←back to thread

Apple Photos app corrupts images

(tenderlovemaking.com)
1133 points pattyj | 1 comments | 17 Sep 25 11:07 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
deviation ◴[17 Sep 25 11:47 UTC] No.45274615[source]▶
It seems to be an import pipeline bug.

Photos does a lot of extra work on import (merging RAW+JPEG pairs, generating previews, database indexing, optional deletion), so my guess is a concurrency bug where a buffer gets reused or a file handle is closed before the copy finishes.

Rare, nondeterministic corruption fits the profile.

replies(7): >>45274840 #>>45275400 #>>45275556 #>>45275634 #>>45277188 #>>45278171 #>>45280431 #
tenderlove ◴[17 Sep 25 12:08 UTC] No.45274840[source]▶
This is also my guess. It's really a bummer, and I'd report it to Apple but since it's nondeterministic I have no idea how to provide repro steps.
replies(8): >>45275065 #>>45275163 #>>45276096 #>>45276185 #>>45276696 #>>45277780 #>>45279586 #>>45281857 #
egorfine ◴[17 Sep 25 14:22 UTC] No.45276185[source]▶
> I'd report it to Apple

What's the point of it? It is well known in the industry they ignore bugreports.

Also, this bug doesn't affect the majority of users, so it won't ever be fixed.

replies(1): >>45276322 #
JKCalhoun ◴[17 Sep 25 14:33 UTC] No.45276322[source]▶
I worked on the Photos team a decade ago — some of what you're saying I can vouch for. If it is a rare occurrence, that lowers the priority of the bug. Data corruption though? That moves it to the top.

I'll tell you a secret though that kind of pisses me off. If you have shipped with a bug, that automatically lowers the perceived priority as well. You know, as opposed to introducing a new bug in a new release. "We've already lived with that old bug…" seems to be the mind set. Oh well.

To be sure though, if you saw the number of bugs that queue up for a popular app like Photos, you'd know that fixing all of them is not going to be possible — some kind of system of prioritization is required.

replies(4): >>45276468 #>>45278671 #>>45279786 #>>45282371 #
crote ◴[17 Sep 25 18:45 UTC] No.45279786[source]▶
> if you saw the number of bugs that queue up for a popular app like Photos, you'd know that fixing all of them is not going to be possible

Why? If your app is used by billions of people, surely you can afford a few additional testers and engineers? Your app doesn't have an unlimited number of bugs: if you are solving them faster than you are introducing them, the number of bugs will eventually approach zero.

Sure, you'll always have newly-introduced bugs which are still waiting to get fixed, but if you've got an ever-increasing pile of bugs which have been around for years - even when they have been reported with easy-to-reproduce steps - then something has gone horribly wrong with your development process. At a certain point you have to stop shoveling new crap, rethink the workflow which is introducing so many new bugs, and slowly start fixing old bugs. The alternative is that your code will inevitably degrade into 100% bugs and become completely unusable and unmaintainable.

replies(2): >>45285368 #>>45286487 #
1. yummypaint ◴[18 Sep 25 07:07 UTC] No.45286487[source]▶
Garbage software still makes lots of money. Sometimes more than good software, and certainly more than the best software. Just look at the windows vs Linux ecosystem for a simple task like screen recording with decent compression. Open source tools are superior, but can be harder to even find on windows due to the poorer signal/noise ratio from all the terrible for profit/enshittification software. Some graphics drivers have dashboards that do screen recording, but that is not a universal solution.

The most viable free options on windows seem to be sketchy cloud stuff designed to be inconvenient enough to upsell you. On Linux it's either built in already or trivial to install something that records locally and doesn't rug pull the user demanding money.