Release 1.0

Apple is the king of the ‘point release’. Of course, its critics will say these are ‘pointless releases’ — they are not really releases at all, they are just bug fixes. However, as with all things Apple there is often more to the releases than meets the eye.

Firstly, iTunes 9.0 released a couple of weeks ago with a set of new iPods. Obviously it supports the new iPods (and apparently stopped Palm Pre’s syncing with iTunes for a few days) but was the difference to everyone else. When I opened iTunes did I go “Wow that’s great” or did I say “Just what I always wanted?. Of course, I didn’t but that wasn’t the point of the release.

Secondly, iPhone OS 3.1 was released at the same time as iTunes 9.0. I dutifully upgraded my iPhone and entered into the game of ‘hunt the feature’. I was in a maze of twisty little paths which did all look all alike. In truth, if I squint my eyes and hold my memory of what iPhone OS 2.0 (and I mean 2.0) was like at arm’s length, I don’t really see much difference. Yes, there are differences between 3.1 and 3.0 and, of course, between 2.x and 3.0 but what are they? Ok in the AppStore application, it will tell me because I have various apps I should try various others. Very much a ‘me too’ idea borrowed from iTunes and very much like Amazon’s “people who bought also bought” and also something that needs some work. One of the apps it suggested for me was in French and another was in Russian. Beyond that there were some other changes (you can now see what apps are making the most money) and that’s about it. So what was the point of this release?

And finally — and probably setting the record for the fastest point release of an OS in history — Apple brought out Mac OS X 10.6.1. Installed it and there are for me, no differences to speak of. Obviously the point of this release was to fix some bugs.

So what is the point of Apple’s point releases? In some cases it is bug fixes and we can all argue until we are blue in the face about whether the problem would be solved with better testing before release. We can also say that Apple gets away with bugs — and in particular security bugs — because of its relatively small installed base (compared to Windows). There is, however, more to it than just bug fixes.

Each time Apple brings out a full decimal point release, there are always new features. Sometimes they correct ‘omissions’ and other times they are new features. Often these omissions are for ‘good reason’. For example, tethering of iPhones was probably omitted for battery life reasons as much as software. Using a tethered iPhone on Bluetooth is going to run done the battery very quickly — which is, of course, why there has been emphasis on using USB tethering. Similarly, the lack of “cut and paste” in iPhone OS was easy to pick on and was easily fixed in 3.0.

As with all these features, they suck in a few more users and give them less reason to move. Compared with other OS’ and applications, Apple’s are constantly evolving.As an individual user this evolution is good for me because I have a reason to upgrade and use the most recent release. That is not to say that these new releases are always for the best reasons. Richard Stallman in a recent blog post “Mac OS X mistakes and malfeatures“ – retracting his previous comments about MacOS having a back door to allow Apple to impose software changes  – went to cite cases where Apple’s upgrades have removed ‘features’ others were using.

This point release approach has not been lost on other manufacturers — Palm’s new Linux based phone OS WebOS has rushed through a number of releases to 1.2 before it even arrives in the UK next week. Arguably WebOS was released in an unfinished form but that is half the point of what why manufacturers are doing this because the other option is the stagnation of the Microsoft release cycle. I’m sure Microsoft will argue that they don’t need to make point releases every other month because of their great quality control — but the patches that get released every month seem to to suggest that is not the case.

Release 1.1

In the first release of this blog post as above, it seems that I confused some readers with my examples. The point I am trying to make is that while some ‘point releases’ are just bug fixes others incorporate new features. It is the idea of adding new features which is particularly interesting as it locks in more users and acknowledges the fact that an incomplete product was shipped in the first place. Another example is search in iPhone OS 3.0 which lets you search the contents of your iPhone or rather it doesn’t. It does let you search the records from the built in applications but not third party applications — there is no API for that but one can guess there will be in the future. Does that help?