Declining iOS And OS X Quality Imperil Apple's Future Growth And Retention

...A growing chorus of developers and Apple-watchers is raising the alarm that the buggy releases of iOS 8 and Yosemite are part of a systemic decline in the quality of Apple’s software. The now-yearly release schedule for both iOS and OS X combined with the increasing complexity of the overall Apple ecosystem have put a strain on its engineers, these voices say. At the same time, Android continues to increase its overall market share while solving many of the fragmentation and quality issues that have made it second to iOS in terms of user experience. One of the leading critics of Apple’s software quality, longtime iOS developer Russell Ivanovic, has even christened 2015 as “The Year of Android.” Ivanovic has been building iOS apps for many years, but his studio, Shifty Jelly, now makes 80% of its income on the Android side of the fence. In a post titled “It Just Works,” he writes:

Tim Cook keeps telling us that ‘Only Apple’ could do the amazing things it does. I just wish that Apple would slow down their breakneck pace and spend the time required to build stable software that their hardware so desperately needs. The yearly release cycles of OS X, iOS, iPhone & iPad are resulting in too many things seeing the light of day that aren’t finished yet...