Bloomberg details Apple’s QA after iOS 8.0.1 debacle

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-25/apple-s-iphone-software-snafu-has-links-to-flawed-maps.html

The article also does a “good” job in terms of character assassination by naming one of the QA managers overseeing iOS quality assurance.

It’s also somewhat tactless/classless to just drop the name of a mid-level manager like this as well.      If that were me, I’d be retaining a lawyer right away and consider filing a libel/defamation of character lawsuit against Bloomberg.  With social media, one is considered guilty without any form of due process (and the damage has already been done by this Bloomberg hack job).

A number of Apple related sites (including Appleinsider, Mac Rumors, and 9to5mac) also initially jumped on the report and regurgitated the mid-level managers name in their own reports (later pulling and redacting the name as it became clear that many readers did not approve of this move).  Note: public officials of a company are fair game but this is a manager who isn’t even senior-level (far removed from being someone in the public eye).

Let’s just say that engineering and marketing are like oil and don’t mix well.  Engineers would prefer to have a lot of issues fixed but product managers have to deal with actual shipping deadlines including drop dead dates for software (for pre-load purposes).  HealthKit apps are a key selling point of iOS 8 but the operating system wasn’t held back due to the release of the iPhone 6/6 Plus (there’s always the logistics of lead time when it comes to manufacturing and having golden master code for pre-load).  Thus they withheld HealthKit apps from the App Store while they continued to work on addressing the underlying issues.

iOS 8.0.1 was one of those updates pealed off for rapid deployment as the bug affecting HealthKit was not show stopping  in terms of the overall functionality of iOS 8 in general.  Lack of testing on iPhone 6’s though (since as noted, QA probably lacked access until they were also released) along with human error contributed to the botched release.

I’ve said it before but there’s a fine line between internal and external secrecy (very important in the early stages of product development where access inside the company is limited).  However, there’s a point at some later stage where production models, have to be accessible to internal quality assurance testers (well before release) to catch showstoppers like this.

Likewise, Apple really needs more outside QA for iOS (outside of registering for the iOS developer program) in general when it comes to major release cycles (like with iOS 8.0 for example).