It's a good strategy for a variety of reasons:
- it lets the OS theming feel fresh on a regular basis
- it lets apple break/disable bad apps that have entered the ecosystem
- it keeps all the OSS binaries more in sync with the fast-paced OSS world.
- it lets the actual periodic security updates be used only for critical fixes. Try loading Windows 8 and you immediately have over 200 critical hotfixes that take nearly a day to download and install on 2 year old hardware.
- Apple's biggest strength is attention to UX details. Each release contains the byproduct of massive amounts of research/data.
You can easily do that with patches and blacklists.
> it keeps all the OSS binaries more in sync with the fast-paced OSS world.
That's hilarious, sorry. Nobody who cares for "OSS binaries" uses anything shipped by Apple -- we all use Homebrew and equivalents, because anything shipped by Apple is invariably ancient.
> Try loading Windows 8 and you immediately have over 200 critical hotfixes that take nearly a day to download and install on 2 year old hardware.
That can be easily solved with release-specific service packs, and it's not an excuse to wreck the entire UI.
> Each release contains the byproduct of massive amounts of research/data.
Such "massive" research, if it's anything remotely valuable, doesn't change every 12 months. You don't have breakthroughs in UI design every 12 months.
You know what changes every 12 months? Fashion.
I doubt they will be making significant changes every year. 2014 was the exception
>it keeps all the OSS binaries more in sync with the fast-paced OSS world
Too many key utilities are extremely outdated due to GPL3. Apple also seems to be moving away from free software wherever it can
>Each release contains the byproduct of massive amounts of research/data.
They seem to be letting the consumers do a lot of the testing (with the open beta for instance). Many features seem half baked, conceptually, and in execution.
In terms of market share, OS X is to Windows as Windows Phone is to iOS. Sometime about a year ago, Windows 8 alone already had higher market share than all versions of OS X combined, and has only been increasing the lead since.
Windows 10 is looking to be the spiritual successor to Windows 7, combining the improvements that came in 8 with a UI that's more palatable for many. And, now there are ample PC hardware options that rival or surpass Apple's in many aspects, which is a lot of what sold MacBooks to average consumers in the past.
I would guess that Apple is taking Windows 10 very seriously.