has no senior management that cares enough (looking at you, Craig Federighi), no QA (this is obvious truth to every user) and no money to spend on making things better (don’t let the stock prices fool you). FWIW, I know of slower and fiddly ways to move the cursor somewhat (press space, hold and move or place finger on the text, hold and move).<p>All these issues persist for years or decades because senior management does not care. I can’t think of any other rational explanation.
BY FAR #3 is the most annoying UX on iOS 26 - I fall for it every single time when trying to change payment method. Not only does it undo years of muscle memory, it's so unbelievably unintuitive to have the first button change address instead of payment method<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1mb4lod/is_anyone_else_as_bothered_by_this_ux_as_i_am/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1mb4lod/is_anyone_else...</a>
Had the pleasure of making an Apple account to join our company's developer team. I filled out the form on the website 7 times: Edge on Windows, Edge on macOS, Safari on macOS, using 2 different phone numbers. No matter what, Apple just refused to send the verification code to me.
It only worked after I remember Apple is a dick to the web platform, then I managed to create one from the popup in the App Store.
I and a friend (both are not Apple users) had the same issue about 2 years ago. I gave up after trying different (non-Apple) platforms, IPs and phone numbers. He was applying to Apple internship and ended up borrowing a Macbook to set up his account.<p>And talking about why I wanted a new Apple account... My old account was created with stupid security questions (like, What is your favorite dish) as a second factor, which I believe Apple has long deprecated. I forgot my answers and that blocked certain functionalities. Resetting the security questions requires answering the questions...
Apple also makes it a biznatch to make a developer account separate from your personal account. In Apple's ideal world, multiple accounts should in no circumstance ever exist. I, in an ideal world, would agree with this. But we live in this world, where Apple bans accounts for redeeming legitimate gift cards.
I had a similar issue when I first brought my iPad. Turns out, Apple doesn't like custom domains for emails. So, I had to make an Apple account with a Gmail account, then remove the Gmail account and add my email address with the custom domain.<p>Why? Who knows. Still remember my first experience after buying an iPad.
All this s#it was already expected, because this is what happened when companies get big enough without competition or any kind of regulation.<p>This already happened in other markets and lots of people have warned this would happened again but nobody cared.<p>Now it doesn't matter anymore because Apple is so big that no matter what kind of s#it they do, nothing will hurt their sales, because people are trapped, depend on their stuff and don't have any other options.
I used to love Apple because they were so far ahead of the game in terms of UX and hardware. They have dropped the ball so much recently with all these UX mishaps from Apple Glass to most of the bugs in the post that affect me. I am more than willing to switch to Android or some other device regardless of price, but haven't found one that is close to equivalent yet. I worry it'll be a few years before something comes close to the battery life + screen quality + camera quality + decent software/security of iOS.
In the context of laptops, I would agree (MBP's hardware just outclasses everything else, even if I prefer Fedora over macOS).<p>However, for phones, this just doesn't shake out. The Pixel 10 Pro for instance, has:<p>* A battery that outlasts the iPhone 16 Pro by an hour<p>* A slightly better display (higher brightness for outdoor use, higher PPI, higher color accuracy, same refresh rate)<p>* A better camera for still photography, especially HDR and low-light (although admittedly worse for video)
Trying to type this comment on an iPhone and that very last issue, text selection, is so so real. It’s probably the single biggest thing I hate about this phone that makes me consider switching back to Android (I was on Android for 12 years before trying out an iPhone for 3 years atm, and in general, on average, I can’t tell the difference… they both have strengths and flaws. Text selection is a pretty massive flaw on iPhone.)
This list is frustrating to read because it reminds me of all the time I've spent dealing with these bugs. Not all of them thankfully but more than half steal my time at least once on a weekly basis. They're all bad but I think the auto correct actively fighting me and the ios cursor thing are perhaps the most annoying of the bunch for me. Trying to communicate well on a mobile platform is bad enough but when it's actively sabotaging you it's just so much worse.
The emoji search box's search bar sometimes will just stop working, usually after a {input, erase input, new input} sequence. No idea why. Dismiss picker, try again.<p>Sometimes the picker just refuses to be summoned.<p>Bluetooth is a mess. File transfers will fail, who knows why? Certainly not macOS. Often I'll just punt to GoogleDrive-TP.<p>Really random screen wakes.<p>Left macOS alone for 5s? All your windows have decided to start playing a game of musical desktop, and need 10s to re-arrange themselves back into place, also while sometimes displaying their contents at 2x.<p>Slack has any <i>number</i> of these; e.g., emoji inside codeblocks are simply corrupted. A number of odd corner cases in URLs will corrupt, and each edit of the message will further corrupt it.<p>So much of the web is plagued by some framework that, upon <i>any</i> JS exception, will destroy the entire DOM (idk maybe defunct page > no page at all?) and leave you only with "ApplicationError: …".<p>At this point I'd add "is a motorcycle a car? Is a pedestrian signal a stop light?!" CAPTCHAKCAS to this list, but those are a "feature".
Yeah, these are funny.<p>There's a strange logic (that I understand is not <i>just</i> at Apple) where if you ship a known bug, it becomes harder next release to fix it… because we already shipped the bug once (twice, etc.).<p>Apple engineers care though. If they were allowed to (given time, priority), they would love to knock out some of their oldest and most annoying bugs. And I understand that from time to time a bug-fix-only OS release is planned… but things always come up. New hardware, "AI"… who knows.<p>Maybe someday we'll get another Snow Leopard (bug-fix-only OS release).
It feels like Apple lacks the institutional vocabulary to even think about fixing old bugs. The way the releases are structured, there’s a “zero bugs” day where all bugs are ceremonially kicked out of the current release, and the level of quality is deemed to be “what we’re shipping with”. On that day, it’s not like the bugs are fixed, they’re just bulk-modified to target “future os release” and that’s that.<p>Then the planning is made for next years release and they plan for X features, which require Y time and Z engineers, and some mild hand-waving later a schedule is made, and <i>gee would you look at that</i>, there’s no time anywhere for fixing existing bugs. But that’s ok because <i>big rewrite of subsystem</i> is gonna ship next release and it’ll probably make all the bugs invalid, right? Right? Well, it certainly won’t have <i>more</i> bugs, right? Right? Oops…
ob <a href="https://xkcd.com/1172/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1172/</a>
> Apple Pay: Card Icon Changes Address<p>This has been driving me nuts. The old design was perfect. Who could possibly think this made sense?
Please add to the list "Launching Apple Music without you wanting to, at the worst possible moment", which is every moment, really.
I own an Android phone. The first time I tried to send a text from my wife's iPhone, I sent the wrong text 3 times in a row because autocorrect was convinced that it knew the word I wanted and I swear that the word was corrected only after I had committed to pressing the send button. At the time the autocorrect on Android was very mild; it's gotten more aggressive since, but still nothing like Apple's
Last time I made a satirical site I was banned from the registrar (I was "convincing" people that aliens were real apparently)
Solid list. I’d like to add the following:<p>- All: Contact syncing with Office 365 results in stored birthdays getting moved forward by one day.
- macOS: Bluetooth audio stuttering when going in and out of full screen view in a given app such as PowerPoint.
- macOS: Unlock using Apple Watch will randomly stop working
- macOS: Safari suddenly going out to lunch and taking 30+ seconds to load a page (fixed by force quitting the entire browser).
A bug that’s persisted for 10 years at least is in the Music app. When you lose Wi-Fi the app will skip to the next song over and over and eventually freeze up.
Wow, the first three "bugs" on this are so spot on.<p>The Apple Pay Card icon that changes addresses always gets me. It's not what I would expect it to do.
This rightfully deserves its #1 spot on Hacker News. I've experienced most of these bugs for longer than I can remember (and my memory goes back to the Apple II days. Maybe this will help shame Apple into fixing these problems.
I have a lot of pet Apple bugs. Top of mind at the moment:<p>Why can't we adjust the order of photos in a Shared Photos album?
Site looks to be by <a href="https://github.com/polymath-ventures/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/polymath-ventures/</a>
Most of these are fully on Apple, but for the Gmail and Google Contacts bugs, I'd say Google is at least partly to blame for positioning the open standards versions of their APIs (IMAP and CardDAV in this case) as secondary to their own proprietary APIs and not implementing them particularly well.
Mail just sometimes refuses to issue a server-side search via IMAP. It insists that it wants to search its offline database of downloaded mails. When it cannot find anything, it will even tell you that “Mail downloads and organizes messages when iPhone is locked, charging, and connect to Wi-Fi.” And my response to that is, it has had eight hours to do exactly that every night.
I laughed at “autocorrect will die on this hill.”
A domain name registered one day ago. I think this is the first time I’ve seen a domain on its first/second day, other than my own domains.<p>I did not intentionally look it up. I have an extension installed that tells me domain age whenever I visit a site.
You forgot when autocorrect fixes your word the second time, in 50% of cases you hit send too fast and have to send a follow up correction or edit the message
I’m not sure if it’s a bug, but I find it frustrating that there isn’t a more efficient way to organize the grid of apps on your iOS home screen.
The Apple Pay one drives me crazy
This is spot on! I have experienced all these issues at one point or other and my spotlight search is frozen as I type this on a Mac mini.
I guess it’s about priorities and not prowess, but it is shocking/fascinating the things Apple seems really bad at.<p>The Mac is funniest of all. I can’t imagine Tahoe drives an upgrade cycle. I buy a Mac for the hardware. Why not refine it? I would love to have a Mac with a better OS. (Don’t troll me about Linux. It’s worse.)<p>Hm, what’s worse? To be incapable or simply not to care enough?
I'm still waiting for apple to fix ringtones on siri generated alarms
I actually keep the Gmail app installed on my iPhone specifically for searching my mail. It's infuriating.
I can't seem to recreate the mail search bug.
This is obvious AI-generated web design style.
You're not wrong — but actually the prompt I gave it was "invert Apple's design style." I think it did a reasonable job?
It’s just Claude code house style, it’s as identifiable as Bootstrap. It didn’t invert Apple anything.<p>Speaking of AI-induced delusions, why did you submit this to HN?<p>It made me cringe to see its AI prose in AI code with completely made up bugs (really, the Mail search bar doesn’t work?), with made up numbers based on made up things as the spine of the content.
I suspect the point was never to win awards for web design, just to put some content on a page.
Is it? Looks good to me.
This is a Claude-coded website that invents metrics and data based on bald-faced lies, ex. the first example makes up that the search in Mail does not work 100% of the time and then calculates fantastical millions of hours wasted.<p>I can report it works fine, needed it to pull up 13 year old emails for me a couple months ago.<p>I absolutely abhor Apple’s software QC since 2010 but I don’t think a vibe-coded, vibes-based, fantasy, written by AI, with the sheen of numbers and reality is the way to do it, or a net-positive outlet for my frustration. At least on HN.
If you want to be that pedantic it does state "This site is satire. Not affiliated with Apple Inc. The bugs are real. The math is not. All estimates are made up. Your frustration, however, is valid." at the bottom.
Huh. How else would you get a massive company that has let certain bugs sit for decades to address them? This method is probably just as ineffective as reporting another bug into the Black Hole of Bug Reports that is Apple, but this one is at least mildly funnier? YMMV of course.
Do you think you might be taking it too seriously?
I mean, it reports FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS in losses due to Apple Mail.app search not working. Give them credit for... something.
This is another level of petty, I love it Maybe it will inspire them to hire more engineers and we can kill two birds with one stone.
This is never an issue with number of engineers, it's an issue of business priorities.<p>Large tech companies have plenty of engineers to fix bugs, but most of them are on projects trying to 10X things instead of paying down debt.<p>Apple used to be unique in it's immunity to it, they even shipped an OS update claiming it was only big fixes and not features which is unthinkable these days. Over time there's much less focus on polish from them though.
Will maintenance and bugfixes get them promoted? "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome"
More engineers aren't the solution. Less engineers are.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law</a>
> Maybe it will inspire them to hire more engineers<p>Given Apple's recent software quality, this would likely just let them ship more bugs.
All these are so infuriating. It's crazy what a nice metal case and good hardware can make people forgive.
iOS user here of a few years, never hit any of the bugs in this article.<p>Maybe Apple didn’t fix them because the bugs never existed in the first place.
The first one is pretty funny because Gmail search itself has a lot of issues.