I'm glad to see that other people have noticed this. iTunes has always been a pain to use, but otherwise Apple's software used to be incredibly robust and worked well. Nowadays Apple seem to be pushing out updates without proper testing. It's got to the point where I'm hesitant to actually update my devices for fear they'll become unusable. And that's never good.
At one point both my MacBook and my iPhone were suffering from regular graphical glitches. It's still an occasional problem, but at least Apple have got on top of it for the most part. I just wish they'd do something to stop my iPhone from kernel panicking and automatically restarting itself every so often.
It's got to the point where I'm hesitant to actually update my devices for fear they'll become unusable. And that's never good.
Sadly, this doesn't seem to be specific to Apple either. It has become almost the norm in many parts of the software industry, to the extent that I don't voluntarily update any software that is installed and working any more, other than essential security updates. These days, even that is only done after a search to see which supposedly essential Windows updates are actually important for security, because I no longer trust Microsoft to be honest about what their updates are for either.
My default assumption otherwise is that running any sort of updater on application software, or heaven forbid on drivers or the whole OS, has a better than even chance of breaking something I care about, and that every time a browser auto-updates there is a close to 100% chance it will break something I care about or change something in a way I don't want or need. But since almost everyone is now producing similar levels of unreliable and unstable products, there's little you can do to get away from it.
Combined with the version ratcheting problem we were discussing a week or so ago here on HN, also in connection with Apple but also a much wider problem within the industry, it's becoming almost impossible to simply choose and use software you actually want, and to upgrade if and when a better version for your needs is available. This is not a good thing.
At one point both my MacBook and my iPhone were suffering from regular graphical glitches. It's still an occasional problem, but at least Apple have got on top of it for the most part. I just wish they'd do something to stop my iPhone from kernel panicking and automatically restarting itself every so often.