Comment by JoachimS
I see this sentiment sometimes, but don't buy it. What I do buy is that customers, as well as investors expect the company to keep developing new products, create new releases and version. To drive sales.
Companies don't build things to motivate having developers - Remember they are the "cost center", while sales are the creators of value. The developers are a necessary burden and would be axed as soon as they don't provide what is needed.
Old products are boring. New products are interesting. Customers likes new thing. Media writes about new things, even writes negatively if updates are slow to come.
Compare to cars, skis, tennis rackets even dishwashers, new coke, new christmas special of somesuch not the same as last Christmas. Things that have new models every year or season, every six months etc. We create newness, not because it is really needed, but it drives sales.
Moving to a once a year makes Apples products guaranteed to get buzz, sales repeatedly. And investors can predict when that will happen. All are happy. Almost.
I believe that sentiment to some extent. As soon as you establish an org, they will keep generating projects for themselves. Almost no manager will tell you that their work is complete and it is time to downsize their team. If you have an UX team with N people, the team will make sure to generate workload for N people, probably even more.
On top of that, managing a huge redesign is a great career opportunity for everyone involved. The incentives are simply stacked in favor of doing redesigns for their own sake all the time. You need a clear minded top level manager to stop these kinds of ideas.