MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 49fixing things in subsequent patches, the
company could roll out features gradually
over the year. Apple’s already taken to
doing this in some cases, with capabilities
like Apple Pay Cash, Messages in the
Cloud, and iCloud shared folders rolling out
over the course of the fall or beyond.
But in most of those cases, Apple has
tried to sweep its release schedule under
the rug, as though it’s embarrassed that it
couldn’t ship those features in the initial
release. In order to succeed, the company
needs to embrace the approach, providing
a roadmap to its developers and users
about when features will appear. This is
one of those things that requires a change
in the company’s culture—Apple, after all,
is not an organization for whom
transparency comes naturally. But there’s
no reason it couldn’t simply lay out a
schedule of features to come in iOS 14,
iOS 14.1, iOS 14.2, and so on. It just needs
to decide to do so.
Moreover, given that it’s already doing
this, it might as well spin it in a positive
fashion anyway.
TICK TOCK
As much as it pains me to say it, iOS is
getting old. Thirteen years and thirteen
releases may seem normal, but it’s a
breakneck pace compared to, say, the
classic Mac OS, which topped out at
version 9 after just seventeen years.
Annual releases are a fairly new
development in the software world: even
Mac OS X once went two and a half years
between major releases.
For a long time, Apple had seemingly
embraced a tick-tock strategy of releases,
alternating those that rolled out major
new features with maintenance releases
that made sure the software ran reliably.
Apple could decide to adopt a similar
strategy on iOS.
I get that the iPhone is more popular
than ever, but with iOS maturing, maybe
it’s time for Apple to slow its roll a little bit.
We’ve come to expect technology to
submit to our every whim, but we also
depend on it every day, and that means
that when it doesn’t work, we get even
more frustrated. Frustrated users, it need
not be said, are not happy users. And
many of us would gladly trade being
wowed by shiny new features for
bulletproof devices that we don’t end up
cursing at. ■Apple Pay Cash.