Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports in his Sunday PowerOn newsletter that Apple’s recent strategic decisions reveal a concerted effort to ensure the quality and performance of its upcoming 2024 software updates, including iOS 18.
This ambition follows a rare move by Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, to temporarily freeze development on major software updates, including iOS 18, to focus on debugging and enhancing performance.
Apple’s decision to pause reflects a significant shift in its approach to software development, echoing a similar move in 2019 when the company restructured its procedures due to bugs and feature delays. This time, the halt came right after reaching a key milestone in iOS 18 and macOS 15 development, allowing an extra week dedicated solely to addressing glitches.
The 2024 updates are critical for Apple, especially as it races to catch up with rivals like Google and OpenAI in generative AI technology. iOS 18 is anticipated to bring such advancements to the iPhone. This becomes even more crucial as the hardware of the iPhone 16 is not expected to see major advances next year, placing a greater emphasis on software to attract more sales and customers.
Inside Apple, the upcoming operating systems are described as “ambitious and compelling,” with significant new features, designs, and improvements in security and performance, reports Gurman.
Federighi’s policy, known as The Pact, emphasizes the importance of immediate bug fixing, especially when new features cause regressions in the build. Apple software has been buggy lately so let’s see if we continue to see improvements in releases leading up to iOS 18 next year. Apple needs to step up and bring us some new software features because iOS hasn’t changed much in the past few years. There needs to be an easier way to organize apps as it’s still frustrating as hell.
