inessential by Brent Simmons

Imaginary performance boosts

I noted that iPhone 1.1.4 firmware is out today.

And I wondered, what if it actually changed nothing? (Nothing other than the version string.) The change notes would just say something like, “Bug fixes and performance enhancements.”

Not that I think for one second Apple would do something like that. I’m just imagining. (Seriously. I’m not being sarcastic.)

My theory is that people would claim on their weblogs that 1.1.4 screamed compared to 1.1.3.

People would write things like, “I don’t know what they did, but my Safari rendering times have been cut like in half!” and “They’ve really got their IMAP implementation nailed, finally!” and “They must have cleaned up a lot of code, because everything feels so nice and smooth now!”

I bet every software developer has seen this—release a new version, even one you know to be slower, and some people will thank you for the performance boost.