Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

alphasubzero949 · May 7, 2005, 10:19 PM

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1813718,00.asp

His rant on Tiger.

Angus_D · May 8, 2005, 05:00 AM

His central point is valid.

theolein · May 8, 2005, 05:18 AM

Although I dislike Coursey a lot, his article is spot on this time. The bugs in Apple's .0 releases are just plain embarrassing.

LaGow · May 8, 2005, 09:35 AM

Originally Posted by Angus_D

His central point is valid.

Perhaps, but it's not as if Microsoft has never released buggy operating systems itself. This article seems like it's yet another hypocritical attempt to spread FUD about OS X. Nobody with any real experience in deploying systems in business does it without taking lots of time for testing. So to maintain that Tiger's bugs keep it from being a player in the "enterprise" at this stage is disengenuous, particularely with 10.4.1 so near release.

asdasd · May 8, 2005, 09:49 AM

Well they should keep the server version uderwraps for a few weeks. Early adopters in the consumer world are happy enough with the new features to not care too much about bugs, many of them cosmetic. That, however, will not wash in the enterprise. Decoupling the server and consmer releases has happened before, hasn't it?

chabig · May 8, 2005, 10:13 AM

I agree with LaGow. Enterprises don't blindly install major OS upgrades without performing a lot of internal testing themselves. I can't imagine that an obscure SMB problem is going to cause difficulties for large customers simply because they aren't living on the bleeding edge. My company still runs Windows 95 on a lot of machines!

Chris

Millennium · May 8, 2005, 10:22 AM

Coursey is not known for FUD, but he's managed it here by bringing out the Cisco VPN issue. That one is not Apple's fault; it is Cisco's. They have been working with Apple for months, trying to hash out the issue, but in the end it is Cisco code which is to blame for this one.

As for the others, Coursey has a point, but I disagree with his solution. Apple's own internal QA process is what really needs to improve, not the Beta trial program. This is not to say that the Beta program is worthless, but more than a few of the issues which have popped up in OS updates ever since OSX 10.0 should have been caught well before the first external build was released. The worst error they've ever committed on this front was the iTunes installer debacle back in the 10.0 days (where the installer could wipe out your hard drive if you had a space in the drive name), but things like the Samba issue should have been tested much more thoroughly before Beta, given how loudly Apple is touting the feature.

besson3c · May 8, 2005, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by Millennium

Coursey is not known for FUD, but he's managed it here by bringing out the Cisco VPN issue. That one is not Apple's fault; it is Cisco's. They have been working with Apple for months, trying to hash out the issue, but in the end it is Cisco code which is to blame for this one.

As for the others, Coursey has a point, but I disagree with his solution. Apple's own internal QA process is what really needs to improve, not the Beta trial program. This is not to say that the Beta program is worthless, but more than a few of the issues which have popped up in OS updates ever since OSX 10.0 should have been caught well before the first external build was released. The worst error they've ever committed on this front was the iTunes installer debacle back in the 10.0 days (where the installer could wipe out your hard drive if you had a space in the drive name), but things like the Samba issue should have been tested much more thoroughly before Beta, given how loudly Apple is touting the feature.

THe other problem with internal QA is that it doesn't allow for diverse usability testing and feedback on the UI. With beta testing, they may not get any better feedback from geeky developers, but maybe one or two of them might notice something that would confuse the general public. I'm not complaining about any of the changes specifically, but I have to wonder if many of them aren't somewhat arbitrary without actual usability testing to justify them.

leperkuhn · May 8, 2005, 12:11 PM

Gotta admit, I agree with a lot of the points in the article. If apple was less secretive and had open betas (that didn't cost a grand), it would be a huge benefit in bug fixing. simple point, well made.

Graymalkin · May 8, 2005, 04:01 PM

I would suspect the betas are often limited to Select and Premier developers because they paid money to get their access. When people have hundreds or thousands of dollars on the line they're far less likely to break their NDA than the kid who clicked through an online ADC registration. Paramount on all the mailings and e-mails from ADC is "don't give this to anybody or so much as give away screen shots".

As to the reason for the secrecy? I have no idea. I would imagine however the original Public Betas didn't prove all that productive and now the OS is much more of a selling point than in the past. With PB-10.1 OSX was still maturing to the point where people could work with it on a day to day basis. It was cool and new but machines were still booting into OS9 out of the box. Since Jaguar's release it's been more about adding features you doin't get anywhere else, this is especially true with Panther and Tiger. If a new feature, say Q2DX, is impressive but buggy in some situations you don't necessarily want people running betas they paid $30 for thinking that is how it will act in the GM and go tell their friends Tiger is a piece of crap.

For enterprise customers buying a Select or Premier developer account is not too much to ask for them to get to test their systems early and often. If I was goiing to deploy OSX in a large installation I'd be all over getting OSX server and client early. You get to test the systems and report bugs you find in your installation that will likely be fixed rather than complaining later that XYZ bug is preventing you from upgrading. You could have run into the bug early during the beta phase and had it worked out by the time the OS went GM.

Angus_D · May 8, 2005, 04:06 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

THe other problem with internal QA is that it doesn't allow for diverse usability testing and feedback on the UI. With beta testing, they may not get any better feedback from geeky developers, but maybe one or two of them might notice something that would confuse the general public. I'm not complaining about any of the changes specifically, but I have to wonder if many of them aren't somewhat arbitrary without actual usability testing to justify them.

I think there's also somewhat of a mentality that developers don't know what they're talking about when it comes to usability, so if a developer submits a usability bug then it's not going to get taken seriously.

Take the Mail toolbar icons, for example.

mitchell_pgh · May 8, 2005, 04:30 PM

His main point is invalid.

"Opinion: Tiger is great, or it will be soon. But if Apple wants to be considered a player in the enterprise, then it needs to improve its beta trial system to avoid the surprises now visiting networked Macs."

An Enterprise would NEVER jump on a .0 version of ANY OS (Windows/Linus/Unix). Many companies wait for a SP1 for Windows before considering moving over to the platform. Considering Apple's history, anyone worth their salt would wait until X.4.2 before moving a large user base over.

OS X has worked perfectly for me.

TailsToo · May 8, 2005, 06:31 PM

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

An Enterprise would NEVER jump on a .0 version of ANY OS (Windows/Linus/Unix). Many companies wait for a SP1 for Windows before considering moving over to the platform.

Half of our computers are work are still on Win2000, and most of the databases that are used to run the company only run under Access 97.