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Apple iOS 9.1 Release Breaks Records After Big iOS 9.0.2 Problems

This article is more than 8 years old.

iOS 9 is a problem. While the software continues to run perfectly on the vast majority of brand new devices like the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus and iPad Mini 4, for others it is causing bug after bug after bug. And now Apple has given its biggest indication yet of the severity of these issues by breaking records…

Yesterday Apple released iOS 9.1 Beta 5. iOS 9.1 will be the first major iOS 9 update and is tasked with addressing the bevy of bugs missed by iOS 9.0.1 and iOS 9.0.2 - both of which were dedicated bug fixes but did nothing other than paper over the cracks.

So far so very normal, but what is unprecedented is the speed with which Apple is readying iOS 9.1 for release…

Thanks to the brilliant tracking of iOS blog Thinky Bits, it shows iOS 9.1 is pushing through beta builds at a rate never before seen in iOS history. It has taken just 33 days for Apple to reach its fifth iOS 9.1 beta when historically it tends to take twice as long. In fact you have to go back to ‘iPhoneOS 2.0’ (in 2008) which actually skipped a first beta to even get close.

In short: there’s been nothing even close to the iPhone 9.1 development cycle in iOS history.

Yes, there has been a single example of a shorter development time (iOS 8.1) and smaller iOS x.0.x releases are excluded, but nevertheless the change in speed with which Apple is racing through iOS 9.1 testing is the clearest example yet of its concerns about the existing state of iOS 9.

Read more - Apple iOS 9 Has 25 Great Secret Features

A Good Or Bad Thing?

Of course the obvious question to ask is whether such a rushed schedule is a good or bad thing? And the obvious answer is: Both.

Getting important fixes to users quickly is obviously a good thing, but the concerns that such accelerated development will not properly address them - or worse: bring new, severe problems, is a tangible concern.

Could there be other factors involved? Certainly. For starters iOS 9.1 will bring compatibility with the new Apple Pencil used with the iPad Pro, but the iPad Pro itself will not launch until November so this doesn’t seem like a driving factor for five betas in 33 days.

Then again you also need to look at Apple’s increased openness since the launch of iOS 9. Four times it has now gone on record in less than a month admitting to iOS 9.x problems and it would make perfect sense that the company would now rather get fixes out quickly than have to do this yet again.

Either way iOS 9.1 is increasingly looking like a pivotal release for Apple. Get it right and the speed and efficiency with which it has tackled iOS 9’s launch problems will rightly deserve praise. But get it wrong yet again after iOS 8’s famously fraught history and Apple’s famed mantra that “It just works” could be left in tatters…

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