“Apple appears to have significantly improved the quality of its code over the past six months,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes for ZDNet.
“It’s fair to say that Apple got off to a really bad start with iOS 9,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that it wasn’t ready, and was only released because Apple didn’t want to postpone the launch of the iPhone 6s.”
MacDailyNews Take: You can say the same thing about watchOS and tvOS, unfortunately.
“Now with the public release of the beta of iOS 9.3, it’s clear that Apple is firing on all cylinders yet again,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “Overall the operating system feels fast and solid, and nothing seems to be broken — important stuff like Wi-Fi and cellular seems to work after the upgrade — and the new features seem to work as they should.”
“One thing that really surprises me about this beta is how excited people are about the new features. And I don’t mean the folks such as you or I that swim in these waters daily, but ordinary people. I’ve had people ask me questions about the new features in iOS 9.3 that otherwise seem to have no interest in tech,” Kingsley-Hughes writes, “but they’re jazzed about a new iOS feature that we’ve only known about for a few days.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Perhaps Apple has taken the kvetching in some quarters about quality, focus, and execution to heart? Let’s hope so.
Just par for the course for the Agile development practice.
What? You are saying that Agile is the cause of bugs in software? I suppose you like to deliver software using waterfall methodologies?
It is widely accepted and acknowledged that software development shops on the verge of collapse are saved by moving from waterfall to agile processes. Be-it Scrum, Extreme, or other.
Keep in mind that major Apple investors and the investment community demands, unequivocally, that apple release something every year. There’s a quote somewhere on this web site from an investor that said release schedules longer than one year would be “…wholly unacceptably.”
Software updates as large as we have seen developed in a waterfall process would be wrought with cataclysmic bugs. Such a process would allow for only very minor updates.
I will have to admin now that I am an Agile Scrum Master and am a bit biased. But, my clients have literally been saved by adopting Agile processes and practices. Their code is magnitudes better and bug/issues decrease astronomically. And time to marked shrinks dramatically.
So, please don’t blame Agile for issues with Apple software.
Time to market shrinks dramatically but so does quality. Period. For instance, where is there time for docs or training in agile? Nowhere, because the app is supposedly self-documenting.
As someone who has used both methodologies, I can’t say if agile is blame for Apple’s errors, but I seriously suspect it. Agile only works if you have a customer that is willing to be a beta-tester. Apple doesn’t have that luxury. A lot of big companies don’t.
I agree about the typical beta quality of the agile methodology. Sorry wx12391b, agile is great for startups for whom usable quality is an ideal to be aimed toward rather than a minimum standard to be enforced. Agile development lets you crank out rapid-fire releases, do A/B testing, and drive your feature set by evolving user stories. It’s awesome when you are angel-funded and hoping to get your A round, or if you’re VC funded and trying to buy market share.
But for a company like Apple, agile development is not even something worth considering. Some departments within Apple may play with that, like the store.apple.com team, but none of the app teams do agile. It’s ALL waterfall. Waterfall is what lets you have your feature set proposals presented at the “million managers march” and then lets the product ship months later. Without top-down waterfall development, Apple would not be Apple. It would be web-based crap-ware where every release is a beta.
Now, YES Apple needs to improve its focus on, and attention to, quality within the waterfall methodology.
Just went through all the hoops to put this on my day to day phone. It’s. Excellent. Really love the warm night color too. Every thing is. Snappy!
I agree that Apple has let things slip a bit of late but as I have said before iOS9 has been by far the best OS on my iPad which was almost unusable after 2 or 3 OS ‘upgrades’ and since the latest has a whole new lease of life, the wifi actually works it’s quicker and more stable and finally new worthwhile features over previous ones where problems with little benefit was the order of the day. So having waited a Few weeks as I always do to load it when launched 9 has been fantastic as far as I am concerned.