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Long ago, the release speed in the entire industry accelerated. I knew that quality would nose dive as a result because there was no way to develop and fully te

Long ago, the release speed in the entire industry accelerated. I knew that quality would nose dive as a result because there was no way to develop and fully test an entire OS (even for a phone) as frequently as each is being released. All operating systems are now effectively permanently in beta.

rektide 4y ago
It's not just about release speed. The whole industry is aligned towards new, towards features, towards impact. Going around making the world better doesnt rank, isnt visible work, isnt tracked or roadmaps, isnt rewarded, and frankly, it's not as fun being a 0.1X hacker tackling the gross ugly old shit, especially when the org wont say thank you either.
- avidphantasm 4y ago
  I would pay $100 per year for macOS if it meant they would go slower and make it rock solid.
- sixdimensional 4y ago
  This is where technology goes from being disruptive in a positive sense, to being disruptive in a negative one. I understand the relentless need to innovate, do cool stuff, etc., but somewhere along the way a line was crossed. A good time to throw in the term exnovation.. there's a reason you rarely hear it, but there's a reason somebody came up with it.
- antod 4y ago
  Sometimes I wonder whether Douglas Adams was the most prescient sci-fi writer when he came up with the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Year by year it seems to get closer, and I can't help feeling recent AI developments will only accelerate it.
gymbeaux 4y ago
But Apple has had the right idea- they release a new version of their desktop and mobile OSes about once a year. I would surmise that their OS reliability and stability issues have more to do with the switch from Objective-C to Swift than anything else. Heck they change Swift dramatically each year (or they did in the first few years). Swift 2 was RADICALLY different from Swift 1. Swift 3 was radically different from Swift 2...
- mjmsmith 4y ago
  There haven't been radical changes like that since Swift 3. And it's much easier to write reliable code in Swift than Objective-C.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > But Apple has had the right idea- they release a new version of their desktop and mobile OSes about once a year. That's not the right idea. Mac OS X 10.3 through 10.7 all took well over a year of development. Yearly major releases is too fast. https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-release-dates-and-rates/ https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-releas... > I would surmise that their OS reliability and stability issues have more to do with the switch from Objective-C to Swift than anything else. There's no evidence of this. Apple itself was one of the slowest adopters of Swift, because it needed ABI stability to put Swift in the OS. https://blog.timac.org/2022/1005-state-of-swift-and-swiftui-ios16/ https://blog.timac.org/2022/1005-state-of-swift-and-swiftui-...

rektide 4y ago

It's not just about release speed. The whole industry is aligned towards new, towards features, towards impact. Going around making the world better doesnt rank, isnt visible work, isnt tracked or roadmaps, isnt rewarded, and frankly, it's not as fun being a 0.1X hacker tackling the gross ugly old shit, especially when the org wont say thank you either.

avidphantasm 4y ago
I would pay $100 per year for macOS if it meant they would go slower and make it rock solid.
sixdimensional 4y ago
This is where technology goes from being disruptive in a positive sense, to being disruptive in a negative one. I understand the relentless need to innovate, do cool stuff, etc., but somewhere along the way a line was crossed. A good time to throw in the term exnovation.. there's a reason you rarely hear it, but there's a reason somebody came up with it.
antod 4y ago
Sometimes I wonder whether Douglas Adams was the most prescient sci-fi writer when he came up with the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Year by year it seems to get closer, and I can't help feeling recent AI developments will only accelerate it.

gymbeaux 4y ago

But Apple has had the right idea- they release a new version of their desktop and mobile OSes about once a year. I would surmise that their OS reliability and stability issues have more to do with the switch from Objective-C to Swift than anything else. Heck they change Swift dramatically each year (or they did in the first few years). Swift 2 was RADICALLY different from Swift 1. Swift 3 was radically different from Swift 2...

mjmsmith 4y ago
There haven't been radical changes like that since Swift 3. And it's much easier to write reliable code in Swift than Objective-C.
lapcat 4y ago
> But Apple has had the right idea- they release a new version of their desktop and mobile OSes about once a year. That's not the right idea. Mac OS X 10.3 through 10.7 all took well over a year of development. Yearly major releases is too fast. https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-release-dates-and-rates/ https://robservatory.com/a-full-history-of-macos-os-x-releas... > I would surmise that their OS reliability and stability issues have more to do with the switch from Objective-C to Swift than anything else. There's no evidence of this. Apple itself was one of the slowest adopters of Swift, because it needed ABI stability to put Swift in the OS. https://blog.timac.org/2022/1005-state-of-swift-and-swiftui-ios16/ https://blog.timac.org/2022/1005-state-of-swift-and-swiftui-...