inessential by Brent Simmons

The Cost of iOS 7

Jared Sinclair, iOS 7 Squandered a Year of Third-Party Development on Superficial Changes:

It’s been almost a year since version 7.0 was announced, yet as a developer I feel like a year’s worth of work has brought about only superficial changes to the apps I work on and the apps I use.

Jared makes good points. iOS 7 meant a bunch of unplanned work for developers — Vesper-with-syncing would have shipped by now, had we not spent last summer updating the app for iOS 7. (And we were a lucky case, since our app was more 7-like than most before iOS 7 shipped.)

And, meanwhile, there are other more urgent concerns (for developers) that have gone unhandled.

Jared argues that iOS 7 wasn’t urgent, that evolution rather than revolution would have been fine, since customer satisfaction was extremely high with iOS 6. In retrospect I agree, but were I at Apple I would have argued that the situation is like tech debt — UI debt — and it’s best to deal with it quickly, completely, and early.

Well. I look forward to WWDC.