Mark Gurman from Bloomberg has reported interesting information about Apple’s internal development. He states that the software development team at Apple, led by Craig Federighi, has started working on the operating system software for next year’s release, such as iOS 18, macOS 15, and watchOS 11. However, there have been issues that led Craig to make some decisions on things that haven’t been done properly.
According to Mark Gurman, Craig announced internally to the development team last week to temporarily halt the creation of new features. Instead, he instructed everyone to focus on bug fixing and performance improvements. This is something that rarely happens.
The report reveals that Craig has been trying to address long-standing issues in Apple’s software development process. Adding new features often leads to unexpected bugs. In 2019, he introduced the Feature Flags process to test new features individually before integrating them into the operating system. This year, he introduced “The Pact,” which means not allowing the software to encounter worsening issues. If any issues are found, they must be fixed as soon as possible. As a result of these approaches, software bugs have decreased, but new features are released at a slower pace.
As for the events that led to the temporary halt in development, it was due to the discovery of an unusually high number of bugs during testing, which exceeded normal levels. This prompted Craig to instruct the team to spend one week solely on fixing these bugs.
The report mentions that this decision was made after completing the first phase of software development, right before starting the second phase. This includes iOS 18’s code name “Crystal,” macOS’s code name “Glow,” watchOS 11’s code name “Moonstone,” and even iOS 17.4, which is scheduled for release in March.
TLDR: Apple’s software development team, led by Craig Federighi, has temporarily halted the creation of new features to focus on bug fixing and performance improvements. Craig aims to address long-standing issues by implementing testing processes like Feature Flags and “The Pact.” The decision to halt development came after an unusually large number of bugs were discovered during testing. The team will spend one week solely on fixing these bugs before moving on to the next phase of development.
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