Defects I have found in iOS and iPadOS
I’ve been testing iOS and iPadOS for years. Here are 65 defects I documented in iOS in 2021.
Introduction
A lot of people like the iPhone and iPad. These devices deliver all the functionality that many people need.
I myself like the iPhone and iPad. Very much.
I wish I could use them for my work as a manager, engineer, website developer and Program Manager.
But functionality continues to be missing, functionality that’s been a part of macOS and Windows and Linux for decades.
For years I’ve eagerly awaited the latest updates to iOS and iPadOS, hoping for the advancements that will make it possible for me to do my work on an iPad.
However, in the past seven years, with each major update, I noticed more and more shortcomings.
More and more bugs.
A gradual-but-persistent worsening of the user interface. More and more taps are required to achieve common tasks.
It is becoming a cacophony of inefficiency.
This wastes the user’s time, adds cognitive burden, and is annoying.
By iOS 13, those problems had become an avalanche. It was strewn with bugs and inefficiencies. And the major new features were worse than the features they replaced.
I think of it as an epidemic of carelessness.
I was completely demoralized.
Michael J. Tsai put it this way:
The general pattern is that each year more stuff breaks, and most of it is never fixed.
That pattern is called technical debt.
# # #
I don’t deliberately look for bugs. Rather, if the device prevents me from doing a task, and if the problem persists over time, I investigate it. I write an overview on this page.
And I continue watching, hopeful that Apple will care enough to fix them some day.
But with every passing day, it seems less likely that Apple will ever do so.
Here are the specific defects I’m aware of:
CONTENTS
Safari Browser
- In the Safari browser, you still cannot copy and paste as plain text. Instead, it gives you all sorts of “junk code” such as anchors, divs, spans, and font sizes.
- After more than a decade of iPads, there are still no developer tools in the Safari browser.
- HTML5 became the standard way back in October 2014. Today all web CMSs use it. But when I’m editing in a web CMS, I find compelling evidence the Safari browser itself is not yet powered by HTML5.
- If I’m editing my bookmarks, and if I accidentally drop a major bookmark folder into some other folder, and if I didn’t see it happen, there is no way to find it.
- There is no apparent way to get that major bookmark folder out of the sub-folder. It is trapped. I went to my Mac and easily fixed it. Why are iOS and iPadOS powerless to do this simple task?
- In previous versions of Safari, you could use the left column to view your bookmarks. That was very useful, given that the font size matched the system font size. But starting in iPadOS 15, that ability was taken away. The left column was been taken over by Tab Groups.
- Tab Groups are an unwanted intrusion. Apple provides no way to turn them off. This is an accessibility barrier.
Multitasking
- iPadOS introduced a new way of setting up split-screen multitasking. New touch controls appear. You tap them, and options appear. However, they are tiny. So tiny, in fact, that with my poor vision and my poor proprioception, I cannot reliably tap them. This is an accessibility barrier.
- In general the multitasking system in iPadOS seems to only be used by iPad experts. Ordinary people find it too complex. When the majority of users find your multitasking system too complex, you have a problem. I myself understand how to set up split-screen multitasking. But doing it is tedious. It requires far more steps, and takes far more time, than the same multitasking on macOS.
Files App
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The Files App is far too slow to become aware that changes were made elsewhere. I navigated to an existing folder that already contained nearly 400 files. On iPad, the folder was displayed as
emptyfor more than a minute. Whether it meant to or not, the Files app sent a signal. It was telling me it had deleted 400 files. - The USB-C port on the iPad Pro does not accept Apple’s own SuperDrive. Nor can it accept a spinning mechanical hard drive.
Mail App
- The Mail app still withholds the time of day an email was sent or received.
Preview App
- The Image Editor still cannot resize an image to a specific number of pixels in width.
- The “full” Image Editor is only available in the Photos app. Elsewhere, it offers merely partial functionality.
- Adjusting the size of an existing image is bewildering complex. Here is an example of something I do many times each day. I navigate to a image stored in a folder:
- Copy the image from the Files app to the Photos app
- Close the Files app and go to the Photos app
- Find the image
- Edit the image
- Open the Sharesheet
- Navigate to “Save to File”
- Navigate through my folder structure to the target folder
- Save the edited image
- Exit the Photos app
- Open the Files app
- Navigate to the specific folder
- Find the old photo
- Delete the old photo
- Find the new photo
- Rename the new photo with the name of the old photo
- On a Mac, I can resize a photo in-place. It takes a few seconds. But on iPhone or iPad, the 15-step process takes many minutes. And it imposes a heavy cognitive burden, all of it unnecessary.
Messages App
- In the Messages App, you cannot highlight-copy individual words. For example, when someone messages me a password in the midst of a paragraph of text. This cannot be done, even with a mouse.
- When a new message arrives, after I read it on one device, my other devices often keep sounding their alert of a new message. Signing out of iCloud, and then back in, still does NOT fix the situation.
Notes App
- In the Notes App, there is no good way to build a formatted hyperlink. A formatted hyperlink consists of two things: Plain Text; and URL. Ideally you highlight-copy those things from the source, and then paste them into the Note. However, you cannot do that in the Notes app. Instead you must highlight-copy the URL, and paste it into the Note. Then manually type the Plain Text. If you need to build dozens (or hundreds) of links, you will find this process oppressively inefficient. It takes too long; and having to manually type the plain text means far more errors.
- In the Notes App, after you build a link, it is yellow. Yellow is a terrible color for legibility. And some people who are color-blind have trouble seeing the color yellow.
- In the Notes app, you can “Send as Email.” However, when you do that, in the resulting email, the links fail to work.
- In the Notes app, you can “Send as Email.” However, when you do that, there are often egregious formatting errors.
Accessibility
- The “systemwide” font size setting does not impact the bar across the top of the screen whatsoever
- The “systemwide” font size setting does not impact the App icon names whatsoever
- The “systemwide” font size setting does not impact the text size in the footer in the Calendar app whatsoever
- The “systemwide” font size setting does not impact the Episode Notes in the Podcast app whatsoever
Calendar App
- If I begin to type an event that repeats a previous event, the auto-complete almost always duplicates the wrong previous instance. I’ve had to manually correct that hundreds of times, despite the claimed advantages of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
App Store App
- In iOS 12, to update apps, you just tapped “Updates.” But in iPadOS 13, Apple made it more difficult to update your apps. That is because they buried the updating interface in a place that is less intuitively obvious. And harder to use. You must tap the icon of yourself. Then in the popup window, you need to scroll way down to the bottom. And then you must pull-to-refresh. But if you pull too much, it closes the screen instead of refreshing. This reflects a years-long trend in Apple. They bury important features in locations that are harder to navigate to. And more difficult to manipulate. In other words, they make it more complex, rather than more simple. The essence of Apple devices should be simplicity, not complexity.
- It almost always fails to show all the apps that need updating. If you manually pull-to-refresh, it almost always discovers more apps that need updating.
Podcast App
- As of iOS 14.5, I found the podcasts app so buggy and so carelessly engineered that it became useless to me. I have stopped using it. I switched to a podcast app by a third-party.
- The “Listen Now” tab has never ever shown me relevant information, despite the claimed advantages of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Not even once.
- Sometimes when I hit Play, it jumped to playing a podcast that was not even on my device. To my chagrine, without my consent, it was streaming the episode over cellular. I have never given it permission to stream over cellular.
- In iOS 14.5, the podcast app went through significant re-engineering. The size of the touch-targets for “play” were too tiny. I could not reliably tap them.
- In iOS 14.5, in the “Latest Episodes” tab, there is no longer anuy indication of whether a podcast episode is downloaded onto your device.
- In iOS 14.5, for an individual podcast, the formatting of the shownotes is corrupted. Basic formatting elements such as paragraphs and lists are destroyed.
- In iOS 14.5, for an individual podcast, links in the shownotes were stripped out.
- Starting way back in iOS 8.0 in 2014, if I paused the playback for a short time while listening with wired earbuds, the app was no longer able to successfully resume playback. Instead, I had to dig the phone out of my pocket, unlock the device, re-open the podcasts app, remember whic h episode I was listening to, navigate to the specific episode, and tap “Play.”
OPERATING SYSTEM
Defect 1
Slideover is a headline feature of iPadOS 13.
However, switching between apps in Slideover always takes longer than clicking to a different window on a Mac.
Defect 2
To switch apps on a Mac, you just click once into the app window.
But to switch apps on an iPad, you must make three to five (or more) separate interactions.
Defect 3
iOS and iPadOS are always more tedious to use than macOS.
They requires more taps. They impose more cognitive burden. They rob more time. They put more wear and tear on my fingers.
Defect 4
Changing split-screen triggers an animation that takes far too long to complete.
This started way back in iOS 11.0 in 2017, and Apple has never fixed it.
Defect 5
The cognitive burden of using the iPad for complex workflows continues to be higher than on Mac.
Defect 6
Even simple operations require a complex succession of multiple apps and navigations.
Defect 7
Due to the above, each task continues to take three to five times longer than on Mac.
Defect 8
Tap-hold a link triggers an animation that takes far too long to complete.
Action should be instantaneous. But instead it is slow and cumbersome, wasting people’s time.
This started way back in iOS 11.0 in 2017, and Apple has never fixed it.
Defect 9
When in range of several Wi-Fi networks, it almost always auto-selects the network with the worst signal strength.
Defect 10
Tethering to my iPhone has always been quite failure-prone.
Defect 11
Bluetooth connectivity to my keyboard is quite failure-prone.
Every Bluetooth keyboard I’ve tried gets disconnected several times per hour.
This annoyance has been around since iOS 8.1.
Defect 12
Cellular often does not switch to the nearest-available tower.
This began in iOS 11.0 in 2017. It greatly worsened in iOS 12.3 in 2019.
Defect 13
Even though I’ve set my devices to automatically join Wi-Fi networks, they sometimes refuse to join them.
In those cases, I must open the Settings app, navigate to Wi-Fi, and force it to connect.
The device is fighting against my wishes.
Defect 14
I wrote my lengthy review of iPadOS 13 on my iPad.
When I was done, my iPad was not able to sync my article to my other Apple devices. And not even to iCloud.
I couldn’t even write my review of iPadOS on my iPad.
Instead, I had to rewrite my iPadOS review on my Mac!
Defect 15
For my work, I often need to have eight to ten apps open at once. And they all need to be held current in RAM.
Doing that on a Mac or PC is easy. Trivally easy.
But it is not possible in iPadOS.
Sure, on an iPad, you can swipe left-or-right to switch between apps.
However, after a very short time of non-use, something like 30 seconds, iPadOS aggressively dumps apps out of RAM.
I need all my open apps to remain in RAM.
This persists in iPadOS 15.
Defect 16
If I had been using iPadOS 13 for my paid work, I would have lost my job.
iPadOS 13 was a never-ending wellspring of heartbreak and disappointment.
Defect 17
In iOS 14, on the home screen, tap behaviors are different.
You must tap a folder slightly longer than you tap an app.
This is confusing and meaningless. It is a worsening of the user interface.
NUMBERS APP
Defect 1
The scrolling inertia is grossly miscalibrated.
I flick, and the spreadsheet only moves a scant ten or twenty or thirty rows.
It takes forever to scroll down a larger spreadsheet.
Try scrolling down to the bottom of a spreadsheet with several thousand rows. I often need to do that.
On a Mac, the spreadsheet moves something like a hundred rows per flick on the trackpad.
Defect 2
It cannot add formatted page numbers.
Defect 3
It cannot rotate text in a cell.
Defect 4
File size needs to be commensurate with Microsoft Word or Google Docs, instead of roughly ten times bigger.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
Defect 5
Improved importing feature.
Currently, the file size of the resulting Numbers document is typically twenty times bigger than the Microsoft Excel source document.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
Defect 6
Improved copying of the file. Each successive copy increases the file size by 10 to 20%.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
Defect 7
In 2020, an update made it so when you open a Numbers spreadsheet, you were prevented from working in it.
Instead, you must now tap an additional new button that says Edit.
This extra step is completely unnecessary. Apple has worsened the user interface.
PAGES APP
Defect 1
File size needs to be commensurate with Microsoft Word or Google Docs, instead of roughly ten bigger.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
Defect 2
Improved importing feature.
Currently, the file size of the resulting Pages document is typically twenty times bigger than the Microsoft Word source document.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
Defect 3
Improved copying of an existing file. Each successive copy increases the file size by 10 to 20%.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
KEYNOTE APP
Defect 1
Cannot position shapes accurately.
Defect 2
File size needs to be commensurate with Microsoft Word or Google Docs, instead of roughly ten time bigger.
What Apple is doing is a gross waste of cloud storage and Internet bandwidth.
Endnotes
Endnote 1. Update #1 is as of October 23, 2024.
Originally published on September 20, 2021
Last updated on May 10, 2025
TOPICS: Apple, Browsers, iOS, Windows, WordPress,