Regardless of the many issues people were reporting with discoveryd, Apple went ahead and released it anyway. As a result, this piece of software is responsible for a large portion of the thousand cuts. Personally, I’ve wasted many hours just trying to keep my devices talking to each other. Macs that used to go months between restarts were being rebooted weekly. The situation is so bad that I actually feel good when I can just kill discoveryd and toggle the network interface to get back to work.
Seems to be a huge paint point in OS X right now. I’ve experienced this issue once with my new retina MacBook Pro since I got it (a week ago), and it basically stops any data from being transferred to the Mac. The wireless connection remains online, but it just does’t transfer any data. I hope Apple gets to fixing this soon.
When Apple starts adding features, especially in iOS, that the competition has had for years, their shit breaks like everyone elss’s. Who woulda thunk it?
Remember, kids… new is easy, right is hard
The last six months has shown us where Apple’s really lie.
Given their massive resources -larger them some entire countries – they decided not to regression test basics like WiFi.
Once people complained in droves that basic fundamentals needed to get daily work done (like WiFi) they didn’t assign those massive resources to fixing it. Even more telling it that after 4 osx updates they still haven’t fixed it.
I know people who have had to use ethernet on their imacs. Others try to use 3g dongles for connectivity.
What does this evidence tell us?
I suggest it tells us that Apple prioritises fashion – the thinness of the new macbook, the new emojis, the gold colour options, the advertising and placements in fashion magazines and venues.
And they have calculated that this will pay off even if the stuff they sell doesn’t work – as long as it looks good.
Perhaps this days more about their target audience – my own experience of won tells me they are more likely to defend apple to the hilt and debt issues. Like WiFi.
Its a shame because the control over hardware and software should make things like WiFi easier. Windows and Linux have it easy harder because the hardware isn’t fixed.
Yes, because it’s the same team that would be testing and fixing discoveryd issues that designs magazine advertisements.
For smaller companies, that’s right on. With limited resources, dollars that go into marketing don’t go into development. Of course, if the marketing is worth the ROI, then of course that makes sense. Things like “fixing wifi in certain scenarios” probably doesn’t get prioritized as highly. Figuring out how much to spend on corner case bugs is kind of tough for most companies to figure out. However, this is Apple, not some small boot strapping company in albany. So none of that logic really applies.
On other OS people would shout the system was fundamentally broken and the OS unusable, even if the OS developers had no control over the hardware it was installed on – different rules seem to apply to Apple.
In fact, it’s lack of control over/heteregeous hardware to support which force to test test and test again software.
That’s a duty *and* a benefit.
I think it tells us that with Apple you need to have hardware that is current or previous gen. Anything older than that and there’s a high risk software upgrades won’t work fully.
Except the WiFi issues are not edge cases.
And the issues affect brand new hardware with the latest OSX updates.
Every time issues are raised re Apple online very quickly they are refuted or made to appear a minority issue. Apple must have great online PR teams.
Too many Cooks spoil the broth. For N>0
I have had an iMac for over 2 years, and I have never had any issues with WiFi. I have installed all the updates to OSX without any problems.
That’s lucky, but be aware other people’s mileage may vary.
Exactly. The discoveryd problem is a mystery to me. I have tons and tons of OS X and Apple products in my shop and at home, and doesn’t see any problems at all. Granted, I have high-end network equipment and excellent signal everywhere, but still…
It’s clearly an issue for some, but it’s hard to see what combination “of things” triggers this. And it’s not like Windows doesn’t have connectivity issues either… just different ones.
Yeah, I have a windows box that demonstrates a similar problem. Its definitely a hardware bug as we have several computers of the exact spec and rev number, all purchased at the same time and none of them have the same issue. A driver update “Fixed” the problem, now windows thinks I have connectivity, but I don’t ….
I had a problem with these bugs a while back…. For me 10.2 and a clean install cleared them up. Reinstalling clean is a pain… but It always seems like upgrading through major versions ends up with some weirdness.
I’m the sysadmin at a small digital publishing firm; we’ve six MacBook Pros, a Mac Mini, a Mac Pro, a couple of Time Capsules, an AppleTV, perhaps ten iOS devices, four Win7 PCs, three Win8 laptops, a few Linux servers, and a few Android devices. Everything connects via Wi-Fi from an Airport Express except my MacPro, the servers, and a few of the PCs which are all on GigE. I have not experienced the scenario described in the article; what am I doing wrong?
It appears that the majority of people commenting on this and other forums, either rodent own MacBooks, or Macs. But it sure makes great fodder doesn’t it?
These are complaints from some of the biggest names in Apple/iOS/OS X development that talk about discoveryd all the time as a huge source of problems. When people like this criticise Apple this openly, you know shit’s up.
But hey, you know better, right!
I claim not to know better; I wonder only how my environment differs from those who have experienced the trouble.
I don’t think his reply was to you
In this life, my opinions are colored by my own daily experience with the technology in question. No doubt, users have problems; but their experience differs from mine….multiple devices with solid function (knock on wood).
I have personally had problems with discoveryd. I’ve had them perhaps a dozen times since Yosemite came out.I think what I and the parent of this thread share in comment is that this is a very rare problem for us as it is for most users.
That’s not to say that Apple should not fix this and that it’s a bit of a sad joke that a company like Apple is not able to get this addressed more quickly but perhaps we should keep some perspective?
As anyone that’s done software knows: new features break shit and your job as a software developer is to fix that shit quickly so you can get back to making new features that break shit.
I wonder if the linux box is cleaning up the bad info?
I don’t actually mean this humorously– but it’s possible there’s some function in the avahi code (I assume that’s what you’re running on linux) that’s cleaning the bad info out of the cache?
Windows was a monoculture – easily attacked.
(Linux has some diversity)
Macintosh, iOS, Apple is a monoculture. 80% plus devices updated to be IDENTICAL.
Prediction:
Within the next 5 years there will be a meltdown of the Apple ecosystem. The downside of “walled gardens” is IF anything gets inside THEN it has free reign.
This will be the greatest failure. Apple CAN secure things – but won’t.