Due to too many bugs, Apple plans to make major changes to the development model of iOS 14

We thought that after the early versions of iOS 11 were plagued by bugs, app crashes, and battery aging slowdowns, Apple wouldn't stumble in the same place twice.

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In iOS 12, which was released a year later, Apple did focus its iterations on the actual user experience rather than blindly pursuing new features. Many older devices also saw significant performance improvements in this version.

However, the endless bug problem seems to have repeated itself in this year's iOS 13. Since its official launch at the end of September, Apple has pushed six or seven update packages for iOS 13. You can see an update almost every two weeks. This speed and frequency are extremely rare in previous iOS system iterations.

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Not only that, but there were also some errors that greatly affected the user experience during the update. For example, many users complained that the previous iOS 13.2 had obvious "background killing" problems, and Apple could only push another update package to solve the problem.

This is not a good situation. For many people, the uniqueness of the iOS system is an important reason for them to choose iPhone. But if even Apple can't guarantee the stability and smoothness of its system, it will obviously reduce the loyalty of old users.

The good news is that this "minor fixes" situation will get better in the future. According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple is planning to make a comprehensive adjustment to its internal software development process to ensure the stability of iOS and other systems in the future.

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According to Mark Gurman, the adjustment plan was proposed by Craig Federighi, head of Apple's software department, at a company meeting. It is reported that in the past, Apple developers often submitted various features for the "daily update version" of the system, and they were directly enabled by default.

An insider put it this way:

• “It’s like we have a recipe book and every day many chefs add new dishes to it.”

But the hidden danger of doing so is that these new features have not been fully tested and verified. When they are combined together, they are likely to generate one or more bugs, causing the testers of the review system to spend several days to find the root cause of the problem, or even fail to obtain a truly usable version.

The new practice is that in the future, these functions that have not been verified or are identified as having bugs will be disabled by default in the test system. Testers can still use special tools to call these functions one by one, so as to find problems more specifically and avoid bringing bugs into the update push package.

People familiar with the matter also revealed that Apple uses a 1-100 scoring system to evaluate the quality of current software. For example, a problematic version may score below 60 points, while a relatively stable version may score above 80 points.

Take iOS 13 as an example. Its score in this regard is slightly lower than that of the previous iOS 12. The latter was already a stable version when it was released in 2018, and it was only updated twice in the first two months.

In addition, Apple will use green, yellow, and red colors to mark codes with new features, and divide the priority of problem solving into levels 0-5. For example, level 0 means that this is an urgent problem that needs to be solved, while level 5 means that this is a minor problem.

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Interestingly, some Apple insiders also revealed to Bloomberg that Apple "privately believes" that iOS 13.1 is the system that should be pre-installed on every new iPhone. This version was pushed to all users a week after iOS 13 was launched, mainly to solve various hidden bugs such as application crashes.

“Before WWDC 2019, Apple engineers believed that iOS 13 would likely not perform as well as previous versions. In August, they decided to abandon the modification of the first version and focus on the development of iOS 13.1. However, due to time constraints, the new iPhone can only be pre-installed with the first version when it is released, and then Apple will advance the update time of 13.1 so that every new iPhone user can use a more stable system.”

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Currently, Apple has planned to push the iOS 13.3 system at the beginning of next year, and has also enabled a new development plan for next year's iOS 14.

According to people involved in the plan, iOS 14 is expected to be comparable to iOS 13 in terms of the breadth of features, but in order to ensure overall performance and stability, Apple is considering postponing some new features planned for iOS 14 to 2021, that is, iOS 15.

This is not the first time Apple has chosen to do this. Before the release of iOS 12 in 2018, Bloomberg also revealed that Apple postponed some new features until 2019 to ensure that the team would focus on underlying stability.

This new development process will not only be applied to the iOS system, but also to other Apple systems such as iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. Apple executives hope that this more targeted development process can further improve the quality of its software, although no one can give a guarantee yet.

To be honest, this year's new macOS also had some problems in the early stages of the update, such as incompatible apps and lost email messages, and the HomePod speaker even became bricked during an update. In comparison, this year's tvOS and watchOS updates have been very stable.