iOS7 Should be an Embarrassment

The rumor mill says that iOS7.1 fixes the daily crasing on iOS7. That’s good news because the big change with iOS7 was the perception of Apple’s threshold for quality. A common refrain from “regular people” I know has been that Apple’s software is pretty poor quality.1 Many of them have the opinion that iOS7 is more unstable and confusing than Windows. Even I consider iOS7 to be a great source of jokes about software crashing. That’s going to be a hard train to turn around.

I really believe that Apple has harmed their brand with iOS7. It’s more devastating than any Samsung ad campaign. They have set back their reputation by releasing a highly unstable operating system for their most commonly used device. They rushed out new designs that viscerally disturb users. I’ve never seen someone more relieved by a single tweak than when I’ve demonstrated the reduced motion option.

This week we get a patch for iOS that might fix the daily crashes and sporadic power and bandwidth surges. I guess that’s good, but cleaning up the mess is not the same thing as not making a mess.

iOS7 should be an enormous embarrassment for Apple management. They set a timeline that pushed iOS7 out half-baked and I hope they regret that decision. I regret ever endorsing iOS to anyone that was tricked or coerced into “upgrading” to iOS7. It’s been a disaster in confidence all around.

  1. You know them. They’re the ones that almost never read blogs and think RSS is a government agency. They also just want their stuff to work without making excuses for it. ↩︎