In an effort to enhance the build process for Ionic applications, significant updates have been made to the @ionic/app-scripts package, particularly transitioning from Rollup to Webpack 2 as the default bundler due to challenges with the former. The changes aim to simplify the build process, reduce complexity for developers, and improve performance with Angular 2 features like Ahead-of-time compiling and NgModules. The Ionic team acknowledges the initial difficulties faced by developers during the transition and is committed to improving documentation and error message quality in collaboration with the Angular team. They encourage developers to update their tsconfig.json file to align with the latest version and promise ongoing improvements to reduce build times, enhance source map quality, and better support Progressive Web Apps. The Ionic community's feedback has been invaluable during this process, and the team is focused on delivering a seamless, powerful development experience.