For me it feels like a much smaller update, which has been rumoured for awhile. Sort of like iOS 11 or OS X Snow Leopard.
It's been running very well for me so far, even macOS Sonoma, even though macOS betas are notorious for breaking things and causing fires, this one has worked perfectly for me so far.
iOS 17 has ran very well too, with the exception of a few of the new features causing the occasional respring but nothing major. Battery life has been fine and my phone is cool so that's got to count for something right?
From a core functionality perspective I'd say that it's very stable, maybe even more so than 16.5? I did get some weird resprings on 16.5 towards the end which I haven't had on stable for a long time.
Curious to hear your thoughts on it.
I remember iOS 11 very differently, one of the largest iOS updates, and one of the busiest beta periods to date. It introduced the home bar navigation style, completely revamped control center, and major auto-layout changes for the new rounded, borderless screens. So buggy it was one of the few releases I went back to 10 for until general release