Help Apple Squash Those Pesky (Software) Bugs

I love it when software works the way it's supposed to (it's one of the reasons why I enjoy using Mac OS X). When it doesn't work as designed (or as the way you expect it to work), it can be frustrating. Not only that, but it can cost you time and money.

Before I continue, let me just say that I realize how complex building good software can be. When I was younger, I wanted to be a software developer. That didn't last very long. I respect good software developers for their hard work, dedication and commitment to making good apps. Having said that, I also know that they are humans like the rest of us, and they make mistakes. In most cases, these mistakes (or "bugs", as most of us call them, aren't always captured in their quality assurance testing. When this happens, we need to let the developers know so that they are aware of the bug, and can correct it.

Every software developer has a different way of capturing these bugs. Some are better than others. Apple makes the process of letting them know about bugs very easy (as expected), and everyone can (and should) use the system to report bugs.

To submit a bug report to Apple, go to bugreport.apple.com and log in with your Apple ID. Once you've logged in, you will be presented with the following screen:

If this is the first time that you've used this system, it will show blank like the above example. To create a new bug report, click on "New" and enter the information that is required. Generally, bug report submissions take about a minute to complete. As you start to submit your bug reports, your main status page will start to fill in. Here's what it will look like after you have submitted your first bug report:

Posted on February 12, 2015 and filed under How To, Mac, Opinion.