Comment by dabinat
1 day ago
I noticed Apple’s software quality decline the moment they committed to 1-year release cycles. Because an x.0 release inevitably has issues, it offers less than a year of stability (sometimes only a few months if it takes until x.4 to be fully stable) before things get broken again in y.0. And because Apple stops signing old versions pretty quickly, you’re often stuck on an unstable new version if you take the risk and upgrade.
Additionally, it is hard on all developers (Apple included) to release updates for all of its many platforms on the same day, which IMO reduces software quality across the ecosystem.
(Apple also has the luxury of only supporting the latest OS versions with its software. Customers often expect third-party developers to support a wider range of OS versions and devices than Apple does.)
I have been using OS X since 10.4 Tiger. I still remember standing in line at midnight trying to get a copy on DVD. Getting to test all the new features back home in the middle of the night was so exciting! Well worth the €129/€29 they charged for it. Nowadays the yearly releases are more of a "meh". I hit install, they added a new grouping feature to Reminders and that is about all I use from what they added.
Still bitter that my 2006 Core Duo MacBook only had support up to 10.6 Snow Leopard but back then that was over 4 years of being able to use the latest OS, so comparable to four releases with the current cycles.
I used that same MacBook until 2014. At least Snow Leopard was a gem.
I used it up till 2011. It had multiple top-cases replaced under the extended warranty, display CCFL was changed a few times due to flickering, disc-drive got swapped once, new logic board because the audio-jack was stuck on SPDIF, new power adapter.
The only device I ever got Apple Care on and I got thousands in repairs covered for free. This was from before Apple would just replace the entire device.
All my other MacBooks have been trouble free luckily.