iOS 27 “Rave” Update to Clean Up Code
Apple’s iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system’s internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The effort is said to be similar to what Apple did with its Snow Leopard Mac update years ago, and will involve removing old code, rewriting existing features, and subtly upgrading apps to improve performance.
Note that it does not say they are focusing on fixing bugs. We’ve heard stuff like this before, and it did not produce anything like a Snow Leopard. Who can say whether a particular feature needs to be rewritten without seeing the code, but I don’t think there’s any reason to presume that a rewrite will improve reliability. At best, there’s now lots of new code that has not been tested at scale. At worst, Apple has a history of rewrites making things worse and even eventually being scrapped. These days, hearing that a feature or app that you depend on is receiving attention in an OS update may provoke more fear than excitement.
Thus, it’s indisputable that iPhone had a significant effect on Leopard. Strangely, nobody appears to acknowledge that iPhone may have had a significant effect on Snow Leopard too. Apple (in)famously promoted Snow Leopard as having “0 New Features.” Although this was clearly a joking exaggeration, the joke had a grain of truth, reflecting the limited scope of Snow Leopard compared to its predecessors such as Leopard and Tiger. No joke was Snow Leopard’s price discount: $29 compared to $129 for Leopard or Tiger. Many people assume that Snow Leopard had 0 new features because Apple was working instead on countless bug fixes, as if features vs. bug fixes were the only possible tradeoff. But Apple’s PR mentions a different tradeoff. What if Snow Leopard had 0 new features because Apple was working instead on iPhone—and iPad! After Apple released iPhone, the company did not simply rest on its laurels. It pushed ahead, not only on iPhone, which was becoming a huge hit, ultimately to overshadow the Mac, but also on a new product, iPad, released in April 2010. Does anyone believe that the key software engineering and QA resources “borrowed” from the Mac OS X team were all promptly returned, like a library book?
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Sadly, I see no reason to believe that Apple has suddenly started to care again about software quality. The new year-based operating system numbering scheme is an overt sign and painful reminder to me that Apple has no intention to end the self-enforced yearly major OS update release schedule that is a primary cause of Apple’s software quality problems. What I liked about the Snow Leopard era, and what I think everyone liked about it, was the unusually long period after major releases when we received mostly minor bug fix releases, slowly improving the quality of the operating system, avoiding big disruptions. In that sense, we will never have another Snow Leopard, because the future is annual major updates.
I liked Snow Leopard’s focus on OS internals and developer features like GCD. But what was really special about it was the time between major releases, and that obviously can’t be replicated on an annual schedule.
Previously:
- Contacts in Tahoe
- Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia
- Snow Leopard at 15
- The Myth and Reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard
- How Apple Plans to Root Out Bugs
- Disk Utility in El Capitan
- Mac OS X 10.10.4 Replaces discoveryd With mDNSResponder
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The timeline Jeff lays out also shows that the annual release schedule only started post-Jobs. And the announcement of the delay is written in a Jobsian style.
Can't imagine them going back to that way while Cook is still in charge. They clearly decided to align the software schedule around the iPhone hardware release schedule, quality be damned.
Sorry for double post but the other thing it makes extremely clear is that there isn't really a macOS anymore in their mind. It's just desktop iPad with dedicated keyboard and usually landscape orientation.
I can't think of a time in recent memory, probably since the annual release cycle, that they released something just for macOS. For many years the so-called macOS releases have just been there to bring most but not all of the iPhone "features" and "design" to the Mac. Thoughtlessly and by rote in most cases.
You need a Leopard to have a Snow Leopard, and OS 26 is no Leopard.
I have no faith that they’ll get this right but I hope I’m wrong.
