Are All Apple Devices This Buggy?

I've been using IOS for,, god I don't know how long now, and the only real bugs I've faced are the Voiceover stopping speech one.

I don't doubt they happen, I may have even come across the voiceover clicking one myself, but I think it's more a case of what we're willing to put up with.

It's either that or each phone has its own issues. I experienced that with a mic port issue that no one else was having a couple years back.

At this moment only bug is facebook losing focus. Not sure if is VO or the app. In general the only bug I have is notification and time. VO keeps saying the time whenever I get any type of notification. Hope it will be history in iOS 18. For me iOS 13 was not good and I called it unlucky 13. People here jump all over me for that. This is why when I heard someone having issues I feel for them.

I've been using iOS since 5.1.1. Have experienced bugs here and there over the years, some were, "meh", some were, "omg wtf?!" *insert head explosion here*. There have been versions of iOS that were done really well, that is to say not too many new bugs and old bugts were squished; and there were versions of iOS that made you want to introduce said device to a sledge hammer.

Currently, there are only 4 issues (note that I did not say bugs) that I am currently dealing with. They are on iOS 17.5.1 on an iPhone SE3:

1. Siri's new adaptive listening feature. I realize this is "working as intended", but it was poorly implemented.
2. VO focus, in many situations; texting via messages, navigating my recent call log, going over emails, web surfing, the list goes on; VO loses focus, or perhaps focus is reset(?), either way it is frustrating when you are in the middle of something, and focus jumps all over the screen. Though usually it is to the top, like in the status bar, etc.
3. This one is kind of new to 17.5 (in my personal experience), where holding the home button/sensor does absolutely nothing. The work-around is to let go and re-press & hold. Its not the end of the world, but frustrating all the same.
4. Dictation is another new one to iOS 17 (possibly 17.4 or 5), where if you double tap on the dictate (microphone) button on the keyboard, you lose almost all functionality of your phone for like 2 or 3 seconds. I mean, no screen feedback, no sound; nothing. However there are 2 work-arounds. Pressing home gets me to the home screen and "frees up" the issue, or, I can magic tap on the keyboard and dictation works just fine.

So yeah, some issues with the latest iOS, but not the end of the world, at least from my POV.

HTH. 🙂

Never really had any major bug in any phone I've had. Any bugs that have turned up have been sorted by Apple. I guess I've been lucky.

I think a lot of it depends on what you are using the device for.

I have a Mac and use it for work, or for any kind of text entry or online shopping or whatever. But generally things where I want to be productive. I'm maybe not really enjoying the activity so want to be efficient, get it done and move on.

And as I've said a lot on here, I absolutely hate it. It is just needlessly difficult to edit text and web browsing is a horrible mess.

On the other hand, I have an iPhone 13 and Apple Watch and use them for more leisurely activities. Often things I would enjoy doing anyway, but overall quite simple apps doing quite simple things. (Well from a UI point of view I mean).

And for these sorts of things, they work pretty well. Whereas I immediately get stressed on my Mac, I can enjoy using my phone quite happily.

I think the phone has an easier plan B if things go a bit awry - in that you can touch on the screen so if focus is misbehaving you are a little less stuck.

I also suspect if I tried entering in any large amounts of text on my phone it would drive me nuts as per the Mac. So I avoid doing it there. I've tried a couple of times, got a bit lost and then not bothered.

So I'm not sure if the phone is less buggy than the Mac or if it's just what I'm using it for that's the biggest difference.

Other people have less of an issue with the Mac. But then they are likely using it in an entirely different way

It is all about your use case. I use braille and it is buggy, not sure if you use braille too. Also I am a Mac user, and won't go that lane to tell you what bugs exist and for how long they existed. Normally forums like this are like hospitals, you won't find a healthy, pain-free person wandering in a hospital or seeking medical advice. So usually people come over here to ask for solutions to issues they come across and usually those people are grumpy and they have the right to be so. Some bugs are very aggressive that you are out of luck to sort them out except by seeking sighted assistant.

For example, if you use a lot of Bluetooth and have a braille display, you're probably going to run into things not connecting on the first try. Also, if you get a lot of calls, eventually your phone is going to lose speech after a call ends.

If you ever connect your phone to a bluetooth stereo, you'll never have the speech come out of the phone at full volume. Frankly, the more you do, the more problems you are going to find; I guess that's just what you get with modern coding practices, things work just well enough to push them out the door, maybe it will get fixed next version.

I can only say, issues, such as the focus jumping issue, have not followed me across upgrades to new iPhones; same apps/settings, same usage. Certain bugs persisted through many updates on a phone and only went away when I upgraded to a new phone. I don't even know how to think about what would cause that.

I have likely misspelled that, but look it up all the same. 😦

Apple is making me feel obsolete.

The perfect thing would be that someone who should not be name read my texts, emails, and do everything the phone does. Sad she does not want.

I actually posted about this about a year ago, give or take. Apple if I recall, was even sued over it.

I have an iPad Pro from 2020, and there are a lot less bugs on it than on my iPhone. The focus bug isn't nearly as bad on the iPad. I have no idea why that is. On my iPhone, there are times the focus issue seems to have gotten worse. I don't know if it actually has, or if I'm just losing patience with it more quickly.

Who has more bugs? NY city hotel or Apple.

This issue is siriously annoying. I accidentally ended up booking cab to the wrong location due to this, and wasn't aware of my mistake untill I arrived at the wrong location.
I wanted to select one thing in the locations list, focus jumped and I ended up selecting something else. Didn't realize this in the hurry. Next day I did the same thing, but paid attention. Was able to reproduce the issue.

Wow. I can see how that could happen, I was looking through GrubHub yesterday and tapped on one restaurant, only to have another one appear. It took me several tries to get the right one. It's also still the reason I can't use the Recent Calls list to place a call. It almost always calls the wrong person no matter how careful I try to be.

I would not be surprised at all if there were other Appleviss members with the same models of phones or devices as you all, and using the same apps, who have absolutely no focus issue what so ever. I want to think this could be a hardware flaw, that somewhere in the circuitry of a few devices there is one transistor, among billions and billions, on a chip that didn't get quite enough of what ever they use to dope the semiconductors nowadays, and... wigs out the system. That seems more feasible than there being flaws, possibly intentional, in the software that gets downloaded and checksummed to one persons device, but that aren't in the same software that gets downloaded to the same model of device belonging to another person. What, am I on a list!?

13 pro with facebook was trying to close or remove so call friend suggestion instead it send me to their facebook info. VO was on remove button but focus was not there. First time with this issue. Looks so far to be a facebook thing. Cross finger. iOS 17.5.1.

I've never had the focus issue on any device or app. So, something is specific for some reason to certain users. But, it does seem to follow these people from model to model so it can't be a hardware issue. Nobody is that unlucky. I don't even think it is specific voices although maybe someone can say it is worse with X voice than with Y voice. It's a strange one and as it seems so random not sure how Apple can fix it as there doesn't seem to be any obvious common cause.

Do people with the focus issue have their VO speech speed set high? Maybe lower the rate to under 60 if so and see if this is still an issue. Not sure what made me think of that and it probably won't make any difference but just a thought.

I'm wondering if Lee, you have a point, My speech is about %65, and I very rarely get focus issues. I've only had it once in recent calls, and I got it in Safari when iOS 16 first came out. I only use Daniel. I'm wondering if the voices people use make a difference too. I hardly ever experience bugs. The only bug I get from time to time is VoiceOver stops speaking when I'm reading a long email in Outlook or a long Reddit post. This never happens in Kindle books. The only one I get really often and it drives me mad is whenever I finish a call, facetime or a regular phone call, the speech turns itself off in VoiceOver. This doesn't seem to happen in WhatsApp though. I just turn VoiceOver off then on again and it comes back.

It seems to me that a lot of these focusing issues might be resolved by muscle memory, or at least this has been my experience. I was told and shown by my iPhone tutor at Second Sense how to use muscle memory to aid in performing gestures, and it has worked well for me. On occasion I screw up, but I have found muscle memory to be invaluable. Obviously that won't work on the Mac unless you're using either the built-in trackpad or a Mac with a touch bar. I'm on an iPhone 14 now, and have not run into the focusing issues. I'm going to try turning on Tap Back and see what it's like for me, but thus far it's been smooth sailing on my end. Hth and for those who haven't tried out the muscle-memory trick, I highly recommend it.

When you say 'muscle memory' do you mean explore by touch? That would be knowing where something is on the screen without flicking through everything? So you touch the area on the screen where you know your most recent call entry would be for example?

I have had speech stop and focus jumps every day, multiple times per day on my iPad 7, i got an iPad 9 a few months ago and it’s a lot better, think I only lost speech maby twice, focus jumpt 5 times well setting it up and still does jump when reading YouTube comments but doesn’t jump any where else

I'm using an iPhone 15 Pro Max with the latest updates on release versions of iOS. I have Siri set to English voice with a speech rate of one hundred percent.
I think what's happening is that VoiceOver is programmed to land on a specific place when a page appears, like the first item in a list or something similar. It's as if the developer of the app instructed, "When this page opens, focus here." Before VoiceOver and iOS can do that, I end up selecting something I want, and when I try to double-tap, VoiceOver finishes reading my preferred option. Then it jumps back to what it was originally supposed to focus on, and I end up double-tapping that option instead.
VoiceOver needs to understand that the user has already focused on the desired item. It should ignore the automatic focus function, maintain focus, and let the user decide what to do next.

Here is an article about muscle memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory