Apple delays refresh of home screen in 'iOS 12' to focus on performance & reliability - re...

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in iOS
Apple apparently had big plans on tap for this year's major iOS update, but is said to have delayed some of the tentpole features, including a new home screen and in-car features, until 2019, allowing it to instead focus on squashing bugs and improving performance.


iOS home screen concept, via The Verge.


Employees were told of plans to delay the features at a meeting with software chief Craig Federighi earlier this month, according to Axios. It was said that improvements to core apps like Mail, enhancements to the Camera app, and additions for photo editing and sharing were also on the chopping block.

Separately, AppleInsider was also informed by sources Tuesday morning that the company held an "unusual" meeting recently with its development team, though details on what was said in the meeting were not provided.

Because of the changes, the anticipated "iOS 12" update will feature additional focus on the stability of the operating system that drives iPhone and iPad.

iOS 12 will still boast tentpole features, as usual. Updates expected this year, according to Axios, include ARKit enhancements, new digital health capabilities, and enhanced parental controls.

If Apple sticks to its usual release patterns, as is expected, then "iOS 12" should be unveiled at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, before launching to the public in September.

In the interim, the company is working on a new iOS 11.3 update that will give users the ability to check the health of their device's battery, and choose to enable or disable automatic throttling of older devices to prevent random shutdowns. The update also includes four new Animoji, support for Messages in iCloud, ARKit 1.5, and tweaks to Apple Music and Apple News.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 54
    Cue the complainers. Tell us about how wealthy Apple is and they should be able to do both. /s 
    macxpressbwintxtmayschlackchaickamagman1979doozydozenlolliverwatto_cobrajony0
  • Reply 2 of 54
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,808member
    Cue the complainers. Tell us about how wealthy Apple is and they should be able to do both. /s 
    Yup! Exactly! Apple has hundreds of thousands of employees so they should be able to do both! Apple is damned if they do and damned if they don't. I for one think this is a great idea for Apple. Do a feature freeze, clean up the OS and get it ready for additional features and major changes. Otherwise, I think they're just digging themselves a hole. Apple has taken a lot of crap for all of its OS's lately. They could probably follow this same plan for all of their OS's for this year.

    If you go to 9to5Mac you'll see just this. People complaining that Apple can't do both. Google can do both, why can't Apple?
    edited January 2018 muthuk_vanalingamdoozydozenwatto_cobrajony0
  • Reply 3 of 54
    Yes. A good move. iOS 12 should focus more on code refinement, like iOS 9. iOS 13 should be a feature year. I already think ARkit has left Apple with a 3 year software lead. 4K 60fps, Neural Engine & TrueDepth Camera on A11 a 2 year lead on hardware.
    schlackpatchythepiratewatto_cobrajony0
  • Reply 4 of 54
    I personally had little to no issues since iOS 11.1. iPhone SE & iPod 6th Gen(both 32GB)
    lolliverwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 54
    I'll take an Axios tech scoop like I take their political reporting - with a grain of salt.
    SpamSandwichlolliverwatto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 54
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Apple is a wealthy company so it should do both. 
    [Deleted User]jbdragon
  • Reply 7 of 54
    macxpress said:
    Cue the complainers. Tell us about how wealthy Apple is and they should be able to do both. /s 
    Yup! Exactly! Apple has hundreds of thousands of employees so they should be able to do both! Apple is damned if they do and damned if they don't. I for one think this is a great idea for Apple. Do a feature freeze, clean up the OS and get it ready for additional features and major changes. Otherwise, I think they're just digging themselves a hole. Apple has taken a lot of crap for all of its OS's lately. They could probably follow this same plan for all of their OS's for this year.

    If you go to 9to5Mac you'll see just this. People complaining that Apple can't do both. Google can do both, why can't Apple?
    It’s at macrumors too. Except worse. I don’t think it’s a bad idea either. Though I rarely suffer any of these “huge” bugs, but I’m sure apple has the data on how many do and it warrants this response.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 54
    While I would like a refresh to the UI especially for the iPhone tbh but id really be just as happy as with a full dark mode for my iPhone X. I agree with others fixing some bugs and pushing possibly more use of the machine learning or whatever with the new processor will be awesome as well. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 54
    asdasd said:
    Apple is a wealthy company so it should do both. 
    🤨🧐🤪🤣
    asdasdwatto_cobra
  • Reply 10 of 54
    Apple is a wealthy company so it should do both.
    jbdragonmattinoz
  • Reply 11 of 54
    asdasd said:
    Apple is a wealthy company so it should do both. 
    That didn’t take long...
    magman1979watto_cobra
  • Reply 12 of 54
    I still have yet to put iOS 11 on my 6s Plus due to the battery life concerns.  I haven't seen any reports of this issue being substantially and concretely fixed with the incremental updates.
    dysamoria
  • Reply 13 of 54
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,250member
    Please don’t make it look like Metro’s live tiles, as the mock-up suggests.
    randominternetpersonlolliverwatto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 54
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    Is the assumption of this rumour really that Apple cannot walk and chew gum at the same time? They need two years between feature releases to stabilize iOS? 

    After this many decades doing major software, one assumes the are capable of doing both.
  • Reply 15 of 54
    tshapitshapi Posts: 370member
    Remember Apple works like a start-up. 
     Secondly,  I understand it. It’s about focus. The pick tasks and focus, if they do “both” then chances are the improvements won’t be front and center.  Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I would imagine the code probably should remain relatively unchanged if they want gl focus on improvements and bug fixes 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 16 of 54
    I think Apple should keep releasing a new iOS yearly, but they don’t have to try and stick everything in at once.

    Why not distribute major features throughout the year? As in every 3 months an update comes out that adds something new? Quality should go up because there’s less pressure to get everything done at once. And people would have something to look forward to by getting regular improvements.
    watto_cobraicoco3
  • Reply 17 of 54
    jcs2305jcs2305 Posts: 1,336member
    waverboy said:
    I still have yet to put iOS 11 on my 6s Plus due to the battery life concerns.  I haven't seen any reports of this issue being substantially and concretely fixed with the incremental updates.
    There is no need for you to still be holding off at this point? Update your phone, set up as new. Bring your apps back down, monitor your battery to see if there are any offending apps that are using an unusual amount of battery. There are 2 6s Plus' in my house now that are on 11.2.5 with no such issues. Honestly one of the biggest battery offenders is having background app refresh on. I am not sure why this is a feature, when it's so hard on the battery?  Even the Apple Genius' go to turn it off if you bring your phone in for battery life issues. I am not sure if it is an individual app problem, or an IOS problem, but it sure is annoying and causes issues for folks.
    brertechwaverboywatto_cobra
  • Reply 18 of 54
    NY1822NY1822 Posts: 621member
    I take it the photo used in just a rendering on speculation? Just curious if there were any leaks on the design...anyone have insight or links to articles based on leaks?
  • Reply 19 of 54
    neilmneilm Posts: 987member
    While this has been more of a problem on the macOS side, Apple needs to focus on the quality of its new OS releases. If that means slower roll-out of new features then it's a good trade-off. There have been some spectacularly inept bugs in macOS (e.g. root user/no password) and quite a few niggling ones in iOS. Time to get some discipline on this.
    hypoluxa
  • Reply 20 of 54
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    tulkas said:
    Is the assumption of this rumour really that Apple cannot walk and chew gum at the same time? They need two years between feature releases to stabilize iOS? 

    After this many decades doing major software, one assumes the are capable of doing both.
    To be fair new features always add instability. So they may fix A and cause B. The best hardening release Apple ever did was 10.1. 10.0 was broken - 10.1 screamed. 
    StrangeDaysmike eggleston
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