Four times the fun

As recently as two years ago, Apple’s fall season of software updates included just two operating systems: OS X and iOS. (And OS X wasn’t even a yearly update until Mountain Lion). When OS X moved to a yearly update, some people worried about Apple being able to maintain its high standards across two operating systems working to strict deadlines. After all, according to reports, Apple had to pull OS X staff to help finish iOS 7 on time, delaying Mavericks. But while some people do have criticisms of Apple’s current software output, generally the transition has been smooth. But it’s not two operating systems any more. Last year added a third to update in the form of watchOS, and this year adds tvOS to make four. All on a yearly schedule! And yet, early signs are that the betas of all Apple’s new operating systems are stable and fast – and betas are where you expect to find problems. It’s an impressive feat, and certainly not an easy one pull off. Sure, Apple has enough money to take on a huge number of staff to help, but that’s no silver bullet for the problem: the whole concept of “The Mythical Man-Month” was written about software engineering, after all.

It looks like Apple is partly managing the workload by spreading out the release of new features more. The launch of iOS 10 is no longer the only time your iPhone gets some new tricks; we saw this with iOS 9.3 this year, which added Night Shift, new Notes features, and more. We also saw it with tvOS, which fixed problems and added great new features in tvOS 9.1 and 9.2. I think we’ll see more of it this year: iOS 10 has been fairly light on iPad-specific features, yet iPad is a big focus for the company. I think we might see an iOS 10.1 release that includes some more iPad changes – perhaps announced along with a new iPad Pro later this year, since they may well be productivity focused.

I’m a big fan of this approach, since it also gives developers the chance to spread out their own workload adapting to the features, meaning better software for us users all round. Plus, it’s fun to have new features to explore the whole year round!