iOS 27 to Focus on Bug Fixes, Performance, and Design Tweaks

[riverguide]

A fair number of new features are added most years, but too many of those are features that not a lot of people use. As you indicate, most people mainly want improvements and bug fixes for the features we already have, that is if we had a choice.

New features in odd-year releases, improvements and bug fixes in even-year ones … 😊

 

[Fara82Light]

A focus on the quality of workmanship would be most welcome.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

I wish every other year was a Snow Leopard release instead of just happening whenever Apple feels the OS isn’t doing too hot

Alternate years where the release has shiny new stuff and years where it’s all about improving what you have built

And if you want it be super generous make the “shiny” releases fully optional

 

[Madonepro]

I wish every other year was a Snow Leopard release instead of just happening whenever Apple feels the OS isn’t doing too hot

Alternate years where the release has shiny new stuff and years where it’s all about improving what you have built

And if you want it be super generous make the “shiny” releases fully optional

I'd personally like to see macOS every other year, and iOS, iPadOS, iWatch OS, every other year. That way Apple could focus on each platform appropriately. With Mac's not routinely appearing in September, there is no need to align the OS with iOS development. Maybe also move WWDC to the slot MacWorld was in.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Yes, Apple is known for releasing half-baked products and improving them over the years.

But with all these visions, it has always been clear what the company wants to achieve. With the new Liquid Glass concept, however, this question remains unanswered.

I'll say it again: why are the search function and the button for creating a new entry always in a different place?
Compare calendars, reminders, and stocks.
Not even the number of buttons at the top right is the same.

And no one can tell me that Apple, as the most valuable company in the world with virtually unlimited resources, was unable to develop a consistent design and adhere to its own guidelines.

As a small underdog 25 years ago, maybe. But those days are over.
We can all expect from Apple to show interest in its image. Which is based on user-friendliness and simplicity.
Liquid Glass is the opposite.

Agree completely.

At the time OS X was first released, and I saw how many HIGs Apple dropped, I felt a little unmoored since so many of those guidelines made complete sense, and it was weird to see that many of them were gone or changed. It wasn't always easy to find where everything had been moved to, or changed, that they hadn't just entirely dropped. If felt like some of the guard rails had been removed on a hiking trail that needs them. I appreciate that much of this was fixed over time, but the initial releases were kind of a mess in this regard.

I got the impression at the time OS X was first released that one of the reasons Apple abandoned a lot of its HIGs was that, in addition to wanting to see if developers could come up with useful new ways of doing things, Apple got tired of being the absolute policing authority for HIG, and wanted developers to feel less "oppressed" by that, by decentralizing some of its authority. But this seemed like a not very appropriate aspect of Apple's operations to relax, and that's especially obvious now, with all the inconsistencies in their OSs that you point out. But at this point, I'm guessing that Apple is reluctant to reimpose even some the obvious HIGs you describe, still fearing they'll be seen as the enforcement ogre.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Occasional, yes. But one of the “disimprovements” was significant for me, not being able to replace the internal SSD anymore with a third-party one. By doing the latter and upgrading RAM, I extended the life of several of my Macs. The loss of both options was a little much. The reason for the RAM change with the M chips I understand, but the SSD lockdown I despise.

Agreed. I was able to extend the usefulness of my 2013 Macbook Pro by replacing its SSD with a larger, faster model, and while I also wanted to install more RAM than its 8GB, that was one of the first models to get non-upgradable RAM. 8GB was OK at the time though. I replaced this Macbook with a 2020 M1 with 64GB of RAM, and that's now fine too.

 

[Scaramanga89]

Make supporting dynamic type mandatory. The sheer number of different font sizes in iOS is insane.

 

[dburkhanaev]

a deeply integrated chatbot in iOS would have such a big impact that they could get by with very few new features. Claude does a decent job at being useful across macOS, but it can only integrate so far, especially on iOS. Apple could integrate so deeply into the system that some very exciting things are possible.

My hope is that Apple doesn’t wiff at the last moment and make it look super powerful without actually giving it deep and broad capabilities.

As long as it’s opt in and it and its UI can be turned off as if it doesn’t exist. I’m okay with it being an option as long as it’s an option I can opt out of.

 

[dburkhanaev]

"Welcome to iOS27, the bug fix release upgrade from iOS26!" - Tim Apple

Snow Leopard the bug fix macos
-Steve Jobs

 

[karlbu]

Hopefully that also means we can turn off liquid glass.