Apple Briefly Paused Work on New Features for iOS 18 and macOS 15 to Clean Up Bugs

Apple briefly paused work on upcoming iOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, and tvOS 18 updates last week in order to make a serious effort to address bugs in the future iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Mac releases, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

iOS 18 Mock Feature Baubles
Employees were told about a development pause last week, with engineers asked to focus on fixing flaws and boosting software performance.

Apple's software chief Craig Federighi has been making an effort in recent years to ensure that software bugs are addressed, sometimes resulting in features that need to be delayed. Sources that spoke to Gurman said that with the upcoming software updates, the software engineering management team working under Federighi found too many bugs that were missed in internal testing, leading to a week-long sprint to address the issues.

During that week period, all development on future features was stopped to allow engineers to work solely on improving the existing software. Apple is lifting the pause this week so that work on new capabilities for ‌iOS 18‌ and its sister updates can continue.

Apple last month finished the first "M1" versions of ‌iOS 18‌, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15. Work on further development was paused, with Apple also taking a brief break from working on iOS 17.4, expected to be released next March. Given that work on future software was only paused for a week, no release delays are expected next year.

Related Roundups: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia
Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia

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Top Rated Comments

Harry Haller Avatar
17 months ago
2 year software cycles, please.
Score: 104 Votes (Like | Disagree)
johnalan Avatar
17 months ago
I support this so ****ing much.
Score: 85 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jz0309 Avatar
17 months ago
That is actually a very good move, but honestly I doubt that 1 week is/was sufficient…
Score: 84 Votes (Like | Disagree)
robertosh Avatar
17 months ago
They should dedicate the full year!
Score: 63 Votes (Like | Disagree)
contacos Avatar
17 months ago
You’d think they are big enough to have two separate teams, one focused on fixing things and another one developing new things?
Score: 59 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gpat Avatar
17 months ago
Now that's something new.
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)