Apple has temporarily halted work on new features for its upcoming iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS updates in order to focus on improving quality and eliminating bugs. Software engineering chief Craig Federighi ordered a one-week pause in development last week after internal testing revealed too many 'escapes', or bugs, in early versions of the software.
According to
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, all Apple developers working on next year's software updates were tasked with fixing known issues and improving performance rather than adding new capabilities. This pause affects OS releases codenamed 'Crystal' for iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, 'Glow' for macOS 15, 'Moonstone' for watchOS 11, and visionOS for the
forthcoming Apple Vision Pro headset.
The temporary development freeze comes as Apple has placed greater emphasis on software quality over the past few years. Under Federighi, the company has adopted new processes
like 'feature flags' to catch bugs earlier and 'The Pact' to eliminate regressions. However, as software projects grow more complex with thousands of developers, some issues are still going through internal testing.
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