> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule.

Snow Leopard was a refinement of Leopard, and both releases had unusually long durations as the newest release of Mac OS X, totaling 4 years. It then continued getting security updates until late 2013, another 2 years after Lion replaced it. I can see how people would treat the later point releases of Snow Leopard as a high point for stability because of the years of bug fixes that had gone into the system by then.

> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation.

I don't know anybody who's switched to Mac because of a feature they added in the latest OS release. It's always because of the better price-performance, the better battery life, or because Windows got too glitchy and annoying. The only new Mac OS feature from the past few years that I can even name off the top of my head is when they finally added window snapping with Sequoia.

When you have a bunch of windows open but you click on the desktop, the windows go off to the edges so you can see the desktop.

mayhaps we've just moved the goal post on what constitutes a major release a lil too far.

redefine what is major, scale that back and ship in a year cycle and not necessarily need to ship anything that pushes you past the threshold of "we're still beta testing even after release, and now the users are the QA team". just bring that definition of "a major software upgrade" back a bit. everyone should do it, i'd be super happy if "major upgrade" meant a new icon set and some exciting thoroughly vetted new utilities/apps. thrilled even.