Steve Troughton-Smith posts about Apple’s software quality:

The story around the decline in software quality around macOS is the same as it’s been for years: Apple doesn’t have the bandwidth to maintain two copies of every app, one for macOS and one for iOS, and keep feature parity. That’s why they embarked down the road of Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI.

A related question: why does Apple have so many apps? Certainly they should have Safari, Mail, and Pages. But what about Journal, News, and Freeform? A bloated lineup of apps is like an app with too many features — difficult to maintain.

@manton I’m wondering if LLMs and coding agents don’t change the calculation here significantly… I’ve recently built a native Mac ToDo list app in AppKit for myself in just a couple of days, see thread here: bsky.app/profile/mack…

@manton in the past we’d be excited by new Apple apps. Now we know they simply won’t maintain them.

@manton but if Apple dedicates a team to each app, then this shouldn’t be the root cause to declining software quality… what is the maturity level of those themes in regard to in-house tech might be the real issue here…

@manton says the guy with how many apps now? 🤣😉

@manton I’ve not yet found a serious use for Freeform. It’s a great idea in principle, but I just don’t use it. Is it very popular I wonder? I don’t use Journal as I’ve been a Day One user for some years now.

@stevesnider Ha, I know!

@Eyebeemania I’m also happy with Day One. I think some of Apple’s apps are already covered well by third parties.

@manton I have no idea what Journal and Freeform do. I’ve never opened either and don’t feel remotely curious. The News app is not available here in New Zealand, although there are hacks.

@manton That even Apple can’t control quality to the degree they’d like, with literally all the money in the world, tells you something about the complexity of organisations.

@stevesnider this is also true 😂