OP
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2009
- Messages
- 15,510
- Reaction score
- 3,874
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Winchester, VA
- Your Mac's Specs
- MBP 16" 2023 (M3 Pro), iPhone 15 Pro, plus ATVs, AWatch, MacMinis (multiple)
Apple makes good products, despite your pessimism, Patrick. So, when an issue arises, however trivial it is, it's worth pursuing. Overall the iPhone 15 Pro, with iOS 17.1.1, is excellent. Standby, when it works, is brilliantly designed and a great idea. However, there is an intermittent issue where it won't initiate, for some reason. It's not consistently reproduceable, so Apple has nothing it can "fix" at this point.
As for the "have you restarted" question, they did ask and I did answer that I had, with no change.
How widespread the Standby issue may be, I don't know, but on this site just Lisa and I have commented on it. On the internet there have been a couple of articles on Standby and getting it working, but none of them mentioned anything about the intermittent problem, so it's apparently not that widespread.
As a veteran of IT and software development, I can tell you that the absolute worst issue to have is intermittent issues. Until and unless one can duplicate the error consistently, it's like trying to fight with a blindfold on. You never know when or if it's fixed because there is no test for it.
I think Apple is making great hardware and even more spectacular software these days. You really ought to move into something more modern. The Mac in your profile is 11 years old, a dinosaur in computer terms. If all you use it for is as a dumb terminal to the Internet, it may work, at least as long as the Internet itself doesn't move beyond its capabilities. I suspect that will happen quicker than one might think.
One of my daughters has a Samsung phone, relatively new, and it's a piece of junk. I wouldn't have one if you paid me. Samsung owners, don't troll me, it's a free market (sort of), and we get to put our money where we want to. Samsung gets my money for SSDs, but not phones.
I'm not an Apple fanboi. I know Apple has flaws. Apple, for example does have a residual problem with Finder that has been there a long time in the form of a memory leak. It's been around for a few years now. It is a niche case, but it's there. It can be cleared by restarting the Mac, which may be why a lot of folks never see it, or it can be fixed with a Terminal "killall Finder" command to restart Finder. Apple knows about it, just hasn't fixed it yet. On the scale of things, it's not fatal. And that is why the "Did you try a restart?" question is on the checklists...it clears memory leaks (and similar problems) like magic!
People want "perfect" software but I tell you that anything beyond "Hello, world." will never be perfect. When you develop software you do the best you can. Complex projects like an OS are always released with known bugs. The objective is to get as many fixed as you can, with the severity of the bug as the priority setting factor. Trivial bugs get through, just because you run out of time. Unknown bugs show up when users to into the deep corners of the use envelope, to places that maybe 1% or less of users will need to go. Big, Ugly bugs that show up get fixed first, obviously, and smaller bugs may never be addressed before the software is retired. You develop workarounds for unfixed bugs and live with them.
A lesson from the past: NASA never wanted to have any incident in manned space flight due to software, so they invoked a "zero defect" policy. That policy meant that testing software had to go into EVERY corner of the use envelope, and beyond. Once the source code was approved, a change to a line of flight code would take 5 years to get approved to fly. That long lead time was the reason that the Apollo missions were flown with really old computers. And yet, when on final approach to the Lunar landing, Apollo 11 reported an error code that was created by a circumstance that NASA didn't anticipate--too many "watchers" pointing radar and radio antennas at the spacecraft to make sure it was on the proper track! Fortunately, the programmer of the code realized when the error popped up and told flight control that the error was "Good to go, Flight" and the mission continued. The code was never fixed, they just told the "watchers" to stop. The programmer knew the error message because the code had been frozen for five years and it had been memorized by then.
So, you can have frozen code and zero new stuff, or you can have new stuff and some bugs to work around. I like new stuff, and I'm willing to work with programmers to squash bugs when I find them.
As for the "have you restarted" question, they did ask and I did answer that I had, with no change.
How widespread the Standby issue may be, I don't know, but on this site just Lisa and I have commented on it. On the internet there have been a couple of articles on Standby and getting it working, but none of them mentioned anything about the intermittent problem, so it's apparently not that widespread.
As a veteran of IT and software development, I can tell you that the absolute worst issue to have is intermittent issues. Until and unless one can duplicate the error consistently, it's like trying to fight with a blindfold on. You never know when or if it's fixed because there is no test for it.
I think Apple is making great hardware and even more spectacular software these days. You really ought to move into something more modern. The Mac in your profile is 11 years old, a dinosaur in computer terms. If all you use it for is as a dumb terminal to the Internet, it may work, at least as long as the Internet itself doesn't move beyond its capabilities. I suspect that will happen quicker than one might think.
One of my daughters has a Samsung phone, relatively new, and it's a piece of junk. I wouldn't have one if you paid me. Samsung owners, don't troll me, it's a free market (sort of), and we get to put our money where we want to. Samsung gets my money for SSDs, but not phones.
I'm not an Apple fanboi. I know Apple has flaws. Apple, for example does have a residual problem with Finder that has been there a long time in the form of a memory leak. It's been around for a few years now. It is a niche case, but it's there. It can be cleared by restarting the Mac, which may be why a lot of folks never see it, or it can be fixed with a Terminal "killall Finder" command to restart Finder. Apple knows about it, just hasn't fixed it yet. On the scale of things, it's not fatal. And that is why the "Did you try a restart?" question is on the checklists...it clears memory leaks (and similar problems) like magic!
People want "perfect" software but I tell you that anything beyond "Hello, world." will never be perfect. When you develop software you do the best you can. Complex projects like an OS are always released with known bugs. The objective is to get as many fixed as you can, with the severity of the bug as the priority setting factor. Trivial bugs get through, just because you run out of time. Unknown bugs show up when users to into the deep corners of the use envelope, to places that maybe 1% or less of users will need to go. Big, Ugly bugs that show up get fixed first, obviously, and smaller bugs may never be addressed before the software is retired. You develop workarounds for unfixed bugs and live with them.
A lesson from the past: NASA never wanted to have any incident in manned space flight due to software, so they invoked a "zero defect" policy. That policy meant that testing software had to go into EVERY corner of the use envelope, and beyond. Once the source code was approved, a change to a line of flight code would take 5 years to get approved to fly. That long lead time was the reason that the Apollo missions were flown with really old computers. And yet, when on final approach to the Lunar landing, Apollo 11 reported an error code that was created by a circumstance that NASA didn't anticipate--too many "watchers" pointing radar and radio antennas at the spacecraft to make sure it was on the proper track! Fortunately, the programmer of the code realized when the error popped up and told flight control that the error was "Good to go, Flight" and the mission continued. The code was never fixed, they just told the "watchers" to stop. The programmer knew the error message because the code had been frozen for five years and it had been memorized by then.
So, you can have frozen code and zero new stuff, or you can have new stuff and some bugs to work around. I like new stuff, and I'm willing to work with programmers to squash bugs when I find them.
