Apple Pauses Future Software Development to Fix Current Bugs

Apple has temporarily stopped working on new features for next year’s software updates across its devices to focus on fixing existing bugs.

That’s according to sources familiar with the matter, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. This decision aims to enhance the quality of Apple’s software after several early versions were found to be bug-ridden.

The internal announcement made last week indicates a shift towards prioritizing performance over new features. Apple, known for its user-friendly software and privacy emphasis, considers maintaining a high-quality standard crucial, especially as its software is a key selling point.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, has been instrumental in implementing stricter quality control measures. This includes a manual feature enabling process and a commitment known as “The Pact,” from 2019, which focuses on preventing and swiftly correcting software regressions.

Despite these measures, the latest software development cycle revealed numerous “escapes,” or overlooked bugs, prompting the management team to pause new feature development for a week to address these issues.

“It’s a problem of 10,000 people typing code and completely breaking the operating system,” said one anonymous source.

The pause affects various operating systems, including iOS 18 (codenamed “Crystal”), iPadOS 18, macOS 15 (codenamed “Glow”), and watchOS 11 (codenamed “moonstone”), as well as updates to iOS 17, currently available. However, this delay is not expected to impact the scheduled release dates for consumers.

Apple plans to resume development this week and continues to prepare for the integration of generative AI into its products for next year’s releases. The company traditionally unveils major software updates in September, following a preview at its June developer conference, known as WWDC.

Are you seeing bugs with iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and more right now? Apple Watch battery life so far has been pretty bad.