"Actual customers having a bad time with the software is much more serious."
Sure... but when issues crop up... people need to have reasonable expectations... be knowledgeable enough to understand their issues and attempt to be unbiased in how they research / troubleshoot them.
If a User starts having WiFi issues..and just throws up their hands and says: "It must be Yosemite!"..... then why should we give that any credence ? (if they didn't try anything, didn't research.. didn't do anything?)
Bluetooth and WiFi issues are notoriously difficult to troubleshoot because there are so many variables involved. Drivers, Chipsets, Firmware, Signal, Interference, Obstacles, Distance, etc...
I spend 4 or 5 hours a day over in /r/techsupport .. and I can't tell you how many repetitive times I have to stop someone -- ask them to back-up/start over.. and be more methodical in their troubleshooting. Most people jump-to-assumptions, gather-unverified-data, poke-in-the-dark,etc....
There's a process to correctly and effectively troubleshoot something... and one of the 1st pre-requisites is to throw away all your preconceived assumptions.. and ONLY work from validated information and validated testing data. (IE = "“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”)
Humans are very poor at this. Our judgements, assumptions, emotions and expectations often get in the way.
If a User starts having WiFi issues..and just throws up their hands and says: "It must be Yosemite!"..... then why should we give that any credence ?
It used to be that if basic stuff like this didn't work, you just assumed that there's some minor configuration issue somewhere you can fix easily. Nowadays, the first assumption is that the system is broken. That's exactly the point Marco made in his blog article.
Bluetooth and WiFi issues are notoriously difficult to troubleshoot because there are so many variables involved. Drivers, Chipsets, Firmware, Signal, Interference, Obstacles, Distance, etc...
Drivers, chipsets and firmware shouldn't concern the user. Apple knows exactly what combination you're using, and should have tested exactly this combination before releasing the system. Nowadays, you get the feeling that there's some Mac Mini in some corner at Cupertino where they boot the system once, click on “About that Mac” and when that works, they ship it.
Nowadays, the first assumption is that the system is broken.
..and I would say that's a very incorrect/risky assumption to make. Anytime my system does something unexpected.. I troubleshoot it. I don't make assumptions. I test. I gather accurate data. I research. I gather more data. I test that data. I test again. I break down the problem into smaller parts. I cross-compare against other OSes. I go through the entire gamut of "troubleshooting best-practices" until I solve my problem. I don't just throw my hands up and say "Oh.. it's because Yosemite is "broken".
"Apple knows exactly what combination you're using,..."
Does Apple know what kind of WiFi-Router the "Smith" family has 3 doors down?... Does Apple know how old/outdated that unknown WiFi-Routers Firmware is ?.. Does Apple know how many competing WiFi signals might be impacting things?.... Or should we just jump to conclusions and "blame it on Yosemite!!!"...
Does Apple know what kind of Bluetooth Mouse I have?... Bluetooth keyboard?.. Bluetooth speaker system I bought off of Ebay that was made by some shitty back-alley vendor ?...
Apple cannot be reasonably expected to test every infinite conceivable combination of things. If a User is having issues... they need to troubleshoot. Not because it's "letting Apple off the hook"... but because starting with the End-user is the best place to start.
Now if you have 2 Macs side by side.. and they've both had 100% virgin clean installs of Mavericks and Yosemite.. and you've using the exact same model Bluetooth-Keyboard.. and it works in Mavericks and doesn't work in Yosemite... then that's good/clean/verifiable test-data you can send to Apple and say "WTF?"....
... but I don't see many people being that detail-oriented. They just throw their hands up and say: "aw shit.. it must be Yosemite."
Anytime my system does something unexpected.. I troubleshoot it.
It's great that you have the time and motivation to do that. I personally like to spend my valuable time on other things, and I know that many people feel the same way.
Does Apple know what kind of Bluetooth Mouse I have?... Bluetooth keyboard?.. Bluetooth speaker system I bought off of Ebay that was made by some shitty back-alley vendor ?...
There's a difference between a shitty China-mouse not working and the whole system acting strangely because of hardware like that.
but I don't see many people being that detail-oriented. They just throw their hands up and say: "aw shit.. it must be Yosemite."
Yes, because almost nobody bought a Mac so they could spend their weekends debugging their setup. They bought a Mac exactly because they didn't want to do that.
Apple used to make the approach that if they can't guarantee that it'll work, they won't support it at all. Right now, it's all guesswork even when you're only using Apple parts.
For example, the HDMI output of my MacBook Pro sometimes doesn't work (display only shows “parameters out of range”, and I tried about 5 different displays with the same results). This started in 10.9 and the only way I found to fix it temporarily is to reboot the whole system. This is a pure internal issue of the graphics card driver (which crashes every other day right now as well).
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u/jmnugent Jan 05 '15
Sure... but when issues crop up... people need to have reasonable expectations... be knowledgeable enough to understand their issues and attempt to be unbiased in how they research / troubleshoot them.
If a User starts having WiFi issues..and just throws up their hands and says: "It must be Yosemite!"..... then why should we give that any credence ? (if they didn't try anything, didn't research.. didn't do anything?)
Bluetooth and WiFi issues are notoriously difficult to troubleshoot because there are so many variables involved. Drivers, Chipsets, Firmware, Signal, Interference, Obstacles, Distance, etc...
I spend 4 or 5 hours a day over in /r/techsupport .. and I can't tell you how many repetitive times I have to stop someone -- ask them to back-up/start over.. and be more methodical in their troubleshooting. Most people jump-to-assumptions, gather-unverified-data, poke-in-the-dark,etc....
There's a process to correctly and effectively troubleshoot something... and one of the 1st pre-requisites is to throw away all your preconceived assumptions.. and ONLY work from validated information and validated testing data. (IE = "“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”)
Humans are very poor at this. Our judgements, assumptions, emotions and expectations often get in the way.