Better communication channel to Apple QA and developers?

By Roland, 15 February, 2014

Forum
Accessibility Advocacy
Hi, I was wondering if there has ever been an attempt to set-up an efficient communication and feed back between forums like this one and the people at Apple. The reason I am asking this is that there are currently several ways to submit bugs. As a developer I can use a bug reporting system. As a user I can write emails to access......@apple.com but I am not even sure if these are processed at all. Speaking from my own experience I have reported about 10 bugs to this email address which are 100% reproducible and for which it takes less then 30 seconds to observe them. Reporting was done in short form making it easy fro the reviewing person to process it further. None of these bugs were addressed in recent releases of OS X or IOS. While we certainly can not expect Apple to give such reports the highest priority and while it does take time to turn such reports into developers tasks I would expect some feed back like "Bug confirmed and added to bug list". By the same time I expect this email channel to be of high volume binding more resources than necessary at Apple. Therefore I would think that it would be a good idea to contact apple with the idea of compiling bug digests and report them in a distilled form including all the information developers need to work on them. Apple has such bug reporting system for developers (which I find quite inaccessible by the way) and this would probably the best place to do this. On the other hand such reports should be treated with some higher priority as they are the result of compilation and cummulation i.e. Apple can be sure that the things reported are really a problem and not - for example - a user or single machine problem. Such arrangement would be beneficial to everyone and the only thing it takes is to get in personal (not automated) contact with a responsible person who could take such decisions. Any thoughts on this? /Roland

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Comments

By David Goodwin on Monday, February 24, 2014 - 23:58

In my personal opinion, a direct line of communication between Apple and the user is always going to be the best option for reporting, isolating and fixing bugs. Introducing a third-party, such as this site, would only serve to complicate matters and is something that I do not believe Apple itself would support. I totally agree that it would be nice to at least get some form of acknowledgement after reporting a bug - simply to confirm that they have been able to replicate the problem and will work to resolve it. Not only would this make my report seem worthwhile, but it would make it more likely that I would report the next bug that I encounter. However, the simple truth is that Apple does not work this way - everything it does is shrouded in secrecy, and communication with the outside world is limited and strictly controlled. This is the culture and practice of Apple, and it’s not likely to change any time soon. I cannot see any possible reason why Apple’s Accessibility Team would not want to make our use of their products as bug-free as possible. So, I also have to believe that each and every bug report makes that a little more likely. Not only does it ensure that they know of every bug, but it also makes it more likely that they will allocate developer time for fixing it.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Monday, February 24, 2014 - 23:58

Good opinion. That's the way I report accessibility bugs to Apple. The only way I report bugs to Apple is through email and contacting the accessibility support line. It is the best way in my opinion.

By KE7ZUM on Monday, February 24, 2014 - 23:58

There are how ever bugs I've been reporting for the last 4 hers that apple still has not fixed in iOS or osx, and I do report them via the email address and through the bug tracker. It took 3 os versions to fix a mail and voice over issue I was having and it looks like it will take 3 more to fix a calendar issue that has been around since lion..

Good luck.