> But the mistake OP is making is assuming this one thing that annoyed him somehow applies to the whole Apple org. Most issues were up to engineers and project managers to prioritize, every team had their own process when I was there.

Except this same shit keeps happening with multiple teams.

Judging from your mention of QuickDraw, which was removed entirely from macOS in 2012, perhaps your Apple experience is now out of date.

> If you demand that I work with some ancient version, I then have to install and uninstall said program every time I work on your ticket specifically.

You completely missed the point of the blog post. Apple was in the process of developing macOS 26.4 beta 4, and they wanted me to install the beta just to "verify" the bug.

Apple could test my bug with 26.4 beta 4 a heck of a lot easier than I could. Nobody was asking Apple to install some ancient version.

> my effectiveness is measured by how many tickets I close.

That was one of the points of the blog post: this is a perverse incentive from management.

Note what you did not say: "my effectiveness is measured by how many bugs I fix." So engineers are incentivized to close tickets even if the bugs they report are unfixed. This is how a company ends up with crappy, buggy software.

> Not all bugs are easily reproducible

Apple did not say they couldn't reproduce it. Neither did they say that they thought they fixed it. They refused to say anything except "Verify with macOS 26.4 beta 4".

> and even if they are 100% reproducible for the user, it's not always so easy for the developers

It's not easy for the user! Like I said in the blog post, I don't usually run the betas, so it would have been an ordeal to install macOS 26.4 beta 4 just to test this one bug. If anything, it's easier for Apple to test when they're developing the beta.

> the most "efficient" thing is just to ask the user to re-test.

Efficient from Apple's perspective, but grossly inefficient from the bug reporter's perspective.

> realistically I can't really do anything with it

In this case, I provided Apple with a sample Xcode project and explicit steps to reproduce. So realistically, they could have tried that.

I suspect that your underlying assumption is incorrect: I don't think Apple did anything with my bug report. This is not the first time Apple has asked me to "verify" an unfixed bug in a beta version. This seems to be a perfunctory thing they do before certain significant OS releases, clear out some older bug reports. Maybe they want to focus now on macOS 27 for WWDC and pretend that there are no outstanding issues remaining. I don't know exactly what's going through their corporate minds, but what spurred me to blog about it is that they keep doing this same shit.

> Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose

That's the point of the blog post. If you can't even say right now whether it's for the better, then there's no reason to rush in.

> This shouldn't be controversial. Height is well-known to be heritable.

I don't understand why so many commenters here are arguing against a straw man. The article author does not and never did believe in the "blank slate" theory. The author has a "centrist" view that genes matter but are not the only determining factor.