Are issues/bugs addressed? Yes. Are there often many of them? Yes again. Is public outcry the primary driver of Apple's rapid response? Yes again.
Now for the user base. If they download Apple updates in good faith based on Apple's New & Improved marketing, they are entitled to cock a suspicious eye at Apple the NEXT time New & Improved comes around.
If your primary profit is in hardware, would you release the "latest and greatest" hardware (at a premium price) with the older OS that may not even support the new tech you are introducing in your product (without having to kludge together something that may or may not be reliable)?
Not necessarily. But, again, it is Apple suggesting that the new iOS is a must-have for all device users except for those specifically excluded from upgrade candidacy.
A conspiracy requires multiple parties aligned to perpetrate a fraud or at least an offensive act but Apple is a single monolithic entity as is their mobile technology line. It does not require a conspiracy nor a nut to point out well-documented missteps they have made in the past and to suggest that haste makes waste, which it clearly has on multiple occasions. As before, the chart clearly shows a link between new versions of iOS and problems reported, searched for, etc.
I gladly use and prefer Apple mobile products especially after about 6 months of Android hell but adoption and use doesn't require unblinking religious commitment to a company, its software or its hardware. Apple have QA and customer service difficulties like any other vendor and it isn't blasphemous to point this out.
It's a "bug" when it effects ALL users. It's an issue when it effects a very small minority of users. That was the case with the bluetooth problem in iOS 10. It WAS only a small number of users, in fact a tiny fraction of 1 percent of iPhone/IPad users. It was such a small number that over 100,000 beta and public beta testers had not a SINGLE tester run into it in over three months of testing iOS 10 Beta versions. It required millions of users after the release to come up with several hundreds or thousands of users who had bluetooth devices that failed to connect or consistently stay connected.
It turned out to be a problem with a batch of Bluetooth radios that were slightly less than optimal and required a software update that could identify those and adjust the connection parameters in the bluetooth radio's firmware to allow for the problem in connecting. Problem solved.
Apple was even able to identify the batch of Bluetooth chips and when it was shipped by who were making the complaints who had actually brought their iPhones in to the Genius Bars. They were consistent to a specific time of manufacture and a specific run of one sub-supplier of the Bluetooth radios. Sometimes THAT is what it takes to find such problems.
However, since not every single iPhone user was having a problem with Bluetooth, it was NOT A BUG in the software. It was an issue with some users' iPhones. How do you find that? You work the problem and find out exactly what the problem IS with those users' devices. The software itself was not "buggy;" It worked as it was designed to work, but to closer tolerances than previous software, likely to save battery power. The problem, the issue, was in some flakey hardware that nominally passed original quality control but was actually marginal. A software FIX actually did take care of it by allowing those marginal radios to work once the problem was identified.
Why did it take so long? Because the problem was not Apple's problem. It was a problem with the supplier of the Bluetooth radio chip. Once Apple had identified where the problem lay, the supplier had to come up with a FIRMWARE UPGRADE that Apple could push out to all of the users who had a problem. That took months to design and write the firmware update that solved the issue in the radio AND kept it within the Bluetooth STANDARDS of the devices it had to connect to.
Some problems are not quick fixes. Apple had pushed out some early patches that solved some of the problems for some users who had chips that were just slightly out of specs, but it did not fix the underlying issue with the more flakey chips that would mostly work but still would drop signals. The worst, Apple just swapped out iPhones for. Others had to wait for the firmware update from the chip maker.
Is public outcry the primary driver of Apple's rapid response? Yes again.
No, it is not "public outcry." Apple is driven to create perfection in its products. Apple does NOT wait for news media to work on improving its software or to fix problems. Apple has mechanisms in place for users to REPORT problems they are experiencing which YOU decry as somehow wrong. Report it on Apple forums IS the best way to report a problem if you don't want to bother calling 1-800-my-Apple which will get you a free one-on-one talk with an Apple support tech person who speaks English and is located in the USA for free. They WILL help you. . . and if they can't, they will escalate it to second tier, who will keep at it until they get you the help you need. . . up to replacing your device.
However, if you DO post it on an Apple forum, they are monitored by Apple employees and often the answer to how to handle your problem is already posted.
Not necessarily. But, again, it is Apple suggesting that the new iOS is a must-have for all device users except for those specifically excluded from upgrade candidacy.
There is a REASON why an update no longer supports a DEVICE, not a specific USER, which you are implying, as though somehow Apple is deliberately discriminating against the USER due to some nefarious reason. The reason is that the DEVICE cannot support the functions the update is designed to update. It would be pointless to update the device and have the device choke and bog down on software it is ill equipped to use. It is simply OUT MODED by the passage of time and the development of more modern technology which has superseded its capabilities. It is not something nefarious or deliberate. The hardware is just not up to the job the software is update designed or intended to do.
Sometimes, the update is for functions the old hardware is literally missing. It just does not have it. Too bad, so sad, but if you want those functions, and sometimes they are for your security, you have to bite the bullet and BUY HARDWARE that supports them. It is not Apple's fault that technology has moved beyond your six year old device. . . but Tempus Fugit, Time Flies, and to stay up with it, you have to move on.
I would not call update advisories from Apple as mere suggestions. Sometimes they are more imperative than that. Sometimes there are severe security threats out there that really need to be addressed by updates. . . and the only way to handle them is through an update that patches something discovered in a software flaw.