Slow is Smooth & Smooth is Fast
It's time for Apple to shift away from the annual feature-packed release cycle.
After a decade of yearly updates to the macOS & iOS/iPadOS platforms, Apple needs to consider a new approach to their feature-packed annual updates.
With the launch of iOS/iPadOS 15 in less than a month, SharePlay, a tent pole feature in iOS 15, has been delayed. Other features, including Universal Control & transferring data when you become deceased, haven't publicly been confirmed as delayed, but neither has made an appearance in any iOS/macOS betas to date.
And this isn't a one-off; Apple took a licking in 2019 after the janky launch of iOS 13, which was riddled with performance glitches. The year prior, iOS 12 CarPlay and iPad features were delayed, and in 2020 Apple gave developers less than 24 hours to build, test, submit, and launch their iOS 14 apps in time for launch.
With iOS 13, critical bug fixes occurred even after the latest iPhones were flashed to ship with iOS 13.0, while Apple worked frantically to address core stability issues by issuing iOS 13.1. And in just ten days of the iOS 13 launch, the company had already released four updates to the operating system. By November, Apple acknowledged their less-than-ideal rollout, promising to change their testing process moving forward.
This begs the question of why Apple feels compelled to stick with such a strict annual release cycle, but one answer seems clear: the hardware. New hardware regularly highlights new features for each device and can add another reason to update to Apple's latest and greatest. Second, with updates needing to occur across the entire lineup to benefit from the latest cross-platform features, coordinating the release of all their updates to occur close to each may be another priority for Apple.
The industry as a whole has developed so much inertia around an annual release cycle for products that I imagine it's hard to pump the brakes at this point. Even as an end-user, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be peeved if I suddenly found out macOS 12 has been delayed by six months. I think we all collectively set an expectation to expect these frantic cycles of updates and features. Is this the best approach for the platform, for the developers, or the end-users?
In the early days of Mac OS X, it was not uncommon for releases to be staggered by more than a year, and in the case of going from 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard, a staggering 910 days passed between updates. As Apple and the product lineup grew, the pace of OS releases has only hastened. Looking at macOS alone, five of the last seven releases have come in less time than it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun.
An OS launch is often casually labelled as either principally a feature-focused or stability-focused update. The general understanding is that more new features result in more room for new bugs and compatibility issues and that an off-year focus on stability can be helpful to shore up the platform. Snow Leopard was famously announced as having "0 New Features" while Panther boasted "100 Amazing New Features", Tiger "150+", and Leopard "300 New Features." Apple has, on occasion, taken an offsetting pattern of macOS releases where a more feature-packed release is succeeded by a more stability-focused one (Leopard followed by Snow Leopard, Sierra by High Sierra).
There could be a lot to gain by spanning out the current launch cycle to occur over an elongated timeline, thereby giving releases time to incorporate new features while also prioritizing stability. Here's a bit of my reasoning:
I'm a Slow Learner
Honestly, I'm still discovering features in macOS Big Sur & iOS 14 on the cusp of macOS Monterey & iOS 15 launching. It can be challenging to keep abreast & integrate features baked into the latest operating system, particularly when a third of the year's coverage has already moved on to report on the evolving state of the next beta. It takes time to discover, learn, and form habits around new features without having another 100 things dumped on you only months after you began to get a grasp of some of the previous year's additions.
Everything Doesn’t Have to Feature on Day 1
Breaking up the enormity of fall releases could give prominent features that may benefit from additional work time to mature over the year. Apple could still announce features during their events but change the language from "Available Fall 2021" to "Available Fall 2021 & Throughout 2022" (thought the marketing on that phrasing would need to be spruced up).
The surprise release of completely native iPadOS cursor support highlights that there can still be a tremendous amount of groundswell around a feature despite being released mid-cycle.
Slow is Smooth & Smooth is Fast
Does stability have to be a necessary trade-off to new features? Using the iPad's cursor support again as an example, here was a feature that was clearly in development for as long as it needed to be. It was fluid, refined, and behaved exactly how you expected it to when it was released. It's a feature that could have been botched in a number of different ways, but by taking the needed time to get it right, the feature was executed and integrated into the OS flawlessly.
Good for Developers?
Honestly asking, would a slower release cycle be beneficial for developers? On the one hand, it might create a slower rollout of APIs over a year. But on the other hand, it might shift the arc of development away from rushing to fix bugs and broken features introduced by the latest release only to then scramble to understand & implement the newest features in time for the launch of the next OS. It all seems chaotic.
In Sum
All this isn't to say that Apple is rushing their development. Remarkably, Apple continues to keep pace and release updates for all its platforms on an annual basis. And for the most part, they launch as solid updates with occasional glitches that sort themselves out within the first month of launch. But I think there's an expectation (which I am guilty of holding) to see the company release newer, more, and better features each successive year. Apple gets a lot of kudos from me for making the decision to delay features it felt it could refine in time for the 1.0 launch, though such a step would only be necessary under the current release mentality.
The artificially imposed deadline that features needs to be ready on a specified date may or may not be the optimal approach for the developers and users of the platform. More features than we have a chance to grasp, frantic updating and compatibility cycles, and delays which create disappointment; all could be avoided if the attitudes about the need for annual updates became a bit more flexible.
