Apple Reveals iOS 9.2, It's A Weak Release

‘Quality Not Quantity!’ has been the mantra iPhone and iPad owners have been shouting at Apple for quite some time as bugs keep multiplyingdespite the ever increasing speed of releases. But it appears Apple has no intention of listening…

Today Apple released iOS 9.2 to developers, making it the fifth version of iOS 9 in just 44 days – or, put another way, the fourth dedicated release of iOS 9 bug fixes in just 44 days.

How come? Because Apple appears to now be playing a little fast and loose with the historical significance of its iOS versions. iOS X.x releases are typically more significant feature-based updates while iOS X.x.x releases are house cleaning updates that focus on bug fixes and optimisation. It’s a simple but effective system, but Apple has now broken it for a second successive time.

Despite headlining its new emoji, the fact remained 11 of the remaining 12 changes in iOS 9.1 were major bug fixes and a number of those were only partially successful. It amounted to no more than what should have been iOS 9.0.3.

And this is happening again. Despite its significant ‘iOS 9.2’ moniker, the new release actually only does the following:

• SFSafariViewController now supports 3rd party Action Extensions. Any Action Extension that works in Safari will also work in SFSafariViewController.
• Long tapping the Reload button in Safari View Controller now gives options to Reload Without Content Blockers and Request Desktop Site, like in Safari.
• iOS 9.2 Beta 1 resolves an issue where WebApps saved to the home screen would not respect the apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style meta tag.

Yes, that’s an iOS 9.0.4 feature set – at best.

Notably iOS 9.2 also includes no updates for the broken notifications which iOS 9.1 did a hit and miss job of addressing, nor for the POP email failures iOS 9.1 name dropped but singularly failed to fix. In addition there is nothing to address the isolated reports of problems iOS 9.1 introduced for some, including broken contact searches and personalised ringtones.

But what Apple does have in its favour is time. iOS 9.1 broke Apple speed records for testing a release (not necessarily a good thing) going through five betas in just 42 days, whereas it is common for Apple to take twice as long to do this. Still it means there should be at least another 42 days for the company to fold extra features and fixes into iOS 9.2.

The good news is Apple does have some precedent of this, but the bad news is the core release tends to make up the major elements. So let’s hope Apple is going to repeat its recent record of breaking from tradition and throw the kitchen sink at iOS 9.2 because, as things stand, it does nothing to deserve the name…

Article Source: Apple Reveals iOS 9.2, It's A Weak Release