Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/11.html

Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you “verify” the bug remains unfixed

I recognize that this is annoying from a user perspective, but I do understand it. Not all bugs are easily reproducible (and even if they are 100% reproducible for the user, it's not always so easy for the developers). Also sometimes you make a change to the code that you think might be in a related area, and so sometimes the most "efficient" thing is just to ask the user to re-test.

When I close an old bug that is not actionable, I do feel bad about it. But keeping the bug open when realistically I can't really do anything with it might be worse.

A company like Apple should have complex enough tools to perfectly capture system state at the time of the bug so that they can reproduce it
I don't work at Apple, so I can't comment on that. But that doesn't always help. There's been plenty of times where I have a full HAR file from the user and I can clearly see that something went wrong, but that doesn't always mean I can reproduce the issue. (I recognize a HAR file doesn't represent the complete state of the world, but it's often one of the best things a backend developer can get)

Reminds me of this Raymond Chen Microsoft blog post:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241108-00/?p=11...

The case of a program that crashed on its first instruction - The Old New Thing

Didn't even make it out of the gate.

The Old New Thing