Axios: Apple Is Delaying iOS Features Previously Planned for This Year and Prioritizing Quality ⇥ axios.com

Ina Fried, Axios:

Apple has shaken up its iOS software plans for 2018, delaying some features to next year in an effort to put more focus on addressing performance and quality issues, Axios has learned.

[…]

Software head Craig Federighi announced the revised plan to employees at a meeting earlier this month, shortly before he and some top lieutenants headed to a company offsite.

Pushed into 2019 are a number of features including a refresh of the home screen and in-car user interfaces, improvements to core apps like mail and updates to the picture-taking, photo editing and sharing experiences.

Reliability and quality may not be as easily saleable in the short-term compared to new features, but it can pay off in the long run as a big deposit in Apple’s so-called “brand bank”. And, for what it’s worth, there are lots of people outside Silicon Valley who struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of software changes as it is.

For me, the big question is whether MacOS will also get a quality and reliability-focused release this year, too.

Update: Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is confirming Ina Fried’s report with some additional information about what features have been delayed.