The IRS has to approve of any software updates before they are included in TurboTax. That does not happen until about mid January. They consider what laws have changed and make sure that the software is using the correct rules for the current year. What gets released in November is just something to help get started but TurboTax is really not very functional until mid to late January.
The programmers review all changes in the laws. They write new code. They send that code to the IRS and get it approved, then it is put into an update.
