A Bloomberg report suggests that next year could be a Snow Leopard-style update for each of Apple’s operating systems. In other words, the company will prioritize working on bug fixes and reliability over new features.
The timing of this claim seems dubious to me: as Gurman himself acknowledges, Apple absolutely has to introduce a lot of AI improvements next year, so I don’t see how it can possibly qualify as a bug-fix year. Timing aside, however, this is something I would love to see …
How Snow Leopard became shorthand for quality
Given that each year’s new operating system releases across Apple products are generally noted for introducing exciting new features, the company did something rather surprising in 2008. It announced that OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, would focus more on bug fixes and stability than on new features.
Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation.
The passage of time saw that grow into something of a myth: that there were no new features in Snow Leopard, only bug fixes. That isn’t what Apple said at the time, nor what it delivered.
All the same, the company choosing to focus primarily on reliability, coupled to the fact that many considered Snow Leopard to be one of the best versions of what became macOS, means that it is still remembered fondly. Effectively, what Apple did was to rewrite a lot of things but with the aim of creating a solid foundation for future changes rather than adding lots of new features at the time.
Today that operating system name has become a synonym for a release which focuses on delivering the best possible user experience over shiny new toys.
The Bloomberg report
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests that all of next year’s operating systems will take this approach.
... continue reading