Reporting Bugs as External Developers
In Apple’s bug triage workflow, each problem is (ideally) tracked by a single Radar. If multiple Radars seem to report the same underlying problem, the oldest or most specific one is kept around while the others are closed as duplicates. This resolution can be frustrating for external developers, as this is often the last word they hear about a problem they’re having — particularly if the original Radar isn’t visible to them.
That said, having your bug closed as a duplicate isn’t always a bad thing. You can knowingly file a duplicate of an existing Radar as a way to say “I have this problem, too” and “Please fix this first”.
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Due to the chilling nature of Apple’s social media policies, you’re unlikely ever to hear anything back. But rest assured that your Tweets are showing up on a saved Twitter search somewhere in Cupertino.
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Speaking from my personal experience working at Apple, Radar is far and away the best bug tracking systems I’ve ever used. So it can be frustrating to be back on the outside looking in, knowing full well what we’re missing out on as external developers.
Previously: File Radars Early and Often.
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One of my biggest grudges is that nearly any kind of bug asks me to file a system profiler report. I hate doing that, partly because I often am super sure that it's not needed as the issue is easy to reproduce, and if contains quite some information that I do not feel comfortable sharing for no good reason.
So, what I like to know: If I file a report and it comes back within minutes, requesting a system profiler report (which I assume is a standard response and not actually requested by the engineer), does the report get put on hold until I file one? Meaning that if I do not supply one, the report is never getting to an engineer?
The lack of answer to radars is the least of the problems with Apple software.
The really big problem is that bugs are not fixed at all unless they get a good deal of public attention.
@Thomas Requesting a System Profiler is fine for me. Requesting a f*cking sysdiagnose is not, considering the size of the file and the fact that is sounds like the person on the other side has not even considered trying to reproduce the issue.
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I don't share the opinion that the Bug Reporter website is "excellent". It's way better than when it suffered a discoveryd treatment but it's not excellent yet.
I said my piece about filing radars in the comments of Michael's previous post: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/06/12/file-radars-early-and-often/#comment-2840913
But the main point bears repeating: Filing a radar for Apple means you're providing free labor to one of the richest corporations on earth. So long as people keep doing this, Apple will continue to think this state of affairs is acceptable.
someone: the bug reporter we see is not what apple employees use. they have a much better ui to their db. last i had any access, they had an actual mac app, not a web ui. dunno about today.
