Eight version updates in two months, what problems did iOS 13 encounter?

"There are bugs again." This is the most common complaint from iPhone users in the past two months. Since the official release of iOS 13, Apple has pushed out 8 version updates at a rare speed, almost one per week, and the recent updates are mainly to fix vulnerabilities. Many people complain that the iPhone has as many bugs as an Android phone.

What happened to iOS, which has always been known for its stability? A recent report from Bloomberg revealed the reason why iOS 13 has too many vulnerabilities, and Apple itself has also realized the seriousness of the problem. In order to avoid iOS 14 repeating the same mistakes, Apple is changing the system testing process.

Is it still useful to “mend the fold after the sheep have been lost”?

From trust to complaints

Users' confidence in iOS mainly comes from Apple's closed ecosystem that combines software and hardware. This approach ensures Apple's strict control over third-party applications, and various applications can run smoothly on mobile phones. The Apple Store ecosystem has supported countless developers, and Apple has also made a lot of money by taking commissions.

However, in recent years, users have been complaining more and more about iOS, mainly because competitors are growing stronger. On the one hand, Google has stepped up its control over the Android ecosystem, improving the overall experience of Android phones. On the other hand, third-party Android manufacturers are catching up, and innovative features are constantly emerging.

In contrast, some new features of iOS 13, such as "dark mode", have already appeared on other Android phones. Even the most basic "stability" has become the biggest complaint of this generation of iOS 13.

Too much emphasis on new features and neglect of basic experience

As early as 2018, Apple's head of software development, Craig Federighi, mentioned in a meeting that the company has placed too much emphasis on new features and should return its primary goal to performance and stability, which consumers care about most. iOS 12 does perform well in terms of stability and improves many basic experiences, such as speeding up app startup time, improving network connectivity, and extending battery life.

This situation did not continue with iOS 13. During testing, iOS 13 was extremely unstable and had inconsistent features. Before the WWDC conference in June, Apple's software engineers had realized that iOS 13 was not as good as previous versions. In August, just a few weeks before the release of the new iPhone, Apple decided to abandon further repairs on iOS 13.0 and focus on improving the next generation iOS 13.1. Apple internally believed that iOS 13.1 was the public version that truly met the standards.

This also explains why iOS 13.1 came so quickly, and was pushed less than a week after the official version of iOS 13 was released, a week earlier than expected.

Set up an "experimental switch" to turn off imperfect features by default

In the previous development process, engineers often added new features when the system was not yet perfect, while other teams made modifications every week. People familiar with the matter described it as: It's like a complete recipe, but different chefs are adding ingredients to it. For testers, working in this unstable state, it is difficult to determine whether a new feature is available in the operating system, which leads to frequent bugs in iOS 13.

In order to solve these problems, Apple began to improve the development and testing process of the software system. By default, Apple requires the development team to turn off all unfinished and problematic functions, and testers can actively turn them on through a menu called Flags. It is a bit like the "laboratory" function in some software and systems. Testers can use it to test the impact of each individual function on the system and facilitate improvement.

Apple has also set up a testing level called "white glove" internally, using 1-100 to measure the quality of the system. Green, yellow, and red are used to represent the quality of a certain function during the development process. The priority of the error ranges from 0 to 5 to determine the severity of the bug.

The new testing process has already begun to be used in the development of iOS 14, and Apple is also considering postponing the debut of some new features until iOS 15 in 2021. This new strategy also applies to Apple's other operating systems, including iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS.

With great power comes great responsibility

From another perspective, each iOS update is not easy. First, it has to adapt to a large number of old models. iPhone's support for old users is still very conscientious. We discussed the issue of "mobile phone nail households" a few days ago. Secondly, the upgrade rate of each generation of iOS is far higher than that of the Android platform. This "trust" is also a pressure for Apple.

Finally, the iPhone’s pricing strategy has been getting higher and higher in recent years, which of course has raised users’ expectations, which may be one of the reasons why iOS has been criticized so much recently. If you spend 10,000 yuan to buy a phone, you can’t expect it to be a “defective product”, especially when the problem this time is with the official version of the system.

Faced with the growing Android camp, the competitiveness of the iPhone as a single product is gradually weakening. What keeps old users is their inertial dependence on the iOS ecosystem and the Apple ecosystem. Once this attraction disappears, more people will be pushed out of the Apple ecosystem.