Actually, I’d argue that Apple is doing pretty well on this front.
Breaking apps and features that worked perfectly in a prior release, didn't change significantly enough in the subsequent release that broke them, and then not doing enough QA work to discover those bugs until the next major release does not constitute "doing pretty well on this front" in my book. They did not have this problem to anywhere near this degree prior to the annual release cycle cadence (starting with OS X 10.9.x Mavericks).
I think we all can agree that we want Apple to constantly improve its products, and that that improvement should be a balance of polishing what’s already there (obviously in the form of bug fixes, but also such as proactively improving the boring behind-the-scenes code such as that which stores your data on a drive) and bringing forth exciting new features.
I do not want them to "improve" their products by breaking them. I want them to give me improvements that actually do something I want them to do and not break things just because it's the annual change-something o'clock time for them. The bugs in Ventura and Monterey are the epitome of breaking things that worked before for no reason other than change's sake and, processing the mountain of feedback requests should not occur when it's time to make a whole new release. That does not a good customer experience make. At this point, Microsoft is doing a way better job of addressing these concerns than Apple is (and, mind you, some of Microsoft's changes to both Windows 11 and late-era versions of Windows 10 are irksome; but even with how much they're trying to shove Chromium Edge and Bing down my throat, they're, at least, not impacting stability or functionality in the process)
What this means is full-time employment for a (very!) large team of programmers.
I'm fine with keeping programmers employed. I'm not fine with programmers being used to break things that needn't be broken. Why are my Apple dollars (and Apple stock values) going toward having their programmers break more than they fix? That just seems like problems.
And a very realistic way to manage this activity is to set a reliable schedule for when a new version will be published
This is true. If Microsoft taught us anything, it's that reliable release schedules are good for everyone...
; in Apple’s case, that’s once per year.
...However, this is where they clearly got it wrong. Under Jobs, releases came out anywhere between 15 and 30 months and only when Apple deemed it polished enough for release. Under Cook, it's between 11 and 14 months. The quality has arguably gone down, proportionately.
Then, behind the scenes, what you have is a regular cycle where, in the early phases, the developers go wild and try to implement as much exciting new stuff as they can. Then a deadline comes and decisions are made as to what is and isn’t close enough to finished to be included in the next version, at which point all the energy goes into getting the new stuff ready for prime time. After that, another deadline, and stuff goes into beta testing … which doesn’t involve the developers so much, so they start dreaming up exciting new ideas for the next version, often including the stuff from the last time around that didn’t make the cut this time. When the new version is released, the developers go wild trying to implement all the exciting new stuff they just brainstormed …
That’s an oversimplification, of course — but it should give you some idea of what’s going on.
I don't think anyone is debating the process. I think everyone is debating the cadence and the effect that it has on the quality of the finished products which, arguably, have gone substantially downhill over the last 11 years.
And the deadlines are a very important part of the process! Otherwise, human nature gets people aiming too high, and projects drag on and on and get worse and worse. This way, people only take on projects they actually have a chance of finishing in a timely manner, and the deadlines keep everybody honest.
Where is this "honesty" that you speak of? Apple is creating messes on an annual basis and not spending the time needed to adequately clean them up and then marketing it like it's the "best macOS release ever" despite the fact that there will be several users finding that a core stock app now has a bug that Apple didn't care to fix or properly diagnose. It also doesn't help that users, Genius Bar staff, Apple Authorized Service Provider staff, and AppleCare support staff are all isolated from Apple's "engineering teams" and therefore cannot provide feedback to them to fix their issues as they arise. It's a very poorly thought out system if you really stop to analyse it.
Now, we can all gripe about which features do and don’t make the cut, which bugs do and don’t get fixed, and the design and implementation choices of all of the above. But … take a step back, and it becomes apparent that, though Apple is far from perfect … they’re actually doing a really good job at balancing all these competing demands.
I'm not sure how (other than perhaps blind Apple zealotry) you can say this truthfully and with a straight face. They're doing a piss-poor job of balancing this because the average quality control is DECREASING year-over-year. Not increasing.
Certainly, I’d argue, a much better job than any of their competitors
They're not. Microsoft uses telemetry and actually engages with their customers to get feedback. It's a process that they started diving hard into with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Incidentally, their quality control release-over-release hasn't gone downhill in the way that macOS's has. Incidentally, your next biggest competitor is Ubuntu, a distro with a very vocal community. Plus, Microsoft and Canonical both release long-term enterprise-focused releases that only get security updates in the unlikely event that your one mission function or feature actually DOES break with a new update. This is not something Apple would ever do or offer its users. They'll break stuff and not think twice about it later.
… you can pick some metric by which somebody else is better, and if that’s the only metric you care about then your choice is obvious. But by all the other metrics, Apple has that particular competitor beat, and the same is true (with different metrics) for all their competitors.
What other metrics? The only metric that Apple might have others beat in (that this forum seems to obsess over like it's the most important thing) is consistency across the iconography on built-in system apps. Maybe on making things look prettier. That's about it. And if form matters more to you over function, Apple will always win for you. Some of us actually want our end user experiences to be consistent and stable year-over-year. Apple doesn't offer that and I can give you several examples of this for them whereas I cannot for Microsoft or Canonical.
Perhaps not the absolute best at any one thing, but solidly the best at everything combined.
That is solidly debatable. Past aesthetics, they're piss-poor on quality control, piss-poor on documentation and availability thereof, they're utterly hostile to IT departments when it comes to supporting the rest of their ecosystem, and overall a poor choice if what you need is long-term consistency and stability. If what you want is a consumer platform that's pretty, has nice aesthetics and you don't so much care about minor bugs from having been traumatized by the experience of buying a $500 Windows laptop (expecting that the experience won't be what you're paying for with such a low-grade PC laptop), then macOS will always delight you and seldom disappoint. If you really want to compare Apples to Apples about a quality Windows experience compared to that of a Mac experience when it comes to stability with major releases, you'll find that macOS no longer compares favorably and hasn't for a good while.
