Updates include less and less news, does it make sense to publish one every year?
Since the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, Apple has released one software update per year, before iPhone OS and now iOS. It made a lot of sense at the start of the “smartphone age” that launched the iPhone, there were lots of ideas and new things that could be implemented. However, iOS is already a very established system, not as many new features as before So, does it still make sense to release one iOS update per year?
Do big annual software updates make sense?
We are talking about iOS but this is something perfectly applicable to other systems such as macOS. They reached a ripening point, that the problems to be solved and the possible improvements are minimal. Therefore, Apple can no longer introduce a long list of improvements every year in a “big update” of the system.
In a way, Apple has already stopped giving importance to annual updates. Many new features presented by Apple during the launch of iOS 15 have arrived with updates 15.1 or 15.2, months after the official launch.
That is, Apple includes more and more news when it really has it ready. Also, versions like iOS 7, iOS 8, or iOS 9 only had 3 or 4 big updates. In iOS 14, we reached version 14.8, that is, we had 7 major updates.
Wouldn’t that make more sense? No need to release major software updates, Apple could simply introduce new things gradually throughout the year. It might even be better for the user as there are many “minor improvements” that Apple is delaying to release with a new “big” system update. For example, we have recent options like grid view in FaceTime or widgets in iPadOS, which could have been launched earlier and not waited for iOS 15.
I admit that this is quite a controversial idea, and that it will against all marketing lessons. Releasing an update with lots of new features creates a lot more buzz than the slow introduction of new features. But there will come a time when it will make sense, I don’t know if we’ll be anywhere near that point.
Related topics: Apple
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