Apple's iOS Is In 'Rapid Decline'?

According to Tumblr co-founder and Instapaper creator Marco Arment, Apple's software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that he is 'deeply concerned' for its future despite praising its hardware which he described as 'amazing'.

Arment wrote in a blog post (www.Marco.org) published on Sunday, 4th January: "Apple has always been a marketing-driven company, but there’s a balance to be struck. Marketing plays a vital role, but marketing priorities cannot come at significant expense to quality.

"I suspect the rapid decline of Apple’s software is a sign that marketing is too high a priority at Apple today: having major new releases every year is clearly impossible for the engineering teams to keep up with while maintaining quality. Maybe it’s an engineering problem, but I suspect not — I doubt that any cohesive engineering team could keep up with these demands and maintain significantly higher quality.
The problem seems to be quite simple: they’re doing too much, with unrealistic deadlines.

"We don’t need major OS releases every year. We don’t need each OS release to have a huge list of new features. We need our computers, phones, and tablets to work well first so we can enjoy new features released at a healthy, gradual, sustainable pace.

"I fear that Apple’s leadership doesn’t realize quite how badly and deeply their software flaws have damaged their reputation, because if they realized it, they’d make serious changes that don’t appear to be happening. Instead, the opposite appears to be happening: the pace of rapid updates on multiple product lines seems to be expanding and accelerating.

He reasoned that it’s simply an issue of poorly weighted priorities that can most likely be adjusted with the current personnel.

The company’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, has faced criticism since its release in September.

Apple’s next big release is the Apple Watch, scheduled to come out in early 2015.