There’s an article in TidBITS I really enjoyed: Six Reasons Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy. Unfortunately, while the actual points in the article are great, both the headline and introduction are… sensationalist. It’s a list with a headline designed to grab your intention.
The problem with macOS Catalina and iOS 13 isn’t that they’re unusually bad. The problem is they’re exactly the same quality as (nearly) every other major release of macOS and iOS, and it just isn’t acceptable anymore. A further problem is that Apple is actually trying to fix these problems this cycle by rapidly releasing fixes, but the software is just too complex for that to work well.
The six points listed are absolutely the reason. But saying “this is unusually bad” is not just wrong but counterproductive. As long as we keep justifying bugs in major releases as “well, it’s not usually this bad” we give them an excuse to continue.
Let me be clear: No, it’s always been this bad. So much so that I wrote about this in 2016. As long as things keep going this way, it’s always going to continue to be this bad. It’s time to accept a simple truth: This is not a one off, any more than previous releases were. Until things change, the quality isn’t going to improve.
The first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge its existence. When faced with reality, choose to believe reality.