“If I could only offer one thing to Apple, it’s this: ‘it’s okay to slow down — a little,'” Chuq Von Rospach blogs. “The iPhone has to ship a new version ever year, and you can’t take your eye off that for a minute, but other parts of the product line don’t need that kind of continuous update. MacOS would be okay with a new release every 18 months or two years, or a feature release as a tick and a performance release as a tock in a two year cycle.”
“Same with Mac Hardware. I wouldn’t be upset at all if the Laptops were updated one year and the Desktops were updated the year after in a two year cycle: as long as we understood this was what we could expect,” Von Rospach writes. “And the watch: the series two hardware is surprisingly good and with current WatchOS software even my Series 0 works quite well. The hardware doesn’t need to be spun to a new version every year. There seems to be magic appearing in the watch software, so it’s still an annual cycle for the foreseeable future.”
My second suggestion to Apple is ‘talk to us more — at least a bit.’ The world has changed since Steve came back to Apple and clamped down into secrecy mode to kill all of the leaking,” Von Rospach writes. “If you want to manage and direct that conversation and minimize the uninformed speculation, you have to be more directly involved in it. At the same time, I’m not suggesting Apple stop ‘being Apple’ because culturally, it can’t. But it’s my belief that if they had added one slide, taken 30 seconds at the MacBook Pro announcements last fall, and said ‘we have new desktops being worked on, you’ll see them next spring, and I think you’ll really like them, but we can’t ship them sooner or we would’ it would have prevented most of the current unhappy chatter going on about Apple today.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote two years and one day ago:
Dear Mr. Cook,
“It just works.” That’s getting tougher and tougher for us OS X and iOS users to say with straight faces lately.
Apple, while certainly still the best when it comes to desktop and mobile operating systems, needs to do better. Our expectations, some of us as users of Apple products since the early 1980s, are not being met when it comes to the quality and reliability of operating systems, software, and services. Used to be, you could pretty confidently install brand new operating systems from Apple. Recently, we’re more inclined to wait for a few point releases than not. It’s downright Microsoftian. Lately, for the past couple of years, your software seems rushed. Is “rush job” really the impression you want to give your customers?
Slow down! Getting it right is far more important than getting it out.
Frankly, we don’t need a new Mac or iPhone/iPad operating system every year and Apple Inc. doesn’t need it, either. Annual OS releases shouldn’t be mandated. What we all really need, customers and Apple Inc., are operating systems that are rock solid and do what they’re supposed to do when they’re supposed to do it. Why not just add new features/services to existing OSes with continued point releases that refine and extend the experiences and services you want to deliver? Why not just release new operating systems only when they are rock solid and ready?
In other words, take a step back, take a deep breath, and focus on making sure that what you have now just works. Because too much of it doesn’t (Wi-Fi connectivity for one ongoing, glaring, vexing example). Getting it right is far more important than having two “new” free OSes to release each year. Seriously, nobody outside of Cupertino very much cares. We do, however, care very much that Apple’s software and services work as flawlessly as possible…
Bottom line: We long to again be able to confidently say of our Macs, iPhones, and iPads: “It just works.”
Sincerely,
MacDailyNews
SEE ALSO:
Apple cuts CEO Tim Cook’s pay after company misses 2016 targets – January 6, 2017