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Rest of Apple hardware isn’t released on the same schedule as the software and it’s fine. iPhone however needs a brand new OS on launch day. iPhone hardware can’t stand on its own apparently and needs to be released every September for profit. It’s an unsustainable cycle that in the end isn’t the greatest thing for consumers.
We might as well let Apple drag themselves into a vicious cycle, slowly consuming the company and everything around it. They need to learn from their own mistakes in a hard way.
 
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People on MacRumors are funny. They complain when Apple doesn't release every single software feature at once, but then they complain when Apple takes the time to roll out software features gradually, waiting until the features are actually ready.

Incorrect

People are complaining that they are announcing things that aren't ready (to hype up stagnant iPhone interest) and then they take all year to get the features out the door, some get dropped in the process and then they start the whole cycle all over again just to pretend like there is a "new iOS!" again

And it never is
And it's always half baked
And it always comes with more new bugs while leaving a trail of unfixed ones into perpetuity
 
Not that it matters for EU users.....
We won't get any of the bigger IOS18 features (apple intelligence) before IOS19 Is released anyways.
Right now there are NO Apple intelligence features available in EU, and the earliest release would be April 25th 2025, but we all know that won't happen either.
But at least it will likely be somewhat bug free by then since US and other parts of the world have been using it for half a year.
 
Honestly apple should focus less on major annual updates and ship stuff independently per team. Theres no good reason why the Safari team can't ship 4 feature updates per year instead of trying to his an annual target.

This also means apple could ship new AI features mid cycle
 
Apple, for the love of everything good in this universe, you must break free from this annual cycle you have locked yourselves into. The world will understand. We will understand. Get back to us when you're ready with the next X.0 upgrade. Take your time.
 
Honestly apple should focus less on major annual updates and ship stuff independently per team. Theres no good reason why the Safari team can't ship 4 feature updates per year instead of trying to his an annual target.

This also means apple could ship new AI features mid cycle

There is no reason why Safari, Mail, Music, Maps, etc. are tied to iOS updates, at all. They could be downloaded as updates from the app store the same as anything else. Break away from the mentality that apps are tied to the OS.

...but then people could continue to use an updated browser when OS updates end, like Android...the horror!
 
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They would never do this, but I'll say it anyway: keep iOS 18 around another year. Take the development energy that would've been put into iOS 19 and use it to continue adding the Apple Intelligence features they love so dearly through 18.X upgrades and focus on removing bugs and cleaning up the OS. Win-win.
100%, they should just do a 18.5 release for september, than use 18.6->9 for the point releases for next year. It's clearly taking longer to add everytihng in, ,we dont need "new" every year
 
Honestly apple should focus less on major annual updates and ship stuff independently per team. Theres no good reason why the Safari team can't ship 4 feature updates per year instead of trying to his an annual target.

This also means apple could ship new AI features mid cycle

The only reason is Apple trying to batch things into a Keynote slide for the cringe worthy PR "event videos"

They need to re-tool the whole operation on how things are released, when, how announcements work or not, etc

It's a just big bastardized mess of hints and traces of "how it used to be in the glory days"

Tim and his leadership style just have no great ideas or the creative talent to come up with good new concepts on their own. It's all just living off inspirations from the past here.
 
iOS 19 need to be bug fixes no new features
Bug fixes and... an optimization and cleanup of settings. With features being added incrementally with each release, it seems like settings structure is a patchwork structure with "Accessibility" being the dumping ground for things that don't seem to fit anywhere else.

Consolidating settings would be helpful too. I don't know why some apps have some of the settings accessible via the app itself and other settings for that app have to go to system settings.
 
There's a lot of truth to this. Among other things, the Apple Intelligence rollout has been terrible. Many people bought phones based on an advertised feature that simply didn't exist at the time, or for months afterwards. Apart from the timing issues mentioned here, the most obvious feature by which most people will measure their Apple's "intelligence" is Siri, which is dumb as a post, and lags horribly behind its competitors. It should be a five-alarm fire at Apple that the Siri of today remains dumber than the Alexa of five years ago. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if my investment in HomePods will amount to nothing, as any meaningful Siri improvements seem to be in the distant future and likely won't run on existing hardware.

Same thing with the Mac. Despite the Mac's excellent hardware, the new OS still lacks features present for a while in iOS, as well as some of the marquee new features like e-mail sorting.

Want to combine two Apple IDs? Still not possible, after years of requests from users who require a technical solution to various Apple-created account problems.

What is Apple doing?

Our spy were able to snap a short video to answer your question. Don't look if you don't really want to know...

scrooge-mcduck.gif

As long as the "pool" is full- and continuing to fill/expand- I'm not sure we ever get much of a different answer. ;)
 
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Every single year, the same story. In fact, “Hello Apple Intelligence” is just a joke! Some countries received it yesterday (after announcing it 6 months ago), and in Europe, it’s still a pipe dream.

Apple is lucky it doesn’t have a competing ecosystem; otherwise, it would be struggling to survive.
I suspect that lunatic legislators and lobyymachinists (in this case in Europe) are significantly disrupting the progress in updates, out of stupidity or as an expression of power.

An iCloud synchronized with an AI machine will serve different interfaces than one without AI with the same operating system. This is actually a terrible mess and a depressing burden for Apple (and therefore for Western industrialized nations). Then there's the dispute with China over their GPT environment. Our world is no longer capable of silencing busybodies, and progress suffers as a result.

Apple certainly has a clean, precise roadmap, but it is being undermined by chaotic people in positions of power. That's a shame, because we customers suffer as a result.

(love you, turbineseaplane)
 
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I suspect that lunatic legislators and loby-machinists (in this case in Europe) can and want to disrupt the wheels of updates considerably.

An iCloud synchronized with an AI machine will serve different interfaces than one without AI with the same operating system. This is actually a terrible mess and a depressing burden for Apple (and therefore for Western industrialized nations). Then there's the dispute with China over their GPT environment. Our world is no longer capable of silencing busybodies, and progress suffers as a result.

Apple certainly has a clean, precise roadmap, but it is being undermined by chaotic people in positions of power. That's a shame, because we customers suffer as a result.

Perhaps you are comfortable with more cloud integration, but I'm not. I want more offline features, disconnected from servers and other corporate-controlled services that can be disconnected and shut-off at a whim, or at minimum, require a monthly toll (err, "subscription") to keep our end functioning.

Apple certainly has a clean, precise roadmap, but it is being undermined by chaotic people in positions of power. That's a shame, because we customers suffer as a result.

Apple has been shooting from the hip the entirety of iOS 18, and anyone that denies it isn't looking at reality. They might have had a roadmap, but it was shredded by openAI, Google, Claude, etc. They simply got smacked across the face with market competition, and don't know how to handle it.
 
Perhaps you are comfortable with more cloud integration, but I'm not. I want more offline features, disconnected from servers and other corporate-controlled services that can be disconnected and shut-off at a whim, or at minimum, require a monthly toll (err, "subscription") to keep our end functioning.



Apple has been shooting from the hip the entirety of iOS 18, and anyone that denies it isn't looking at reality. They might have had a roadmap, but it was shredded by openAI, Google, Claude, etc. They simply got smacked across the face with market competition, and don't know how to handle it.
The day Apple gives up privacy on a relevant scale, I too will loathe the cloud. But that's not the case yet, and I'm watching it just like you.
And Apple's internal AI concept is interesting for me precisely for this reason, unlike the bridge to OpenAI. I think AI without a protective wall is a pretty risky business.
 
Just do what Android does. Annual updates are just bug fixes or support for newer hardware. The OS doesn't change from year to year. Android 13, 14, 15, 16... it's all the same. Save the new stuff for quarterly drops that are separate from the OS itself, might be hardware exclusive to specific devices, and (hopefully) optional installs. Longer beta cycles where they actually have time to listen to the feedback and pivot. Apple gets enough news coverage on their betas that an annual keynote for stuff that is half a year away is nonsensical.
 
I think this is kinda good? I like large new things being released every few months. While it’s fun to get a big released at WWDC, I think it’s actually more interesting over time to get chunks released throughout the year.
 
Well maybe their UI and artistic designers have more time to spend re-evaluating their choices since they moved away from the initial Skeuomorphism.
Maybe they come up with something new, fresh and less Pokemon style.
The current design language could use a bit more detail and realism and layering, but I sure a heck don’t want to see skeuomorphic realistic icons back in the mix. That ship sailed a long time ago. The Germans seem to really miss Aqua icons, though, like, A LOT.
 
With all the bugs and issues that iOS 18 launched with I wouldn't be opposed to them moving to a 2-year release schedule or just make iOS 19 basically a refinement of iOS 18.
 


Apple's staggered release of iOS 18 features is reportedly causing delays in the development of iOS 19, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Generic-iOS-19-Feature-Mock-Light.jpg

Historically, Apple has unveiled new software features at WWDC in June and then released fully complete software updates in September alongside new iPhone models. However, thanks to the gradual rollout of Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18, iPhone users look set for a long wait before they get to use many of the new iOS 19 features that Apple will inevitably promote at WWDC 2025.

In a new post on X (Twitter), Gurman said that he continues to hear that engineers who would typically be transitioning to work on the next major iOS version are still occupied with implementing features for iOS 18 updates through iOS 18.4, expected in the spring.

Gurman reports that this extended rollout of iOS 18 features through various point releases is creating a cascading effect on iOS 19's development timeline. The situation is unfortunately expected to result in a similarly staggered deployment of features in the next iOS cycle that is likely to frustrate many Apple users.

The latest development follows a report from Gurman last month that iOS 19 will include a significant Siri upgrade powered by large language models, making the assistant more conversational and similar to ChatGPT. Apple is expected to preview this enhancement at WWDC 2025 in June, but it won't be available until iOS 19.4 in the spring of 2026.

The current focus on iOS 18 updates appears to be affecting more than just the Siri upgrade, though. Gurman in November said that "a larger-than-usual number of features" initially planned for iOS 19's release are now postponed until iOS 19.4.


Apple on Wednesday released iOS 18.2, introducing several new Apple Intelligence features that it has been advertising since September when the iPhone 16 series launched. iOS 18.2 is the last iOS update of 2024, with iOS 18.3 and iOS 18.4 set to bring on-screen awareness to Siri, deeper per-app controls, and several other enhancements.

Article Link: iOS 18 Updates Continue to Cause Delays in Apple's iOS 19 Plans

They need to get off the 12 month release cycle. It just makes for disappointment on many levels.
 
The day Apple gives up privacy on a relevant scale, I too will loathe the cloud. But that's not the case yet, and I'm watching it just like you.
And Apple's internal AI concept is interesting for me precisely for this reason, unlike the bridge to OpenAI. I think AI without a protective wall is a pretty risky business.

I'm fundamentally against more of my life and data moving off devices I own and control, to the cloud and corporate servers, regardless of protections.

Again, in the minority, but I'm trying to reduce my dependence on the internet and internet services, not increase it. How those on the other end handle my data has little bearing on it.
 
It is likely that Apple will have to accept the fact that they will not be able to announce a significant number of new features at the upcoming WWDC. I do not blame them for this situation.
Alternatively, Apple could make the timeline for the new featues extremely clear. If a feature is scheduled for release in 19.4, everyone will be aware of it.
 
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