There is a lot of angst by some blog commentators regarding Apple’s decision to take a break from adding new features and concentrate on performance and stability. The common theme is, why should I have to pay for performance and stability it should be free!

While I agree that stability should be free guess what? It is free. That is what all the third digit updates are about. And in some cases new features are added and performance is improved for free. I think Apple is holding up its end of the deal. But what about pure performance improvements?

Performance is a feature of a working system. It takes a great deal of effort to identify, assess, engineer and test performance improvements. In fact, a proper product organization considers performance a feature. It needs to identify where performance is key to a product, plan for time to investigate performance improvements, implement the performance enhancements and then test. Then, when performance has been achieve, it needs to be marketed just like any other feature.

I give Apple product managers and sr. management credit for standing up and saying that performance is a feature, and treat it like any other feature. It’s a Think Different kind of move.