SW Development: Apple Revamps SW Development Lifecycle...

... after the problems with iOS11:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/263795-apple-plans-revamp-software-development-cycle-adopt-slower-cadences

Quoting:
"Former Microsoft developer and head of Windows 7 and Windows 8 development, Steven Sinofsky, has published his own thoughts on the topic, and we recommend giving his article a read. One of the points Sinofsky makes is that Apple has, over the last decade, created an ecosystem that saw it go from a small phone vendor to a major player. It took an OS originally developed to run on the NeXT workstation, ported that OS to PowerPC, then to the x86 architecture, and finally to ARM. It ramped up its own CPU development team and now leads the mobile market in ARM single-threaded performance. It has done all this while simultaneously iterating on iOS, year after year.

As Sinofsky points out, we tend to talk about development as if its three goals — the so-called “iron triangle” of quality of release, pace of change, and the adding of new features — exist in a zero-sum game. It is, to be sure, much more difficult to develop solutions that balance all three of these requirements than to focus unilaterally on just one of them. But this is a balancing act that Apple has been performing fairly well for a decade, across an ecosystem Sinofsky considers without peer, save possibly for that of IBM and its System/360. The idea that companies choose one, and only one of these criteria to focus on is something he dismisses (...)"

Product Design: Planned obsolescence (as a feature?)

There are good features and there are bad ones. If true, Apple is using planned obsolescence features in its iPhones since 2008:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11963122

Apple explains the "feature":
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800058/apple-iphone-slow-fix-battery-life-capacity

Quoting:
""I believe, as do others, that Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point.

"If the performance drop is due to the 'sudden shutdown' fix, users will experience reduced performance without notification.

"Users expect either full performance, or reduced performance with a notification that their phone is in low-power mode.

"This fix creates a third, unexpected state."

Without this warning Poole believes that the fix will cause users to believe their phone is slow so they should replace it, rather than the battery which is actually at fault.

"This will likely feed into the 'planned obsolescence' narrative," he added.

Every time Apple launches a new handset people seemingly flock to Google to ask why their current iPhone or iOS is slow.

This trend has been seen every year since Apple released the iPhone 3G in 2008.

Explanations for the slowness range from Apple's iOS causing problems on older devices to the firm deliberately slowing down old phones to make people buy the new handsets.

This latter explanation is known as planned, or built-in, obsolescence.

This is the idea that manufacturer's deliberately make their products in such a way that they become out-of-date sooner.

By doing this, the companies can encourage customers to buy the latest model of a certain product."

Updated: 2017-12-08, Apple "explains".

Security: Apple is revising its SW Development Process

We should ALWAYS take into account security issues in SW Development, even if there are no explicit requirements on that. Do you agree?

What do you think the developers of these features (and the rest of the team, of course) heard after Apple felt obliged to do this public (shaming) announcement?

https://www.itproportal.com/news/apple-to-review-software-development-after-login-flaw-was-discovered/

Quoting:
"The vulnerability allows users of macOS 10.13 to gain admin rights, or log in as root, simply by clicking a login box several times. Apple issued a fix within 24 hours, and both the US and German governments issued alerts advising Mac users to patch up.

But besides patching up, Apple is now looking to review how it does code.

“We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users,” Apple said in a statement. “Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again.”

“Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of Mac OS,” Apple said in its statement.

To exploit the vulnerability, users simply needed to bring up the authentication dialog box, which is often done if needing to configure privacy or network settings. Once the dialog box appears, type in 'root' as a username. Leave the password blank, press Enter, then click 'unlock' a couple of times and voila – access granted.

Fortunately, the workaround to the flaw appears simple – all users need to do is configure a root password and the flaw will no longer work."

Mobile Development: Cross platform languages?

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3231664/application-development/apples-swift-is-losing-developers-to-multiplatform-frameworks.html

Quoting:
"Microsoft’s Xamarin, Apache Cordova, and Ionic are replacing the use of Swift and Xcode as developers seek to maintain fewer code bases".

Naturally. The TIOBE guys say.

The Biggest Software Flops of All Time - PCMag.com

Right on topic, one interesting feature from the PC Magazine site (Slideshow):

The Biggest Software Flops of All Time - Slideshow from PCMag.com

PS. Have [NOT] fun!

Quoting:
"Software is a funny thing. You can't touch it, but you can certainly pay for it. It weighs nothing, but takes dozens or even hundreds of people to make. And sometimes it just doesn't work out.

No matter how detailed your specs, how solid your market research, and how optimized your code, there are always winners and losers. Sometimes a competitor comes to market with something better. Sometimes unforeseen circumstances make your program useless or outdated. And sometimes you just screw things up to a point that no amount of patching can fix it.

In this feature, we'll crawl through the annals of computing history to showcase 10 software releases that went horribly wrong. Some of the biggest names in the industry show up here—Apple and Microsoft are both well-represented—which proves that there's always a second chance. And a third and a fourth if you play your cards right. For some of the other development houses on this list, though, their software flops sounded the death knell for their businesses."