Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Should Tech Companies End the One-Year Software Update Cycle?
Software giants Google, Microsoft, Apple and others release a major software update to their desktop and mobile operating system (and OS for other platforms they have) each year. This model seemed viable -- to a consumer -- until a few years ago -- the days when shiny new features were exciting -- but of late the number of bugs that companies are failing to patch before shipping these operating systems has seemingly gone off the roof. For instance, Apple has released more than 10 software updates since seeding out iOS 11 in September this year (up from seven last year). Similar is the case with macOS.
The situation has gotten so dire that IT admins in many corporate environments are waiting for as long as six months before they are certain that it is fine to get the staff to move to the "newer" major software update. For companies like Apple, new software update also means a business opportunity. Several of the new features that they ship with the new update doesn't work with older iPhone and iPad models. And as we learned this week, new major software updates could hinder the performance of old gadgets. With these things in mind, should industry at large consider prolonging the duration between two major software updates? Or should they stick with a one-year software cycle model?
The situation has gotten so dire that IT admins in many corporate environments are waiting for as long as six months before they are certain that it is fine to get the staff to move to the "newer" major software update. For companies like Apple, new software update also means a business opportunity. Several of the new features that they ship with the new update doesn't work with older iPhone and iPad models. And as we learned this week, new major software updates could hinder the performance of old gadgets. With these things in mind, should industry at large consider prolonging the duration between two major software updates? Or should they stick with a one-year software cycle model?
Yes /thread
Now that software companies are hooked on the recurring revenue of subscription-based pricing and their end users have seemingly accepted it with little fanfare, I don't see the subscription model going away any time soon.
The trap is that software companies now want to be seen as giving continual improvements (and therefore value) to their customers, so they push out annual updates (as most subscriptions are an annual subscription) just so that people are using WhateverApp 2018 instead of WhateverApp 2017. It's got a bigger number in it's name, it must be more better. Or, why am I paying a subscription for WhateverApp 2015 and it's nearly 2018? What has the vendor been doing for the last two years to deserve my money?
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Worse than even annual releases are the much more frequent releases of web browsers, mainly FF. Early on, FF used to have relatively infrequent major releases, but when they did come out they were good news. They brought lots of great improvements, and new FF releases were something to look forward to. Then around FF 4 they started moving toward more frequent releases. I think it has been awful, cumulating in what has been the worst release for me yet, the recent FF 57 that broke nearly all of my extensions and that ruined the UI. All that these frequent releases do is let the FF developers shovel shitty changes on to us users every few weeks. Rapid releases don't encourage doing a good job. They just encourage lots of unwanted change for no good reason that's then forced on users who never asked for these changes and who don't want them. The ESR releases don't even help because they're just specific versions of the rapid releases. They're afflicted with the same flawed development model as the frequent releases.