I can't weigh in on Apple's internal process, but that explanation you quoted from the article is far from convincing to me. In fact, having been in the industry for a very long time, it makes the whole article smell pretty naive.

It's _extremely_ unlikely that Screen Time went from nothing to launch in nine months. It's a deceptively complex feature that requires support throughout the OS as well its own foreground and background components. Between product design, prioritizing, development, and testing, they'd probably been exploring the idea for several _years_ before that shareholder pressure appeared.

Did they maybe rush the work out early because of the growing pressure? I'd buy that. To me, being pressured to rush it out would even explain some of the rough edges discussed in the article without having to assume Apple was reluctant.

I can't know if I'm right, but neither can you or the article's authors. It turns out that there are quite a few ways to make sense of all the facts that are out there, and any final conclusions we draw probably just emerge from our own biases.

Do you actually think Screen Time, a feature with deep, pervasive integration all through the operating system, was completed in 9 months?