Should Apple release more feature packed .X updates?

[irDigital0l]

Looking back at iOS 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, it seemed that was the last time when Apple offered up to .3 updates. Those updates were also featured packed.

iOS 5.1 had a few things like Japanese for Siri, delete Photo Stream pictures, camera improvements, and iTunes Match improvements. Obviously it had less features than iOS 4.1

Then iOS 6.1 was just released a couple days ago and it had more LTE support for European and Asian countries and purchase movie tickets with Siri.

It just seems Apple is adding less and less features each time while taking longer to do it.

Are they running out of ideas? Probably not but why wait for everything for iOS 7? I would rather have Apple announce 7 major features like iOS 4 and release more .X releases than announce 10 major features and release only 1 .X update.

Perhaps something like this for releases

Feb/Mar - .1 update
June - iOS 7
Sep - .2 update
Nov - .3 update

Of course this could vary but my whole point is more updates more frequently. For example we shouldn't have to wait 1 year for new features to be added to Siri. Apple update Siri with Japanese in iOS 5.1 in March 2012 and with Fandago support in iOS 6.1 in Jan 2013.

 

[aziatiklover]

Yea prolly something like siri languages feat!

 

[TacticalDesire]

Why does it matter how many point releases there are? I'd rather have 10 features at once than get 7 of those features and have to wait for the other 3 simply for the sake of having more .X releases.

 

[irDigital0l]

Why does it matter how many point releases there are? I'd rather have 10 features at once than get 7 of those features and have to wait for the other 3 simply for the sake of having more .X releases.

It doesn't I was just using those as an example of .X with actual good features.

 

[Beeplance]

WITHOUT A DOUBT, YES. Who wouldn't welcome that?

 

[Random 995K]

IMO iOS 5.1 and 6.1 were about equal on features... 4.1 was quite big though.

 

[globalist]

You are right.

It seems Apple has jumped on the dumb&dumber bandwagon of making releases more marketable rather than more logical and benefitial for the user.

This is a trend started by Google with their Chrome, then Firefox jumped on, then others, where every release no matter how significant, gets a new, full release number (e.g. Firefox 18 or iOS 6), leaving any point releases for just really really insignificant stufff such as language updates and some security fixes. It's a result of the tough financial crises that we live in. Gradual dumbing down of the target populace also does not help.

If you're expecting this to change then think again. No way in this brave new world of Dumbgrades that Apple has opted for (iOS6, Maps, iTunes 11, the new app store, etc.) will we ever see what we saw with iOS3 and 4.