Bugs cause Apple to pause development of new features for iOS and macOS

The next versions of Apple’s operating systems are giving you a headache. Company executives have reportedly asked teams working on the development of iOS 18 and macOS 15 to pause the creation of new features. They’ll focus on something more important right now: fixing bugs. The information comes from Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, who follows the behind-the-scenes at Apple.

According to the publication, the last round of development of next year’s versions of the operating systems was not very smooth. The first milestone (called “M1” internally) of “Crystal” (the internal codename for iOS and iPadOS 18) and “Glow” (the internal codename for macOS 15) fell short of expected bug patterns.

For this reason, the executives responsible for leading Apple’s software work have decided to suspend work on new tools to work on fixing bugs. The break is expected to last a week and also includes watchOS 11 and iOS 17.4.

Usually, when the first milestone of Apple’s software is completed, engineers start working on the next one (the so-called “M2”). This week’s decision is out of the ordinary, therefore.

A person interviewed by Bloomberg on condition of anonymity said Apple has thousands of people working on software development. If this work isn’t well-orchestrated, the source says, the successors to iOS 17 and macOS 14 could break down completely.

iOS 18 and macOS 15 should not experience delays
Despite the suspension, this does not mean that Apple will postpone the release of the next versions of iOS, macOS and other systems. As Macworld notes, this means that teams will have fewer bugs to fix in the future, as they won’t let problems pile up.

In the worst-case scenario, what Apple can do is leave some of the new features in iOS 18 and macOS 15 for future updates — the “.1”, “.2” versions, and so on.

Apple has been trying to avoid bugs
Bloomberg notes that Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, has made some changes to workflows to avoid problems.

In 2019, the company began to treat each new feature individually. Thus, in case of a problem, the corresponding module could be deactivated or removed, without prejudice to the rest of the system.

The teams also made a “pact” not to allow “regressions,” the name given to when a new function brings a bug that breaks another feature that worked perfectly.