[hgomersall]

It's a bug that shouldn't have happened though. One hopes that they have a well verified reference implementation for all their signal processing pipeline (and ideally both a high level and a bit accurate model) and they're testing the output of any optimised implementation against that, with random input data. This is Apple, one of the most "valuable" companies in the world. They should do their job.

[gjsman-1000]

> They should do their job.

They did their job. They delivered a sound system that has been called the best available in any laptop. Nobody, and I mean nobody, noticed this bug in the last three years.

Apple is doing just fine without your couch coaching about what they should have done. I might as well harass Apple for having 99% P3 color certification but not 100% accuracy certification.

[sussmannbaka]

Nobody noticed the bug in the last three years because it’s more recent. You can hear it clearly in real world usage compared to the M1. Harassing Apple over 99% P3 certification is not remotely comparable because that’s neither perceivable, nor incorrect behavior. It’s clearly a bug, an egregious one at that and it will be fixed no matter what you think about Marcans choice of words.

[Clamchop]

This is an egregious deployment of the word "egregious". In a world where security catastrophes are de rigueur (all of them driven by oversights), this level of drama over an audio bug is so unjustified that it reads like trolling.

[hgomersall]

You're completely wrong. Signal processing is regularly used to make life and death decisions in medical technology, including audio techniques which are particularly useful in say, heart beat analysis. Your perspective appears rather narrow. In any case, I said egregious "signal processing cock up", which from a purely signal processing perspective, it absolutely is (as in, it has a big impact).

It might well be the case that a bug in a bass audio driver is not that big a deal, but these sorts of bugs are easy to avoid and shouldn't happen. It does indicate something about the quality of the engineering.

[hgomersall]

I'm sorry, dropping samples is a pretty egregious signal processing cock up and one I'd be ashamed to have made. I think the market assessment is pretty meaningless in the face of objective evidence like this. By all means, you can keep buying Apple, but I'd have no trust they're doing things properly under the hood.

[gjsman-1000]

Well then I sure hate to tell you the major “cock ups” that have happened on Windows or Android or Linux or iOS or OS/2 or BSD…

But seriously, shit happens no matter where you look. At least this bug affected nobody. Windows has a bug that causes agony on a weekly basis.