It’s no secret that Apple’s latest operating system updates haven’t gone over well with segments of its user base. This is normal, to some extent — every OS release inevitably causes problems on someone’s hardware, random edge cases pop up, and rare bugs or upgrade issues manifest. Nonetheless, the last two releases (iOS 7 and 8) seem to have been more troublesome than their predecessors. iOS 7 sapped device performance and battery life, iOS 8 had huge install requirements and was known to cause WiFi issues. Even some of Apple’s most consistent fans have been stymied by endless reboot cycles or lost data through iCloud synchronization bugs.

I’d like to add my own anecdotal data to the pile. My iPhone 5C on iOS 7.1 has been significantly buggier than my old iPhone 4S was on iOS 6. Safari crashes are commonplace and I refuse to upgrade to iOS 8 because I’ve got no faith that the update won’t just make things worse. Stories about Apple’s “Core rot” in both OSX and iOS have been growing over the past two years, and Apple is apparently finally going to do something about it.

iOS 9, codenamed Monarch, is rumored to focus on the same devices as iOS 8, meaning the iPhone 4S and above along with the iPad mini, iPad 2, iPad 2 with Retina, and the 5th generation iPod. The new OS will still introduce some features — it’s not a complete freeze, like OS X 10.6 — but the emphasis will be on reducing the update size, fixing bugs, boosting stability, and improving overall performance. OS 10.6 was well regarded as both a bug fix and a performance booster. This latter category depended on which devices and software you owned, but as Lloyd Chambers detailed, OS 10.6 was faster than 10.5 in a number of software suites and professional applications.

There are few rumors on what software or additional capabilities might be included, but the developer and mainstream world is humming over the simple idea that the next version of iOS might make the device, well, better. That’s a note that Apple needs to pay attention to. As an Apple iOS user, I’d rate my overall happiness with the company lower today than it was three years ago. I’m not interested in moving to the latest version of their operating system because I no longer trust Apple to deliver a product that “just works.” That doesn’t mean I think the company’s hardware or software has become objectively bad, but OS upgrades are always a bit dicey — backing up everything takes some time and effort, and the installation process can drag out if something goes wrong.

It’d be nice to have a version of the software that actually felt like an easy upgrade path. Judging by the rumor mill, plenty of other people feel the same way.