278: Unforeseeable Issues
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Welcome to under the radar show but independent I O S F development. I'm mark arment and .

i'm Davises ith under the rather than thirty minutes. So lets get started.

So it's been a big week. We have the release of IOS seventeen even I believe now the release of makos 3 oma。 I don't I never jump on that .

right away. Which way to .

go go anywhere near IT, but it's been watch O S ten, the release of the new phones, the new watches. It's been A A pretty big two weeks since we last recorded. Um how has been going for you so far?

So I think so certains stressful um it's probably the most honest way to start the discussion is like h so one thing that doesn't help is I think for the last two or three years. So like the week between the you know fall event and dial is launching, I almost always get a cold, just which I think is just a manifestation of the being so stressed and run down run up to IT. And so that's always a fun thing.

But that was a rough week in that sense. It's always exciting is this weird tension I feel like in this weird like cool feeling of like it's awesome and wonderful and it's terrible and awful um and it's bouncing back and forth between those two feelings like there's nothing quite as fun as you release a new feature and you see someone who super excited about IT like that's good. Great and then you nothing quite as as frustrating as you released in your future and someone points out the obvious problem or flaw or bug in the future that you've been staring out for the last two months, but you just never saw this issue or sort of sort this bug.

Did you make the fine moving cases?

I did not. Sorry.

sorry to pick on that. What we're made those just it's the topic to je.

but I think it's it's instructive in that sense of IT is so difficult to understand the how they try to keep a broad perspective while you're in middle of developing something is very difficult. And also understanding that every development process, every cycle that we go through of this is always having to baLance constraints and they are always treating off.

I can make this Better now, and that will impact negatively this other thing and applies the physical products that applies to the software we make. And this is one of those realities. And like I always find IT really frustrating.

And but I think it's just part part of the deal is when someone suggest something that's like I knew I could do or could do Better or they were frustrated by and I knew they were going to be frustrated by. But I was just a choice that I had to make to scope of project in a particular direction or not add this feature even knowing that I would be desired. But if I like, I see all the other knocked on effects of adding that feature and all the other problems that is because so yeah, it's i'd say it's a complicated time, but I certainly is an exciting time.

And yeah, I like you hope that IT goes well like you're betting in the case of you know those cases, they they didn't have a great launch. Um and thankfully this year, I would say overall things went pretty well for me. Um you know had a few bugs, had a few issues, had a few things that worth talking about um as they came up. But overall, like IT seems to go well. Um and you at at this point in the game, I think a lot that is just it's funning because I think quality and that that kind of thing is something that is is can be very more recent kind of femoral.

But I think it's knowing the right things to test, knowing where the right that where issues are likely to to crop up and having done that issue here, we've talked about this over the summer of the kind of making sure that you do testing that on old devices and sure that you do install the old version on an old device, like, I think the most time consuming tests I ever do are where I intentionally downgrade phone to the old version, install the version from the up store, get IT set up, install the IOS update using the beta program, and then install the new version. And I definitely caught a bunch bugs and issues with that process is very time consuming because every time you want to cycle through that IT takes like two hours but yeah after you're not looking at IT for two hours but you can't iterate on IT very quickly. But like because I went through that IT won, wasn't turning into the issues that i've have over previous years or if I spend all my time only working on the new, you know, I upgrade my own phone and my testing pho E S are all running.

In this case, I was seventeen. I can get so used to that and lose track of what it's change. But at least for me, that's how I went, how to go for you.

IT was actually IT was similar, but on on a much more compressed time scale, unfortunately, with much lower stakes. I've had a lot of stuff going on in life. I had moving, trying to sell a house like it's been a lot of time in summer stuff.

And so i've had very little time to work on code. And this has been a very busy fall for me. And I just I had done most of the work to get overcast.

I seventeen, which is done a one or two ago, but I I just didn't have the the sit down time and I get IT at the door. I knew that my current beta version had some biscuits on IOS sixteen. exactly.

He had to talk about. I know not with the migration itself, but just I was using all the new widget API in the process. I've broken some stuff on.

I was sixteen and I just didn't have time to go back and test IT for so long. So so i'd actually notified my customers on twitter or on the matter on rather IT looks like witter like tweet pot. Anyways, I don't know if I my country I messed like look, i'm sorry i'm going to miss day one.

I just don't at the time I need I need a few more weeks and IT turns out that like the day before, like the night before, I started working on those things, I had some time. And into the morning of IOS seventeen s release, I actually fixed the problems really quickly. Like I thought I was going to take a couple of weeks and I took a couple of hours, you know, sometimes in development, often time to go the other direction, often times think something going to be simple and is are being a huge.

I think this was the opposite occasion. You get a nice win. Like, oh, wait a minute, I just had accidentally disabled this thing or comment to this broke support for the API, and I can just go and read d IT.

You know. So I didn't have being fast than I expected. And I assignment the APP store, got approved in like forty minutes and was in the APP store like right before.

They really basically an hour or two before I was seventeen was released. So I actually did make IT, but I run to a lot of that. You know, I think there's a lot to be said.

And honestly, this applies to apple two, one of the to avoid those surprises of, hey, I updated in in this broke all the sudden or hey, this this really obvious thing that you didn't think of um why did you think of this or I don't understand this feature. Why why do you have what do you intend here? Because this doesn't make sense.

All of those kind of like initial gut feeling reactions that are hard to get when you're in IT because if you're happy you're familiar with IT or you're on the latest version, everything or whatever, a huge amount of that value is possible through beat testing. But the problem with beer testing is that you have constantly cycle through beta testers. We taught about this is a little bit in the past, and I have found us to be truly, I bet, tested overcast with the new widget for think of weaker to at least.

But I wasn't getting all the feedback I needed because I haven't cycled out my beer group a long time. And when there's this processes like I think about like data fade, you know that people slowly stop paying attention to those test flied bills that come in every few days or whatever, and you slowly stop and receiving feedback. The most valuable feedback you ever get from somebody is the very first data that, that they install because that's the first time they are seeing where we are working on.

And that's when you get those initial gut reactions that you need as a developer who can see them yourself necessarily. The problem is if you keep sending the same keep sending Better to the same group people over over again, they might have pay attention. The first one, they're not going to pay attention to ongoing changes nearly as much as that very first one.

And so what you have to do really is make sure that you're constantly getting fresh eyes on what you're working on. And that takes constant expansion or replacement of the beta group. And I think sometimes I like when apple releases something that doesn't land as well as as they would probably have hoped.

I think I think a lot of that is that they their feedback loop doesn't bring in enough new and diverse viewpoints frequently enough. Maybe sometimes IT seems like when we has commentors say that they misread the room, and I think that's often the reason is like the same group of people who they always run stuff by in their immense culture of secrecy and everything. It's probably you know, i'm sure it's almost entirely just employees of the company. Maybe their immediate family is towards the end of a cycle or something, but for the most part, that feedback look, I think, doesn't have enough new perspectives coming in all the time or doesn't have a broader gh view. Sometimes get get the feedback they need and we we can fall into the same trap of our apps.

You know, it's so easy for us to just have the same group by the testers if we have any at all, the same group by testers, handful of our friends and you maybe a couple of power users that use the APP, but who else is who else is looking at that before you released IT? And inevitably, no matter how much data cycling that you do, inevitably when you'll listen to the APP store, that's that's go into way more people with way more diverse backgrounds and way more diverse situations, then any test flight beter group ever will have and you will always find new things then. But but I think it's I think you get surprised that less often. The more fresh eyes you have coming in dear beta throughout the cycle.

sure. And I I think in that way, it's like I think you can decide exactly how you wanted, gather that feedback and what that's going to look like. And I think for me, it's the chAllenging thing that i've run into recently is the sense of like I did a very limited beta testing for any of my updates this year.

I think I was mostly the kind of like close friends kind of thing. Where is less like they bated testing in so far as finding bugs and more like the ideas of someone or getting kind of a design feedback and those kinds of more kind of higher level things. But and that in some way, it's A A concious choice because managing A A beta process well, I think is very useful, but very time intensive in a way that you're asking someone to give you you like to give you their time and they may be very willing and very excited to do that. But I want to be sort of an appropriate give you an appropriate amount of attention if someone is going to sit down with an APP of mine and test that out and try IT and put some effort into IT for me to just respond like thanks and not really and I put that a feedback to the side is not particularly great.

Is not good for my relationships with my beat testers or just and my mental health and so in general, I don't actually do a very wide bit testing and instead the of place i've edged up said sudden two is the first like three days um of a major update is in a weird way almost my beta period um and so like for this updates for I was seventeen I issued several very quick turnaround up updates that were fixing issues or making clear clarifying points of confusion um and you know almost is a funny thing for me to do but if I feel like those first few days are both incredibly busy and incredibly busy in this isolating period where i'll be sitting down and you i'll get an email to the helpers h system and I read IT and then investigated um or i'm looking at the crash logs or i'm listening to you put people are saying in the press or i'm massed on our things and i'm just trying to gather all the little bits and pieces that I can and see how quickly I can kind of put that into place because the reality with these updates is if you use the phase rollout, and especially a year like this where it's IOS seventeen features, the initial period is only going to be going out to a tiny fraction of your users in some ways. The same way that you would expect with the beta period Better group at this point. I think I seventeen a week in is something like twenty percent for me um in terms of the user base.

And so it's still a very relatively small a group of my user. So I have a lot of time together that feedback and respond to IT, and I think it's important for me to do that. Um and that is a useful way if a beta processes is sort of saying that's difficult both in terms of gathering that audience or in terms if you have stale bet testers or whatever of the limits you have there.

It's I can be very useful and that I found a lot of successful this spending those first few days trying to erase and taking advantage of the fact that this is is forever ver a reviewed, clearly highly stepped up, highly engaged like the number of times where I could sit in updating, you said used at forty minutes. I think i've had some of those even in a couple of main the twenty minute range um that are very useful to be able to kind of iterate on IT. And you're not not want to you want to be cavalier in this that obvious ly, you're still you're pushing them out to production.

And any time you push code to production to be very careful and be very aware of what you're doing. And I think there is an an element of that of just developing an intuition for what are the kinds of changes that you can make that are safe and relatively low risk, and what are the kind of changes that are difficult. So like something, for example, that I did a couple of times, a enrich Smith for this update is I added additional help text inside of the APP or changed the flow for a few things.

Like one of the features is a new like music widget that's interactivity. You can browse through your your favorite albums on your poe screen and the process of adding songs and adding albums and adding players to that was slightly confusing the way I originally structured. I got some feedback from people who in in the in their excitement are saying it's like, i'm trying to do this and is, am I doing this right? And they trying you going to you that sense of their reflection ration and it's like I don't want blessing you need is you're most excited.

Engage people who don't move the APP on day one to use your APP to be confused if they are confused and they care the people who don't care as much are just onna bounce off that feature. And so that's terrible. And so it's like I added a bunch of text and that's a kind of change that is super safe, relatively speaking, to add to us something where i'm not you changing some deep some deep logic that was super complicated. And depending on lots of things in part of the engine of the APP or something, it's like just adding some text labels and places to make IT a little bit clear or restructuring things or making a few button a bit bigger or those kinds of changes like those are great things to do quickly, to iterate on and to gather that feedback, whether it's from a beta group or from you her initial users um to really make your APP to really shine when they are actually properly expands out to abroad. We are brought .

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bit of story that I think would be a useful thing to dive into next about the launch that um I think is was an instructive like capsules for a bunch of the different activities and things that typically come out around a launch that hopefully in the same way I hope no one else runs into these things but inevitably you will cause this is going to talk about you know and APP crashing and bugs and issues and compatibility problems and dealing with all that um so uh so last friday. So the day that the new iphone fifteen came out, um I was going through my support queue like i've been saying, I go through my support queue and kind of heven I am what's going on in a way that I will at some point very soon turn off my support q or at least make IT much harder to find in the appi kind of buried a little bit but at this point I want to serve maximum explosion that's .

interesting by itself, by the way. Let's talk about that sometime.

But yeah, that is the thing. I find less support as the APP gets older for Better words most because I need to focus on things, and it's less useful together the data. But nevertheless, last friday I had IT open and had to gathering things.

And I do him in this world where i'm responding probably within like to fifteen twenty minutes to news emails that are coming in like i'm really in there trying to really understand what's going on. Take advantage of if someone is is seeing something I wanted know IT. And someone reached out and said, hey, i've noticed something that my photo width in in bridge smith.

If I apply a photo filter to them, like a photographic filter, you could make you to know buck and light, or cpa or more contracted or whatever, those kind of filters, if I plan on to IT, IT doesn't doesn't show up anymore. But if I turn the filter off, then IT does show up. And that any time you like, any time you see any email like that, you like where someone has been able to create a situation where the bug happens and then when the bug doesn't happen, like they've done so much of the work for you, it's amazing.

Like feedback like that is incredible because I get this feedback and i'm like, oh, wow, that's that's weird. Like, that's really strange. So I pull out my phone, my new iphone fifteen promex, and I try the same thing and the same thing happens again.

I can reproduce IT. It's like there's this issue where if I add a photo filter to particular kind of um with IT, then if I cry IT doesn't load. And if I don't, then IT does.

Originally that I said I was related to one of my interactive widget where like if you tap IT, there's you can have like what I call a draw wdnr, where you have a photo and you tap on the photo in this kind of information, another widget behind the photo and so first I thought, oh, this is some I seventeen in our activity problem. Let's okay. So I went down that road and started investigating.

And then, as I can, no, that dogs seem to be the case. And very quickly I started to think of there's this debugging process and this is the part that I think it's just birth, kind of maybe just sharing because getting good at to blocking problems is like eighty percent of our job functionality, like there is a meaningful amount of IT that is the building part. And then I just is meaningful, if not more meaningful part is being able to identify problems and find them quickly.

So the first thing I do is like it's tried in different a different widget types, just a plain photo widget, huh? Same thing happens then try. okay.

Is this based on certain kinds of photos? So do I take a big raw photo? Do I take a basic photo? Do I take A P.

Ng file? Do I take a small, like, create a little like ten by ten photo, and put IT in there and see if that happens to that doesn't seem to matter. Like, okay.

So i'm now narrowed down set of dramatically in a way of what factors are coming into this. IT has seems to have nothing to do with an activity. IT seems to have nothing to do with the type of photo that IT is.

It's just something about applying photo filters um to images in I S seventeen at this point. That was my working theory. This was an ice seventeen bug. Then like huh that's interesting because I hadn't run into this during the summer at all.

But that doesn't mean that I that wasn't the case because the reality of being a one persons shop is that they are inevitably going to be things that I just miss that you and up like bridge Smith has so many screens and so many features that IT is physically impossible for me to have tested and tried everything, and then also have made meaningful work towards this progress. And I was like, I just assumed that was, and I was seventeen bug, and I tried to slowly OK. Let's try in the simulator, see if that happens there.

Like no simulators, fine. So then I pull out one of my other I S seventeen phones. But the first thing of course I did is I told IT and I was sixteen phone tried IT there and IT didn't happen, which confirmed my ti unfortunately confirmed to my bias that I was IOS seventeen, which spoiler alert wasn't actually the case, which unfortunate because I did that then I was just like a hoosh and I was seventeen. Bug, everyone who has this is going na have this issue. It's a big problem thing.

Thank you for this person for identifying IT but you are not going to do and if so, I try back and fourth a few times to see that was that and then I was like someone reached out and and I got a sort of indication that you might not happen um on iphone elevens um and I was like home I wonder if it's said a two x three x bug and so then I because like my phone has a three x screen. Where is the old anything that has an L L C D screen is still two x and so then I pulled out my iphone ten r, which happened to be running. I was seventeen and I tried on there.

And IT doesn't happen there. So now in my mind, it's in my mental model. It's, I was seventeen, but only on three x displays.

Maybe IT only happens on red phones.

Maybe IT does like, like this. The thing I love that I had a reproducible bug in the sense of that made this bunch Better. But then it's like, now what do I do? I'm just try to find out what at what happens so that I need to find one of my, like, go to my draw of old iphones, find a three x phone that supports iphone in seventeen and installed on there, and tried there, and then IT worked and as well.

So like, huh? Well, this is interesting. That happens one hundred percent of the time on my fifteen pro max and zero percent of the time on any other advice that I can find. So that's interesting.

And now I think it's a bug in the new phones, which in some ways was a small comfort to me because that's a bug that I cannot in any way prevent happening um because I can do all that. I apple is very kind to us. They give us I was seventeen with like three months notice.

Even for minor bug typical updates, they often will be to test them that we have access to them. So I ve an opportunity to install, like we will probably have an opportunity installed seventeen point one for a few weeks, at least before he goes out to the public, most likely. So I can do testing ahead of time and see those boxes.

In this case, turns out there was nothing I could have done because I had influence. Unfortunately, I do not have access to iphone fifteen pro max ahead of time. And at this point is press the best I can understand.

This is an issue that relates to the new GPU architecture on the iphone, I guess the eight seventeen pro chip. Um it's at this point that's as far as i've been able to kind of narrowed down that IT only happens on that. IT doesn't happen on the fifteen in fifteen plus.

IT only happens on the fifteen pro and pro max. And so IT seems to be something related to that chip. great. That's useful. That's very helpful to know.

Now, do I do? And that was one of these fascinating questions span of, do I pull the feature from those devices? Do I trying to find a work around? Do I change the feature in some way that only on those devices um and of getting of it's always kind of complicated because none of those scenario are great.

Pulling the future off an an APP in that way is always going to be disruptive. It's gonna noy people, especially because some of the photo filters are paid features inside of the APP. And so like taking away a paid features from some of my users.

But in the end, like I spent the Better part of a day trying to find workarounds, trying different options for core image, trying to force you to only process on the CPU in the case that might help. And in the end, I don't have a way of haven't been able to find a work around. I had some people who are very acknowledged in core image take a look and they were unable to find anything. So for now, i've just had to pull the future on those phones.

Um I was able to do a slight work around for some of them where you I can reprocess some of the images ahead of time in the main APP where it's fine, but IT doesn't work if for you know, my photo album widget, for example, which load images dynamically and then apply the filters to them, because if you apply, if essentially if you touch a courage filter inside of a which extension, the which extension will die because of memory pressure. I just set to pull that feature. And now i'm just kind of like waiting and seeing.

And who knows if I filed a bug with apple, I filed a developer tech support issue with this. And we'll just see like hopefully you you from my perspective, holly is one of those things of in the same way that I didn't have the opportunity to test this on the new phone ahead of time. Like apple only sort of has the opportunity to really understand stand if their their new architecture has issues for third party things because while i'm sure they download third party apps and run them, they didn't necessarily try every future of every APP on their new art architecture.

And so fair enough, they didn't discover that applying a core image filter inside of a wide extension is problematic on their new architecture. But anyway, so it's now that updates been out. This couldn't pushed out generally. I have been to any particular push back from customers.

I think they understand like if you go to that, you know that part of the idea of a message that says, unfortunately, if you're running one of the new phones that i've had to disable this feature while I work on a compatibility update and I kind of went from there. But anyway, hope for me, that's an interesting story. I'd just feel like these kind of things just are inevitably going to happen.

And I think IT is important to do to try like keep calm and Carry on when that happens. And in this case, it's it's not quite a happy, happy ending at this point in the sense. If I haven't found the work around, I haven't found um away or a boat know I S seventeen point one has been fixed IT or something like that.

But you there were times that when I discovered this that I definitely had that moment of despair. We are like, oh no, this is going when I first thought I was every device ring, I was seventeen. Their image filter ers weren't going to work, and there was no work around that I could come up with that was going to work around that.

Like that is really problematic and chAllenging and disarming and well, was able to narrow this down and make that less of a problem because at this point point one percent of my user base has an iphone fifteen pro. So you know it's not A A massive problem in that respect yet ah, but you know I think I this is not the first time this kind of issue has happened to me. And because i've experienced enough times, I know that you'll get through IT.

It'll be fine and in the moment, it's hard to do things like turning off a feature that you know someone's going to want. But the reality is is with some perspective, it's almost always been fine. It's it's know a few games y people is not something that um you should also let IT under your skin and me a part of the job is working through these issues and keeping your keeping your level head around IT and just kind of work the problem try isolate variables crm work through IT and the more variables .

you can isolate the Better. I like you have a few minutes ago, like when the new phones get out there, when the new to get out there and when you all all the new third party efforts to get out there, no matter how much testing you've done, like that combination has not been extensively. Rested by the world yet.

So no, apple can't test all the apps before the developers have even submitted them. Even then, they can test all the apps, no, on the all the new hardware that they only have so many people, all these certain people have access to the prey released hardware. Things are still moving like your APP is still moving.

The OS are still moving like things you're still in flux. So IT IT can be very hard to to avoid having any issues when new things all launched at the same time. And so it's Better to expect that, yeah, this might happen like this.

Every so often, there will be some weird problem that you have to deal with you immediately after launch on in september, new phone or new L S. That is part of being a development. And and not only is that an unbodied a part of your job, but I think also customers are fairly forgiving of that, like he get the occasional one star angry person. But for the most part, like customers know like day one of something, they know that stuff might work a little bit monkey for, for a little bit as long as you are you fairly aware of IT and and plan update on a reasonable basis as your customers tend to be pretty understanding and exactly.

And I think that is a key thing in this experience, is understanding that like the people who was who emailed in and said they were having this issue and I email ed them back right away and say, hey, this is the issue almost always they're like, no, i'm so sorry that's happening to you. I look forward to fix in the future. No problem and it's being responsive and being responsible.

Um I think those two things together will go a long way to know kind of making initial like this. It's never great. It's never nice, but you can make a kind of manageable and then it's just a thing that you deal with and then you know they'll be behind us at some point, i'm sure.

Thanks, losing everybody. I will talk you in two weeks.

die.