How Often Do Ios Updates Come Out

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The Telugu "text bomb" bug sounds like an Apple user's nightmare: y'all get a message containing a particular character from the Indian language of Telugu, and your iPhone's messaging apps and WiFi functionality not merely crash just "keep crashing forever" without desperate intervention. Apple issued a patch on February 19, but the Telugu bug isn't the only software problem that'southward had the company in the news in contempo months. Critics of iOS 11 say the update made their phones slower, tuckered bombardment life faster, and came with a host of bugs.

These issues raise questions about Apple'due south quality command in general, and a expect at the information suggests that a problem may have been brewing for awhile. Since Steve Jobs left Apple's leadership in January of 2011, the frequency of iOS updates has increased by 51 percent. What does that mean for Apple users? Lots of updates, patches, and sometimes follow-up patches. For case, electric current iPhone owners had to fence with 15 iOS updates during the year ending January 31, 2018. By contrast, Apple only issued six iOS updates during the 12 months prior to Jobs' departure from the company's top spot.

A dramatic rising in iOS update frequency

This chart, compiled from a variety of sources for updates to the iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone 4 CDMA, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, illustrates the rise in iOS update frequency over the decade from 2007 to 2017.

The chart shows that during the period that Jobs led Apple, the average 365-day update rate was half-dozen.75. After his go out, the average jumped to 10.22 per year, a 51 pct increase. If we look at the same statistic before and after Jobs' death, the increase in updates was 48 percentage (not shown on the nautical chart). The nautical chart also shows that subsequently Jobs stepped down in Jan 2011, and also after his death in October 2011, in that location was still a menstruation of infrequent updates from the 2d quarter of 2012 to the beginning of 2013. After that, the number of updates per year stabilized around 10 each year, until the concluding 365 days of the study period, during which there were an astounding fifteen updates.

Why are iOS updates becoming so frequent?

There are many possible explanations for the uptick in updates. One potential factor is rise complication. Smartphones have been gaining more functionality, more apps, and more accessories that involve a growing complexity of operating system maintenance. And software updates accept get more complicated, with more than features required for more devices beyond more languages and markets than ever earlier. However, at that place'due south also been a steady stream of bad news involving bugs, inattention to detail, poor performance, and security bug.

For example, Apple released the iOS xi update in September 2017 to improve security and add features. By November, Apple had to issue an update to gear up a bug that caused the lowercase alphabetic character i to autocorrect to a capital A. Users reported that iOS 11 also slowed downward their phones (unless they backed up their information and did a factory reset), drew down battery ability faster, gave wrong answers to math bug in its calculator, and had other problems. Indeed, the concluding week of Nov 2017 saw at least five major iOS and macOS problems, including security flaws followed past patches that introduced bug of their own. The more than recent Telugu text issues, which can "crash and brick iOS devices" besides as macOS devices and Apple watches and TVs, prompted Apple to rush out a patch for the problem among international headlines.

Is quality in decline at Apple?

The level of detail-orientation and perfectionism in Jobs' leadership way was well-known. Widely considered a product genius, Jobs led in a unique way that's difficult to replicate. And with such a marked increase in updates and patches since his departure, it's reasonable to ask if Apple's product quality level is in a long-term turn down without that relentless drive for perfection at the company captain. But while the update numbers seem to tell one story, other metrics tell some other.

Despite the widespread coverage of Apple's recent bugs, including some scathing headlines in the tech press, investors seem unbothered. Since Jobs passed away, the value of Apple stock has increased by roughly 240 percent. Consumers seem undeterred as well. In early on February, Apple appear tape revenue for the commencement quarter of its 2018 financial year, driven by highly assisting iPhone Ten sales. For consumers and investors alike, the luster of the Apple brand may outweigh any concerns about software issues. If the visitor continues to have problems with updates and patches, that luster may fade. Simply time will tell.

Bernardo Lustosa is Partner, Cofounder, and COO at fraud-management solutions provider ClearSale .

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