Rolling release

[jeanre]

Why does apple not push smaller updates each day and not massive updates each two weeks, I think rolling releases can give something like OSX a massive advantage with regards to big tracking and new feature requests.

 

[chrfr]

Why does apple not push smaller updates each day and not massive updates each two weeks, I think rolling releases can give something like OSX a massive advantage with regards to big tracking and new feature requests.

This would be entirely unmanageable and would make it impossible to test applications. Individual parts of an operating system do not work as an island and are always interacting with other parts. Without benchmark releases, there's no way to keep track of those interactions or to find bugs.

 

[pdjudd]

Not to mention that Apple is no where near the size and design of a methodology where they operate in that fashion. Their corporate cult here is very antithetical to that. Microsoft can do that since they built there company around that idea and it was to support a very specific element of their client base - businesses.

Apple is not that type of operation.

 

[Julien]

Why does apple not push smaller updates each day and not massive updates each two weeks, I think rolling releases can give something like OSX a massive advantage with regards to big tracking and new feature requests.

This would be entirely unmanageable and would make it impossible to test applications. Individual parts of an operating system do not work as an island and are always interacting with other parts. Without benchmark releases, there's no way to keep track of those interactions or to find bugs.

Just to add to chrfr points...How would Feedback Assistant work in this nightmare scenario? Apple could never gain any useful info from our BRs & ERs.

 

[jeanre]

Rolling release

You guys are missing the point. So you have 30 bugs you fix 2, you send a update saying x and y is fixed in this release. Only for bug fixes and then every year bring out a major milestone release

 

[chrfr]

You guys are missing the point. So you have 30 bugs you fix 2, you send a update saying x and y is fixed in this release

We're not missing the point. That's just not how it works.
Since you edited your post after I replied: a major release every year and bug fixes in between is exactly how Apple is releasing OS X currently. You're posting in the 10.10 forum. Are you referring to released operating systems or to 10.10? 10.10 is relatively early in development and needs major updates every couple of weeks.

 

[PsykX]

This would be un-manageable.

One of the reasons is they're updating/changing fundamental APIs. Take Swift for example, this is still a construction site and it shows if you've developed with it.

If you decide that a function needs another argument or behavior or should return another data type (Double instead of Integer for instance), you can make every app that uses this API crash instantly. Which means that all these apps need minor changes to accomodate the new APIs. This is why even though they can't change a billion things on a two-week release cycle, the updates are rather big (over 1 GB).

Now, if you change an app for an API and then you need to change the exact same app for another API, this is where it becomes un-manageable. Real-time updates are a dream and will never happen.

 

[pdjudd]

I agree. In situations where you are making changes to a system being in development, you cannot just rapidly just roll out changes - developers who are trying to test the OS out with their software and trying to re-tool their processes would get really frustrated with Apple if they constantly changed how API’s and how things worked if they changed it from day to day when changes in one system can easily affect other systems. This is especially true in a system that is not in wide usage by the public and you are not just patching an existing stable system that is known to be stable overall, and a new system where they are developing new systems.

Using bigger milestone releases like Apple does (and many other companies) over a long period of time allows them to really figure out more meaningful progress and possibly address similar issues and make more progress overall rather than operating in panic mode and breaking one thing while fixing another thing rapidly in a complex system.