The speed is bad too. At least on Android, it does actually take 5-10 seconds sometimes. That's not an exaggeration.

It should be searching, what, a few hundred strings? What is it doing? Is it making a network call? For what?

Anyway, barely related, but it does bring into question the quality of modern software.

It is possibly Null value pattern in action, which is a good thing in my opinion (as in robust), though its display this way is a bit suboptimal.

Funny I'm defending them, but I think this is not even a papercut in my opinion, while they have far bigger issues.

I'm sure this is me seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, but the reason bits of visual pollution like that is particularly annoying is Apple shit used to be so exceptionally polished. Not sure what emotion I want to project on them as to why they're like that now (or if it's even actually true), but it's the perception that if they're no longer getting the little stuff like that polished anymore, what else just isn't being done to the same high standard?

Lots of things. iOS has never implemented the iPod USB interface properly and whoever thought listing music alphabetically was a good default should be fired.