RE: Revisiting NSTextView bugs in Interface Builder (rant about B ugRe porter)
RE: Revisiting NSTextView bugs in Interface Builder (rant about B ugRe porter)
- Subject: RE: Revisiting NSTextView bugs in Interface Builder (rant about B ugRe porter)
- From: "Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 00:08:16 -0500
It was explained to me once that internal to Apple, the complete
explanation, status, planned resolution if any, schedule for fix,
responsible person, etc. is available to engineers.
Perhaps customers do not get that information even for bugs they submitted
for some of the following reasons:
- The detailed description(s) of the bug contain Apple proprietary
information.
- The detailed description(s) of the bug contain other customer's
proprietary information.
- Detailed editing and review of detailed description(s) to avoid leaks of
proprietary information may not be the best use of an engineer's time.
- Exposing the responsible engineers to unwanted or unwarranted interaction
with a customer just frustrates everybody.
- Reporting a schedule for a fix might be interpreted as a binding promise
to perform to that schedule, and Apple can not open themselves up to that.
- Even if Apple thinks they have fixed a bug, they don't know for sure until
after extensive testing and possibly after verification of the fix or work
around by customers. Therefore they can't tell other customers anything
definitive until the hear back from people who don't necessarily work to
Apple's schedules. That means Apple can't even say when they can say
something definitive.
- Apple's engineers need to be free to add any kind of information to the
bug tracking system without fear that their candid comments will be leaked
on rumor sites and embarrass the company or the engineer.
- Apple may receive hundreds of bug reports per day, and the engineering
time needed to identify duplicates at all is so large that there is no time
to compose lucid explanations for a customer's benefit and vet the
explanation through the necessary QA and or legal analysis needed before
delivery to a customer.
Now, from the customer's point of view, what incentive do we have to file
bug reports at all given that Apple can not or will not provide more useful
feedback ? When I submit a bug, it is very important to me, and I want to
know when it will be resolved. Yesterday is not soon enough either :(
However, Apple has lots of customers and Apple's priority for fixing bugs is
not necessarily the same as mine. So again, why should I bother ?
Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I do in the hope that adding my voice to many
others will persuade Apple to view a particular bug as high priority.
I also work with an institutionalized bug tracking database, and we also do
not expose our dirty laundry to customers by making it widely available. We
have a much smaller market than Apple and we get many fewer bug reports. We
are able to provide significant technical details and sometimes even
schedule details to customers on a case by case basis. We don't
automatically provide that information to anybody who submits a duplicate
report. One reason in our case is that all correspondence with customers is
supposed to go through QA so we assure a high quality of correspondence, and
there are never enough QA resources.
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Cocoa-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden