Depending how long ago you started using a Mac, you may have started using them after the slide started.

From my own experience, and the experience of other Mac users that I know, I think that the quality of their software has had a marked decline in the last decade or so. The exact reasons aren't totally apparent, but it seems like there's too much rush to add new 'features' without fixing and refining existing ones, and that annual releases aren't giving them sufficient time to polish what's already there. It's no accident that Tiger was incredibly stable and 'complete' after having nearly three years of work done on it.

I'm not advocating they work for three years on each version of OS X, but even 18 months, and fewer new 'features' per release, would give them more time to improve the quality of what they're releasing.

The main reason could be that they don't have a competitor in UNIX devices at the moment, at least when it comes to hardware quality.

Beside that, if you want to do mobile development, you need a OS X at hand, again, not much alternatives.

All companies have a life time at the end, and I think Apple is enjoying its 90s of Microsoft era.

I think I'm in the same boat, only a Mac user for less than 5 years. It seems to me that it's never been perfect, but that it remains somewhat above its alternatives, especially with the hardware/software integration they can have... but it can't compete with its own reputation.

I'm on the last El Capitan.

Actually I have to restart the Finder every few days because the network drives either disappear or are no longer reachable. Sometimes the shortcuts disappear as well especially the ones that are located on a network drive (I tried both smb and afp).

I've also noticed a lot of slowness throughout the OS. The spinning colored wheel shows up very often compared to previous OS versions and on all kind of actions.

That spinning colored wheel issue went away for me when I upgraded from 4GB RAM to 20GB. It was constant and terrible in El Capitan before I did that, though.

My 2013 Macbook Pro keeps crashing with Firefox, a few times every day. I cannot use Firefox anymore, I had to switch to Chrome. And as I am writing this Mail crashed because I wanted to forward an Email with a large picture in it. And messages has crashed numerous times, I don't use that either anymore.

So yes, for me Apple's software quality truly has declined sind Snow Leopard.

How is Firefox crashing an Apple issue, assuming you don't hit the same problems with Chrome?

I was probably unclear: The whole computer freezes, and there is nothing I can do except a "hard" reset, i.e. pressing the power button until it shuts off.

But there are more issues still, e.g. that the computer will only connect to my bluetooth radio after a restart.

Firefox is nowhere related to Apple of course, but it is so bad on Mac. I recently went back to Chrome because it just works so much better on my macbook. (El Capitan)

>Is Apple's software quality truly declining?

I'm not really sure, it's hard to point to something that's just plain broken. I noticed that some small UI features that I don't like in El Capitan, it seems slower, but nothing's crashing or preventing me from working.

Part of it might be that Apple is moving in direction that many professionals/developers don't like.

iTunes is different story though, that piece of junk needs to get replaced. Half the time it would even find my iPod and I doubt Apple cares because "get an iPhone".

Indeed, I rarely have any kernel panics, or system crashes on OS X, and especially iOS with the latest iPhone. Other than iTunes, their software (that I use) has been pretty good lately.

I've actually had more problems with the hardware. My late 2011 Macbook Pro was just returned from the offsite Apple Repair with it's 3rd logic board (that being said, it's still under an extended warranty from Apple, which is at least a consolation prize).

I'm not sure any OS really suffers from system crashes these days. The expected quality bar is now much higher (Fyi: I use Windows, Mac and Debian every day).

> or if it's received too many features to be properly maintained

That means that it's not properly maintained, which means declined.

> or if now it has so many more users that the flaws have become more apparent

More eyes do find rarer bugs, and hundreds of millions of eyes is a LOT.

But I can tell you from personal experience that all sorts of little simple things that used to work don't and it gets very obnoxious. I've been using Apple stuff since ~2004 (ignoring the iPod I had earlier) and I do think things are worse.

+1

Anecdotally I've noticed a significant degradation of quality over the last year or so, everything from updating a new iOS device from on iCloud backup, general iOS bugs, OS X wifi connectivity issues etc etc. It's been noticeable.

Besides little long time bugs (like my device prompting for password because it's been 48 hours since last TouchID when it's actually been like 8) there are bugs in new things.

Since 9.0 (or so) using CarPlay I find that it occasionally messes up the audio engine on the phone requiring a restart to a fix. That means instead of my old weeks and weeks of uptime it now varies between 24h and 7d or so.

Having your phone not have audio work correct? Horribly obnoxious. Especially when 70% of what you do is listen to music and podcasts.

I gave up on Podcasts and switched to Overcast because Apple (despite years) was unable to correctly sync which podcasts I'd listed to and which I hadn't. I'm wary to buy things from iTunes because I end up with 2 or 3 copies in my library of some songs, randomly.

I STILL randomly get corrupted songs on my phone and occasionally have to reload all 45GB of music (everything I own, just easier since I have the space) to fix the issue. Don't know why.

I've been using OSX since 2003 and I think it's better than ever. My guess is some people are just nostalgic for a time when computers were easier to master/understand.