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2 possible causes for this: 1) Apple still develops the OS using waterfall over the year. Entire sweeping changes are made only at x.0 releases that trickle do

2 possible causes for this: 1) Apple still develops the OS using waterfall over the year. Entire sweeping changes are made only at x.0 releases that trickle down to teams that have to work around the instability all year long and there's no other approved way to get in significant changes. 2) They keep adding more apps to the core OS image that can only be updated with a full software update now. This makes delivery of quick fix updates near impossible since they have to go through the OS release management teams. It certainly sells better to have a huge list of changes at WWDC that then become reasons to upgrade, but software delivery has moved on from waterfall, so in that respect Apple's OS teams are behind.

muddi900 11y ago
>They keep adding more apps to the core OS image that can only be updated with a full software update now. This is a huge drawback for Safari, both on desktop and mobile.
collyw 11y ago
I would be skeptical about agile on something like OS development which is on a different scale from your average software project. Not saying it won't work, but I would like to see some comparisons of OS level projects that have gone agile and compare it to the waterfall approach.
- rtpg 11y ago
  Well Linux is run like that right? Releases very often Not to mention Facebook itself... We all know FB has fallen flat many times but its never been busted for weeks at a time to my knowledge
illumin8 11y ago
#2 is just not true. They deliver point releases that add new core functionality all the time. For example, Photos for OS X was delivered in 10.10.3. A point release that came mid-year and delivered a huge amount of new functionality, including photo streams shared between iOS and OS X. They also deliver many bug fix releases throughout the year, on both platforms. The 9.x releases have seen them add support for WatchOS 2, and many other things. It's a huge ecosystem, and many teams, that all have to line up their product release schedules, and now 4 operating systems (OS X, iOS, tvOS, WatchOS) that have features that all work together. This is not trivial.

muddi900 11y ago

>They keep adding more apps to the core OS image that can only be updated with a full software update now. This is a huge drawback for Safari, both on desktop and mobile.

collyw 11y ago

I would be skeptical about agile on something like OS development which is on a different scale from your average software project. Not saying it won't work, but I would like to see some comparisons of OS level projects that have gone agile and compare it to the waterfall approach.

rtpg 11y ago
Well Linux is run like that right? Releases very often Not to mention Facebook itself... We all know FB has fallen flat many times but its never been busted for weeks at a time to my knowledge

illumin8 11y ago

#2 is just not true. They deliver point releases that add new core functionality all the time. For example, Photos for OS X was delivered in 10.10.3. A point release that came mid-year and delivered a huge amount of new functionality, including photo streams shared between iOS and OS X. They also deliver many bug fix releases throughout the year, on both platforms. The 9.x releases have seen them add support for WatchOS 2, and many other things. It's a huge ecosystem, and many teams, that all have to line up their product release schedules, and now 4 operating systems (OS X, iOS, tvOS, WatchOS) that have features that all work together. This is not trivial.