This isn't new, every year there's complaints about battery life or other bugs that get fixed in the 0.0.x updates. The 0.1 update basically knocks out anything

This isn't new, every year there's complaints about battery life or other bugs that get fixed in the 0.0.x updates. The 0.1 update basically knocks out anything else. It also doesn't matter if "we" don't need yearly releases (and I don't agree with the premise at all). The product needs them and therefore Apple needs them. If they're planning on releasing a new iPhone every year (they are) then there needs to be an accompanying OS release to make use of whatever the hardware features are. It also needs to be for all their platforms because so much of it uses shared technologies.