Why are you all complaining about the media naming a person in charge of these bricked phones? If it was regular police officer that happened to shoot someone in St Louis, you'd all be complaining that his name wasn't released.
Transparency is the best disinfectant. Verify the sources, name them and put it on record. This is just as bad as all the media reports of "un-named officials" or "un-named corporate spokesmen/women". Without a name on record, the media is un-credible and unchecked.
Police officers work for the public and need to be publicly accountable. The person in question doesn't, and shouldn't be.
Well now you know that both 1. the AppleInsider staff and 2. the Bloomberg staff
are ALL MORONS.
FYI, quality control managers, nor their staff
WRITE THE CODE ! ! ! ! ! ! in this case called iOS
So, now we at least know, if there is any website failure here at AppleInsider IT'S THE MORONS WHO WROTE THIS ARTICLE'S FAULT. or at least that makes as much sense.
I will admit, it seems hard to believe that they released an update with these problems, but a hell of a lot more people were involved than just one.
Having been a programmer, and a world-wide manager, started and sold 4 businesses in different states; most programmers can only think in a straight line. 'Hey, if it works on my device, it must work for everyone!' and thus the need for QA to begin with.
I would also surmise that someone above him was pushing for the release before his group really had time to test it. That is how large companies work.
My whole family has iPhones and I am the only one of the four of us that in general doesn't like it. So I am not coming from a drank-the-Apple-koolade viewpoint.
Just to throw a free bone out to whomever this manager is: Use at least all three / four of the major carriers within your staff to test iOS. I would guess that their entire staff use the same cellular service.
What my memo said was Jobs's philosophy—to only hire the A players, not the B or C.
Seemed to serve him pretty well.
Then why was mobileme such a disaster or the antenna disaster. A is relative. The guy may be an A relative to everyone else in the industry but at Apple he may only be a B or a C. However, you dont stay and A all the time. You have good and bad days because you are human. Saying that a guy who made a mistake is not an A player after 14years is wrong. There are so many holes in your logic. What about those people who are Bs and Cs but under the right situations become As. Again your logic is flawed. Success is based on a team. Too many stars on one team is not necessarily good. You need someone to do the not so fun and less glamorous stuff.
Same thing was said about traveling to the moon. Or any number of other great achievements.
A team took a run at it. Six people took five years to prove that 7500 lines of kernel code was "bug free." This effort and time will grow exponentially. At commercial rates, you're looking at about a $5-$10 million dollar effort for six CS MS degree holders to beat on this for five years.
Let's get real- this guy is a major f' up, if true.
But in each of these incidences, we don't know the facts behind it.
Maybe he told Apple management that these apps/OS builds weren't ready, but they told him to release anyway.
Maybe he said he needed 30 more people to effectively test the apps, but they told him no.
Maybe the coders or the product managers insisted that the software was releasable over his objections and they won out.
According to the article, his testers weren't permitted to test on unreleased hardware, so he had no way of knowing what bugs would result.
Etc.
Anyone who has worked in software development knows that these things happen in every company, large or small.
It certainly might have been his fault. He might be a sloppy, incompetent manager. But the fact is we simply don't know.
The difference if it were Steve Ballmer is that he was at the top of the food chain and everything that happens his is responsibility. So I think it's fair to blame Tim Cook or Apple's other senior execs, even though they generally don't manage the details, but it's not necessarily fair to pounce on this guy.
Another major factor in the problems with maps, and possibly to some extent to 8.0.1 is Apple's need for secrecy. The only sane way to roll out a mapping app is as a beta, only making it the default maps app after at least a year or two of testing. We're talking about the entire developed world here folks. OMG. That was a management failure of epic proportions. Casting any aspersions towards the testing department is clueless.
For starters, QA can only report on the quality of the software and QC do their best to discover the bugs. Defects are written in software by the developers not QA and not QC. Ultimately everyone shares in the responsibility of delivering software at quality. But hey, if you want your pound of flesh at least find out the engineer who wrote the defect in the first place. Maybe you can find out details about his family too? Let's get them all!
Secondly, shame on you for an article like this. Why not attach your name? I'm calling you out to resign, or even better the site's editor for such a low-quality and despicable article. After all, what's good for the goose...
Rogifan. That is bullshit and you should know it ! If the evidence isn't clear, then any individual deserves protection. If the evidence is clear and shows culpable negligence or incompetence, then any individual deserves to be made accountable in public.
No that's bullshit. The only employees that have a right to be mentioned by name are either executive officers of a company or those employees the company chooses to highlight on stage at keynotes or give access to the media. It's not the publics business which individual(s)was/were responsible. Yes the other day I did say someone should be fired over this but that was right after the incident happened when a lot of people were upset because they didn't have cell service. Now having more time to reflect I realize that's a stupid thing to say not having all the facts. I still think perhaps Apple needs to slow down a bit and really focus on quality, especially when it comes to software. They've made a lot of changes to iOS in the past two years. Maybe they should shift focus to polishing what they have and slow down on new features for a while.
Apple has become a celebrity. A "company as celebrity," who would think such as thing could happen!? But it has!
So now Apple has a hoard of paparazzi constantly hounding them, digging through their trash, chasing them in public, bugging their children's lunch boxes, digging for dirt, digging for inside information, stimulating throngs of fans, and infuriating mobs of haters.
How and why did this happen? The obvious incubation point was having a strong, charismatic, and sometimes polarizing leader in Steve Jobs. Steve was not only a genius at getting everyone's attention but he was able to back up enough of his claims and hype with amazing, and as he would often say, "magical" products. If Apple had never been able to deliver on Steve's vision he would have been seen as just another buffoon, like so many of these others we see orbiting the immense gravitational attraction that is Apple today. To top it off Steve was able to establish a roadmap and vision to the future by building a company around amazing people like Tim Cook and Jony Ive who can not only maintain the gravitation attraction of Apple but reshape it in their own new collective image. That's what Steve wanted, a new Apple defined by its current cast of caretakers and not him. I'd say they've done a pretty amazing job in total, but as with any human endeavor there are always bumps in the road and lessons to be learned.
Wasn't Apple already a huge brand and Steve already a celebrity in 1982?
I don't think we guessed that we'd someday listen to "Eye of the Tiger" on an Apple replacement for the Walkman, but still, the Apple brand and its leaders had celebrity recognition.
Heads should roll over this but I doubt I would be the guy mentioned. Why? Because QA didn't make the decision to release to everybody without releasing to devs first. That decision is not made at the level of a director. It's made at a higher level. It's company policy. It looks like it may go to the top.
As for maps again not a QA issue. The software worked fine it was the data which was faulty. And the decision to go worldwide was made at the highest level.
Not giving the test team enough new phones to test isn't a QA decision either. It looks like ass covering is going to the top here.
With Apple pretty darn good at keeping their dirty laundry out of the public eye it's entirely possible someone currently at Apple threw him under the bus. (The reporter smartly refers to one source as a former senior manager) If someone in management unwisely chose him as their sacrificial lamb it's Apple managers you should be concerned with, not Bloomberg.
Another major factor in the problems with maps, and possibly to some extent to 8.0.1 is Apple's need for secrecy. The only sane way to roll out a mapping app is as a beta, only making it the default maps app after at least a year or two of testing. We're talking about the entire developed world here folks. OMG. That was a management failure of epic proportions. Casting any aspersions towards the testing department is clueless.
Absolutely. Unless QA went around the world how could they test anything except the software running locally in California. I don't think that any testing in Apple is outside the US.
It was hubris or a mistake or both to think it would work everywhere.
Comments
Why are you all complaining about the media naming a person in charge of these bricked phones? If it was regular police officer that happened to shoot someone in St Louis, you'd all be complaining that his name wasn't released.
Transparency is the best disinfectant. Verify the sources, name them and put it on record. This is just as bad as all the media reports of "un-named officials" or "un-named corporate spokesmen/women". Without a name on record, the media is un-credible and unchecked.
Police officers work for the public and need to be publicly accountable. The person in question doesn't, and shouldn't be.
1. the AppleInsider staff
and
2. the Bloomberg staff
are ALL MORONS.
FYI, quality control managers, nor their staff
WRITE THE CODE ! ! ! ! ! !
in this case called iOS
So, now we at least know, if there is any website failure here at AppleInsider
IT'S THE MORONS WHO WROTE THIS ARTICLE'S FAULT.
or at least that makes as much sense.
I will admit, it seems hard to believe that they released an update with these
problems, but a hell of a lot more people were involved than just one.
Having been a programmer, and a world-wide manager, started and sold 4 businesses in different states; most programmers can only think in a straight line. 'Hey, if it works on my device,
it must work for everyone!' and thus the need for QA to begin with.
I would also surmise that someone above him was pushing for the release before his group really had time to test it. That is how large companies work.
My whole family has iPhones and I am the only one of the four of us that in general doesn't like it. So I am not coming from a drank-the-Apple-koolade viewpoint.
Just to throw a free bone out to whomever this manager is:
Use at least all three / four of the major carriers within your staff to test iOS.
I would guess that their entire staff use the same cellular service.
MEMO TO COOK
If there were a medication to treat forum diarrhea, I would surely offer it to you.
No back-doors, no viruses, no bugs.
Prove it.
Same thing was said about traveling to the moon. Or any number of other great achievements.
Prove it.
Same thing was said about traveling to the moon. Or any number of other great achievements.
A team took a run at it. Six people took five years to prove that 7500 lines of kernel code was "bug free." This effort and time will grow exponentially. At commercial rates, you're looking at about a $5-$10 million dollar effort for six CS MS degree holders to beat on this for five years.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/proving_a_compu.html
At the end of the effort, you still don't know know that the list of test cases was complete or if the requirements fully met all user needs.
Well if were Steve Ballmer you'd be all for it.
Let's get real- this guy is a major f' up, if true.
But in each of these incidences, we don't know the facts behind it.
Maybe he told Apple management that these apps/OS builds weren't ready, but they told him to release anyway.
Maybe he said he needed 30 more people to effectively test the apps, but they told him no.
Maybe the coders or the product managers insisted that the software was releasable over his objections and they won out.
According to the article, his testers weren't permitted to test on unreleased hardware, so he had no way of knowing what bugs would result.
Etc.
Anyone who has worked in software development knows that these things happen in every company, large or small.
It certainly might have been his fault. He might be a sloppy, incompetent manager. But the fact is we simply don't know.
The difference if it were Steve Ballmer is that he was at the top of the food chain and everything that happens his is responsibility. So I think it's fair to blame Tim Cook or Apple's other senior execs, even though they generally don't manage the details, but it's not necessarily fair to pounce on this guy.
Another major factor in the problems with maps, and possibly to some extent to 8.0.1 is Apple's need for secrecy. The only sane way to roll out a mapping app is as a beta, only making it the default maps app after at least a year or two of testing. We're talking about the entire developed world here folks. OMG. That was a management failure of epic proportions. Casting any aspersions towards the testing department is clueless.
Secondly, shame on you for an article like this. Why not attach your name? I'm calling you out to resign, or even better the site's editor for such a low-quality and despicable article. After all, what's good for the goose...
Wasn't Apple already a huge brand and Steve already a celebrity in 1982?
I don't think we guessed that we'd someday listen to "Eye of the Tiger" on an Apple replacement for the Walkman, but still, the Apple brand and its leaders had celebrity recognition.
The only reasonable response is to hold companies responsible to their customers.
As for maps again not a QA issue. The software worked fine it was the data which was faulty. And the decision to go worldwide was made at the highest level.
Not giving the test team enough new phones to test isn't a QA decision either. It looks like ass covering is going to the top here.
Wonder if that was Scott.
Absolutely. Unless QA went around the world how could they test anything except the software running locally in California. I don't think that any testing in Apple is outside the US.
It was hubris or a mistake or both to think it would work everywhere.
Better to see what he's up to in public. Keeping quiet looks like he's biding his time. For a return. I'd prefer he was outspoken.