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Hands-On Apple 240: Feedback in the Apple Public Beta Program
00:26:13
Test-Drive Apple's Pre-Release Versions
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Micah Sargent
It's that time again. The iOS 27 public beta is finally here, but installing it is only half the deal. See, when you join Apple's beta program, you're signing up to be a tester and testers file feedback. Today I'll show you how to write bug reports Apple's developers will actually read. Stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by Black Hat usa. If you listen to this show, you go deep on the technical detail. So does Black Hat. For nearly three decades it's been where the security industry's most rigorous research gets presented and pressure tested. More than 100 hands on trainings taught by practitioners who've actually deployed in live environments, not lecturers reading from slides. And hundreds of peer reviewed briefings that go well past the overview into the real work across the four areas defining security right now, AI and autonomous threats, cyber conflict, systemic resilience and identity. This year, Black Hat's briefings pass includes all keynotes and main stage access plus business hall entry. You also get breakfast, lunch, Arsenal live tool demos, on demand session access and admission to the midnight in the war room screening. Black Hat takes place from August 1st to the 6th in Las Vegas. If you want the depth this show gets into in person with the people doing the work, this is the room. Oh, and we'll be there too. Prices rise on July 17, so book before then. Use code TWIT for $200 off your briefings pass@blackhat.com US26. That's B L A C.
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Micah Sargent
This is twit. Welcome back to Hands on Apple. I am Micah Sargent and yes, the public betas for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, Mac OS 27, TV, VOS 27 have arrived. And that means that if you would like to be part of the program, part of the fun part of the process, well, you can. The public beta software program is completely free, it does not require a developer account, and usually it's a more stable build of the various platforms. So whereas the developer beta could result in your phone not starting up, it's less likely that the public beta will do so. The Betas arrived on July 13 as we record this on, well, I should say yesterday, as we record this on July 14, on Tuesday. And the process for joining is pretty simple. So let's take a look at how we go about doing that. Here we are on iOS and you can do this from the Mac, you can do this from your iPad. We're going to launch Safari and we're going to go to beta.apple.com once you go there, you're going to sign in with your Apple account and then you're going to choose get started. You'll see an agreement that you need to read through and you can read through that text there. You can also view it as a PDF that you could send to your email. We'll choose Agree and we'll move right along here to see the guides. Now, as you can imagine, the process is pretty simple. Always remember to back up your device first, though. Always back up your device because you should be expecting bugs. You will experience bugs, you will experience poor battery life, you will experience all sorts of issues. And so I often recommend that if people are trying to, you know, have a taste of what's coming next and they also want to help the developers at Apple make a better version of the software, well, then the best thing that you can do is install this on a secondary device, so, like an iPad. But if you do need to install on your primary device, then be prepared for issues and always, always, always back up once you've installed it. The process for actually getting to it is to go into the Settings app, tap on general, tap on software update, and once you've actually signed up for the program, you will see in this section a beta updates flag that appears. You can tap on that beta updates flag and in we would want to choose the iOS 27 public beta. Choosing that will lock in that you're trying to participate in the iOS 27 public beta. Not to be confused with the 26 public beta, that's the current version of iOS, but the 27 version. And upon doing so, you will see the screen beforehand, the software update screen change to give you the ability to update. Now, once you update your device, then you'll be able to go forth with the next step, which is actually making use of the software and also understanding how you can better provide feedback to Apple's developers to help them figure out what's broken. Now, let's talk a little bit more about this, okay? Because there's sort of an unspoken, although arguably a little bit spoken, you are a public beta tester rule that is part of joining the program. Apple gives you the software early and then you tell Apple what's broken. And you can do this directly by actually providing feedback, which we'll talk about, but also indirectly, just by using the device. If you have usage statistics turned on, sharing those analytics, then Apple will be able to see some of the data. It's all lined up in Apple's privacy policy that Explains what data is shared with Apple when you are using the beta version of the software. The idea is that even as you're going along, if an app crashes, if something isn't working right, Apple can get that information. And you may think that individual reports don't matter, right? But here's the thing, individual reports do matter. Because yes, one report is a data point, but hundreds of reports that are flowing in about the same bug become a trend that then gets priority, right? And so it is not just, it's not just you alone. It is you and the other people who are testing this who also happen to experience the same thing. Now, something to understand because we're going to be talking about using the Feedback app. There's, there's sort of some, some good rules, right? When you use the Feedback app, which by the way, gets installed when you join the beta and you install the beta, it. The thing that you need to understand is that you should submit one issue per report. So as you're going through and you're testing this software and you're putting it through its paces and you run into an issue, don't sort of like write that down, make a note of it, and then continue using it. And then going on, no, no, no, no, no. You don't want to bundle multiple bugs into one submission. You want to get it done right away. And part of that is because the overall recommendation is to file early in the beta cycle, so the soon, it's more likely that that fix is actually going to make it before the public release later in the fall. So being able to file early, especially filing right as soon as that next beta drops, very helpful as the developers will be focused on the feedback coming in. Always do try obvious fixes because it helps the developers as well. Being able to say, hey, look, I force quit the app, I restarted the device. That didn't work. That didn't solve this problem. And that way the developers know, okay, well, this is more than just something that could be solved by a force restart. But still, even if it is just a force restart, that solves it. That is good data for the developers. And most importantly, arguably, if you see an issue and you go through the process, try to reproduce it, what does that mean? It means that if something is broken, let's say every time I hit the A key, the voice on my phone says, and you go to the keyboard and you tap the A key and now it's not making that sound and you're not sure why, but then you think about it and you go Okay, I just hit the A key while I was in Safari and that did nothing. But when I was in the Notes app and I was typing and I hit a, that's when it happens. So you go into the Notes app, you hit a. It doesn't happen. And then you remember, okay, I was in the Notes app. I had just written with the Apple pencil on the screen, and then I hit the A key and then that's whenever it bleeded and so it bleated. And so then you write with the Apple pencil and then you hit the A key and you're able to reproduce it. That is incredibly valuable. That would tell the developers exactly where they need to look to figure out why that is happening. It's very unlikely that that's actually to be an issue for you. If that does happen, please reproduce it, please let us know. But I want to show you now because again, the process for joining the beta. So incredibly simple. Beta.apple.com Sign in with your Apple ID and then go into your software settings and you can get the beta. But let's talk about actually helping to do this. Once you install it, you will see on your device a new app and I will show you here on my phone a new app called Feedback. And you'll find it likely on the second page or the furthest page on your home screen. On the Mac, it's called Feedback Assistant. And then you can also, I should note, file Feedback on the web by going to feedbackassistant.apple.com but frankly, the app is better. And that is because it's going to capture what are called diagnostic files automatically and attach them to your report. What that means is that there's basically stuff running in the background at all times. And when something happens and you go to file a report, the stuff that's running in the background has a lot of logs and a lot of information that is collecting data. And all of that data gets scooped up right there, right at that time that this issue happened. And, you know, with padding to the left and to the right and uses all of that to help the developers figure out what has happened. If you do it from the website, it does make you collect this manually. And that's a little troublesome. It's not as easy to do.
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Micah Sargent
So for today's kind of demonstration of how to file good feedback after you've installed the public beta, let's think of a pretty annoying bug. Okay, I'm going to pretend that the calculator app is malfunctioning. Let's say that the multiplication button in the calculator app isn't registering taps. Okay, so you do 78 times 23 and in this case, boop. You tap the X key or the multiplication key and we're going to pretend that it does highlight, but then it doesn't do the multiplication and instead then you go to type your next number and it just adds it on. Right? Very frustrating. Very annoying. How are we going to go about filing it? Well, first and foremost we will launch the feedback app. And if you are not, when you launch the feedback app, if you don't see that you're signed in, you're going to sign in. Make sure you sign in with the same Apple ID that you use to enroll in the beta program. And then in the bottom right hand corner we're going to tap that new feedback button. It's a compose icon. And from here we need to choose the platform. Of course, in this case it's iOS and iPados. That's where the calculator is not working. And then you're presented with a form. You can see basic information, you can see description, you can see attachments, and you can even see. Well, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. First and foremost we are going to fill out this set of fields. You can think of the descriptive title and you see this says a descriptive title, right? This is sort of like a headline. So it needs to be short, it needs to be specific, but it also needs to be searchable. Don't do calculator Broken. Hundreds of hundreds of other people will probably write calculator broken. Especially don't write bug here. An engineer should be able to look at this and know exactly what's wrong from the title alone. So in this case, I'm going to type in multiplication. Multiplication button does not register taps. And you know what? I'm even going to put the X key in parentheses so that it's even clearer. It asks which area you are seeing issues. And in this case we'll scroll through and look, there's calculator. And then it asks, what type of feedback are you reporting? There's a suggestion which is if you. There's a feature that you wish existed, battery life, which has to do with you noticing that your battery is not what you expect it to be. Application slow or unresponsive. Obviously, if the app is not running as you would expect it to, that when you launch the app, it crashes, or that there's an incorrect or unexpected behavior, as you can imagine, that's the one we're choosing. That's why I started from the bottom and went to the top. This is in this case, just an unexpected behavior. Then the details field. And this is where most people write a couple of vague sentences and hit submit. Don't do that. Instead, I'm going to tell you what you want to do. Give the engineers four things. Okay, we want to tell the engineers what you did. We want to tell the engineers what happened. We want to tell the engineers what you expected to happen. And then you want to tell the engineers how often it happens. Okay, now you'll notice that because I chose the calculator app, there's actually another part of this that pops up. It says details. It says, what does the calculator issue you are experiencing involve? And it asks, is it in the basic mode? Is it in history view? Is it in math notes, scientific mode, or unit conversion? I'm going to choose basic mode. It also asks that we provide a screenshot or screen recording and we will get to that in a moment because there may be an additional request for more information in order for the engineers to actually understand what's going on here. So what are we going to write in the description field? Well, first they want a clear description of the problem. They want a step by step set of instructions to reproduce the problem. They want to know what results you expected and then what results you actually saw. Does that sound familiar? Yes, it's the four things that we want to say. So to save us time, I'm not going to type all of this in. But instead I will tell you what I came up with if I was going to write this out. So for the summary, I would say in the calculator app, tapping the multiplication button produces no response. The button does not highlight, no haptic. Or in this case, I'm going to say the button does highlight, but no haptic feedback occurs and the multiplication operation is not entered. All other operator buttons, plus minus division work normally. That is the description. That is the first part, a clear description of the problem. Then it asks for the steps to reproduce. Here's what we would do. I'm going to say steps to reproduce. One, open the calculator app in basic mode. Two, tap any number. Three, tap the multiplication button. Four, tap another number. Five, tap the equals button. Those are the steps to reproduce the issue that we're having. What happens? Well, let's say that the number. Because we could actually put this in too. Tap any number 7 and then tap another number will go 8. 8 times 7 equals 56, right? So then we say expected result. The multiplication button highlights when tapped. That's what we want to happen. The multiplication operation is registered and the result displays 56. Please can we have that? That's what we want to happen. The actual result. Again, this is what it asks for. What results you expected, what results you actually saw. The actual result. The X button or the multiplication button does not respond to taps. It highlights, but it does not register the multiplication. The second number is added to is shown with the first number on the display. And tapping equal returns 8 instead of 56. Because we did 7 times 8. Right? The next thing that I recommend including, it doesn't say it on here. It doesn't say that you need this. It says a clear description of the problem, a step by step set of instructions, what results you expected, what results you actually saw. But including frequency is also nice. So I can say this also tells the engineer that I tried it, it's reproducible 100% of the time. And then if you want to, you can include additional notes. So you could say, and again, this whole thing is you helping the engineer to understand that you know what you're doing, that you have tried all of the basic things, that you can reproduce the problem, that you were able to reproduce the problem. And so going as far as to say, force quitting the calculator app and restarting the device did not resolve the issue. The X button works. The multiplication button works normally in scientific mode when the device is rotated to landscape issue began after installing the iOS 27 public beta. You could even include the build number, although that is automatically included as part of the diagnostics. But once again, it's a little bit about showing that you are thorough and that you are trying to provide as much information as possible. Now, in this section, note that here in the attachments, we have the device that's being used, the name of the device, but also the iOS sys diagnose, that is the diagnostics data. But do you recall that Apple requested that we include a screenshot or a description or a video recording? We're going to back. We're going to go back to our calculator and we are going to. In this case, I'm just going to take a screenshot, but normally what I would do here is a screen recording because I would want the actual process of having that X or multiplication sign highlight, but not actually be registered by the app. And then we can add that attachment, so photo or video. And then we'll choose that calculator or yes, the calculator app. And you can see it's all right there. I'm going to quickly just paste some text or put some text into here. Here is some text that explains our issue. And we are going to pretend that we put in all of the information that Micah read earlier, period. Okay. And then you would hit the check mark in the top corner in order to submit this data. Now. Well, actually, as you'll note, it changes from a check mark after you've left the text field to an actual arrow, meaning that you are, are sending off that feedback. So that is a way to fill out the feedback in a very, very, very detailed way. But it's important to understand that there is something here that we did not do. We did not rant, we did not say, please fix your terrible app. We didn't put a bunch of bugs together that we noticed along the way. If the, if a different key wasn't working or if the equ was behaving strangely, that would be another bug to file. It's one issue clearly described, easily reproduced, shown that you can reproduce it. And that is a report that an engineer can see and act on quite quickly. Now, a couple of other things. If you are working along and you notice there's something that happens if you quickly click and hold the volume up, the volume down, and the side button together, you will feel a. You will see a screenshot taken, but you will also feel a vibration. And what happens is when you capture or when you press all three of those buttons instead of just the volume up and side button. But when you actually press all three and you have to hold it for about a second in order to do this, then what's going to happen here? You'll see this pop up in just a moment. It's going to show you that diagnostic files were created. And so what's cool about that? Let's see if it's going to pop up this time. There we go. So you'll see it says diagnostics are in flight. Perform the following Send feedback or ignore. We can choose send feedback and this lets us start from the beginning, but this time with that data being included in the feedback. So the importance of this is if you experience a bug in the moment, you want to make use of this. You don't want to hop into the feedback app later and then have it pull the iOS sys diagnose because that's going to be different. It's going to be data that does not tie to that earlier issue that you had. At any time you can always check your reports status so it'll tell you if there are recent similar reports to yours. It'll show you recent activity, it will tell you whether others are hitting the same bug. If Apple replies asking for more information, you can respond quickly right here. If you do not retest on the latest beta within a few days, then they might say that the issue is resolved. So if you get any information from Apple, you do want to actually reply and provide more if you want your bug to be fixable. Now, if a serious bug does survive into a new beta build, then go ahead and refile it after the beta drops because when a new build is released, as we mentioned earlier, those tend to get extra attention right at the start. And don't use this to report bugs in third party apps. Check the app store for an update and also make sure that you are kind of focusing most of the attention on Apple's software because again, this is beta software and it's not necessarily the case that in its current form every app is supposed to run as expected because those apps are built as it stands for iOS 26, not iOS 27. You can see that that feedback that I started to file earlier is in my drafts section and I'm going to go ahead and choose Edit in the top corner, select it and delete it. I could also swipe to delete it because that feedback was f. But I can see some feedback or rather the recent activity here, which includes the release notes for the latest versions of iOS and iPadOS as well as the my inbox which has all of that. And if I've submitted feedback in the past, and you'll note that on this Micah Twit account I have not. On my actual account, I have submitted some feedback in the past. And so that will. That shows up there. So that is a look at not just joining the public beta, but more importantly, a look at how to file detailed feedback that can actually help to make a difference in the next version of Apple's software. So some homework for you if you'd like to do it. Install the public beta on a secondary device if you can, and then this week play around, try to file at least one piece of feedback and you know, make sure that you include all of that information because that is the way to make a difference and actually participate in a, in a real way in the public beta. Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Hands on Apple. As always, it is a pleasure to bring the show to you. If you have questions, if you have subject requests, anything like that. If you have feedback. Huh, you can file that by emailing us HOA tv. I'll see you next time for another episode of Hands on Apple. Bye bye.