The counterpoint is that doing these releases means having to roll out 100 changes at once instead of trickling them out continuously

The reason people hate upgrading is half "losing features", half "everything breaks". Imagine if they rolled out changes continuously?

I don't want even more updates to apply. It's a nuisance. And most of the time they don't make things better for me in any appreciable way.

Yeah, Win 10 and Arch Linux are poster children for "everything just works".

well... Chrome updates all the time (version 50 now, can you believe it?)

I haven't used Win 10, but even Win 8 was pretty good for me (crashed less than Sierra + the new MBP).

... but you also get people like us fawning to find out 'whats next' and the associated big press hype that accompanies such an event..