Apple is changing how it develops its software to cut down on bugs

“The initial release windows of both iOS 12 and iOS 13 saw users complaining about a plethora of bugs both major and minor. Apple has plans to mitigate this problem when iOS 14 launches next year, according to sources who spoke with Bloomberg,” Samuel Axon reports for Ars Technica:

A major factor contributing to iOS 13’s rough launch window was the fact that many Apple developers were making daily or weekly commits of new features at varying levels of readiness and quality, and those features were enabled by default regardless of their readiness. This meant that test builds were often unusable for stretches of time due to one problematic feature or another, which limited the amount of time testers spent with the software.

Under the new methodology, new test builds of Apple’s future operating systems will turn certain features deemed to be buggy or to cause usability issues off by default. Testers will be able to opt-in on a feature-by-feature basis in many cases, reducing the likelihood that they will be working with “unlivable” builds.

The change in approach was directed by Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, and was announced during an internal meeting. And this would also apply to Apple’s other operating systems such as macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and iPadOS.

MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, this will mitigate bugginess in Apple’s software and operating system releases. We’re dealing with a pretty major one in macOS Catalina right now: Once our new 16-inch MacBook Pros go to sleep (lid closed, running dual external displays via DisplayPort) they won’t wake up without having to open the lids and force them to reboot. It’s not a fun bug with which to deal. We’ll next try with lids open (three displays, yay) and see how they deal with waking up from Sleep. [UPDATE: 4:20pm ET: Lid open method does not prevent waking up, but the external displays lose their resolution settings. So, it’s still buggy, just in a different way.]

Oh, here are some 16-inch MacBook Pro benchmarks we ran earlier: