This is why I (and many others) I think still have some fond memories of Snow Leopard, marketed as 'bug fix' release. That feels like the last time there was a united push to polish up existing stuff without throwing in 'new' things.
This is one of those lessons that we as a software dev community seem unable to absorb. Polish is universally better received than flaky new features, and the releases we view most fondly are the ones that are fast and reliable, and yet we never seem capable of holding off on the new features to fix existing pain points.
> Polish is universally better received than flaky new features, and the releases we view most fondly are the ones that are fast and reliable
It's far from universal. Most users never expect to understand their software in the first place, and so put a lot more value on new features. If anything I'd say developers put too much effort into polish, since we're the very small demographic that actually appreciates it.
