According to a recent Bloomberg report, Apple is focused on enhancing the software quality of iOS, macOS, and watchOS, temporarily delaying the development of new features for the next versions of these platforms due to bug-related issues. Even visionOS, a part of this development, has been affected.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg noted that the initial iOS 18, macOS 15, and watchOS 11 releases for the following year had been completed a month ago. However, numerous bugs surfaced during the review of the update, causing the development teams to pause new feature development for a week to address the issues.
Evidently, this year’s development process for Apple’s firmware updates has been anything but seamless. Typically, following the milestone release of a software update, teams would start work on the next milestone. However, in this case, the focus has shifted to bug-fixing instead of continuing with new feature development.
“With thousands of different Apple employees working on a range of operating systems and devices — that need to work together seamlessly — it’s easy for glitches to crop up,” commented one person familiar with the situation regarding the problem of code glitches disrupting the operating system.
While Apple recently implemented a temporary pause on new feature development, this pause is expected to be lifted soon. The report also delved into how Craig Federighi, Apple’s software engineering chief, has actively sought to enhance software quality over the years.
Federighi’s strategies, such as the implementation of “feature flags,” which involves the manual enabling of each feature to assess its impact on the system before adding it, have played a crucial role in preventing regressions and fixing mistakes quickly. As a result, Apple’s software releases have seen fewer glitches in recent years and fewer delayed features.
It remains uncertain how this temporary pause will affect new features in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, and watchOS 11. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s decision to pause new feature development for a week is an unusual move.
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