Apple Has Delayed Some Planned iOS 12 Features Until Next Year to Focus on Performance and Quality

[urkel]

Why is it one or the other? Is today’s Apple incapable of providing BOTH “New Features” and “Performance/Quality”?

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

You mean they're gonna do what they've done for the past several iOS release cycles? That's not news.

 

[macsrcool1234]

Next year?

 

[Piggie]

What bugs? Mine works great. I WANT DARK MODE!!! Who comes out with an OLED phone and still keeps their messaging obnoxiously white

I can only assume Apple's programming talent is having trouble being able to handle to coding complexities of changing colours on screen

 

[dominiongamma]

Refresh of the home screen? I wonder what that's all about.

Getting rid of the outdated grid icon likely or the icons will provide more information.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I bet that Street level view in Maps won't make it.

 

[AJ5790]

Great so ios 12 will bring nothing new to the x so much needs to be changed

Not saying you have complained, but this is evidence that no matter what they do, they can’t please everyone... They add new features, they’re doing too much and should focus on quality. They focus on quality and do less and they aren’t adding enough new features and should do more... Lol

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Hopefully they decided to wait on the Emojis, and not in the important features.

 

[Joe Rossignol]

Vague, a lot of new features in 11.3, so they are ditching those?

Since we do not know what features were expected in iOS12, this article is saying nothing.

Gotta love an overarching statement that only exists to stir the pot

My God, they call anything a report these days, don't they

My bad. I clearly need a coffee, as there was more to this article hidden below a "read more" button.

I've updated the MacRumors article with the following information.

The report claims Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi announced the revised plans to employees at a meeting earlier this month.

Fried says a number of features have been delayed until 2019, including a planned refresh of the home screen and in-car user interfaces, improvements to core apps like Mail, and updates to capturing, editing, and sharing photos.

While those features might be shelved until iOS 12, Apple still has a number of improvements planned this year in areas like its Health app, ARKit, and parental controls. In addition, Apple is said to be prioritizing work to make iPhones "more responsive" and "less prone to cause customer support issues."​

 

[AJ5790]

Got to give them credit....they are churning out updates at a pretty high clip these days to try and squash as many of these big bugs as possible.

You forgot where you are. They won’t get credit here.

 

[kiranmk2]

Better idea is when announcing features at WWDC, make it clear that they will not all come at once in September. 3 of the big additions: Apple Pay Cash, AirPlay 2 and iMessage in the Cloud didn't make it into the 11.0 release and given 2 of these won't make it out of beta until 6 months after the iOS 11 launch looks pretty shabby. They've done it before when the pre-announced the Photos app 6 months before it debuted.

The focus should be on getting a stable release with a few new features out in September and then fix a last few bugs and add features with each subsequent point release.

 

[djeeyore25]

I'm glad that Apple is taking the time to fix the software, but how can we be sure that when they add new features again we're not back in the same position? I'd rather Apple not release anything until it's been completely tested for quality and performance.

 

[AJ5790]

Translated to "Apple can't think of any innovative features right now and need another year to come up with something"

Lol. So predictable. Not possible to please everyone, and some simply impossible to please.

 

[edgonzalez32]

I just want notifications grouped by app. Is that going to be delayed until 2019?

 

[Krayzkat]

This is good news. Lets get the quality level back to where it should be.

 

[cknibbs]

Hey, there is signs of intelligence at Apple. This is good news as I think this needed to be their primary focus this year. Continuing to release "updates" full of new emoji and animoji and other trivial app features and gloss over the fundamental core quality issues that many customers are continuing to experience after a half-dozen updates on both macOS and iOS is just not going to cut it anymore, not if you are selling some of the most expensive phones and computers on the market.

If I am going to pay $1000+ for a phone, then it needs to be superlative not just for hardware but the software running on it should also be impeccable.

On top of that Apple needs SERIOUS investment into their battery technology, buying off the shelf batteries and power management chips from 3rd parties just is not good enough. When a company like One Plus can offer a phone for 1/2 the price that charges from 0% to 100% in less then 30 minutes and last 2 days on a charge, at least, while the flagship iPhone X takes 2+ hours to get to 100% and still barely lasts a day, there is something very wrong with how Apple has treated battery charging and power management in general. iPhones SHOULD last the longest and have the shortest charge times, period, for the price people are expected to pay for them. Also this idea they ever needed to cripple performance to prevent their devices from shutting down suddenly screams of a complete lack of focus and innovation when it comes to battery technology.

If Apple wants to be a premium high end expensive phone company they are going to start having to deliver premium quality across the board. Even if you are beloved Apple fanboi, you cannot deny that Apple's reputation took a hit last year because of quality issues and the company can only do better if they take some of those 300 billion dollars in the bank and re-invest back into iPhone software and battery innovation. Coming out with a mildly updated iPhone X2 (or whatever) this year, without addressing those core issues will do more harm then delaying some stupid emoji or trivial features on their phones.

I remember the days where their laptops blew competitors out of the water with battery life. I’d love to see that too.
[doublepost=1517319672][/doublepost]

I just want notifications grouped by app. Is that going to be delayed until 2019?

That and I’d love to put certain apps in a “do not disturb” mode while leaving others on

 

[jdclifford]

Has Apple just admitted that it can't "Walk and Chew Gum" at the same time?

 

[djeeyore25]

I agree. I really wish they’d do the same with OSX. I few there’s no need for yearly update. Anyone remember Snow Leopard?! Desktop should be rock solid. There’s way too many bells and whistles being added at the expense of stability.

I'm with you on OSX. I recently booted into Windows 10 on my Mac Pro for the first time in a while and was amazed how much faster, smoother, open, and simple Windows felt compared to OSX. It was the first time that I could honestly say that.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

So basically Apple is doing what it has always done. Withold a couple of things till next year. Not sure you needed an entire article to point out the obvious?

 

[3rdiguy]

I think this is a good idea. The current software has been quite buggy especially on my 10.5 iPad Pro. No way it should be getting stuck at Messages and no keyboard popping up and/or apps freezing. I love new features but clean up and refinement needs to be happening now more than ever.

 

[jdclifford]

iCloud Messages is long overdue. Using iMessages on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch is a pain, especially deleting messages on the watch.

iCloud Messages is in latest beta.

 

[RamGuy]

This sounds great. I can't help but feel like the past years Apple has felt the need to add new "exciting" features ever WWDC and as a result they have been cramming in one features after another.

Its time to take a step back and take a decent amount of time going through the code and keep squishing out all the unnecessary parts and keep plugging all the holes and bugs.

 

[sziehr]

Bring Forstall back. Problem solved.

They did this is exactly what Forstall would do. He would slam the brakes on all new additions till the code was refactored and bug load reduced no matter what Steve, Time, or Craig said. So this is the Forstall plan. This will serve them much better in the long run if they plan on unification with Mac OS for some design elements. I suspect that was on the deck for 2018 and that is now 2019 API change as to much is broken in to many areas to push forward with a unification plan. So we are gonna finally get a snow leopard year for IOS thank the makers. I want to be able to upgrade to .1 release with out it borking my phone or pad completely. I want to get a .1 and it not feel like beta 12. The new .3 is amazing and feels like 11 should have from the drop.

I take your comment as a longing for a slower but more direct approach to development and with all the recent screw ups they have finally hit the wall hard and now they are going to go back to the Forestall play book.

 

[unobtainium]

The article says some new features have been delayed to iOS 12, but the date quoted (2019) would suggest iOS 13. Anyway since we didn’t know about these planned features it’s not like we’ll miss them.

 

[dannyyankou]

Good. iOS 12 needs to be a performance centered update.