Apple is going to announce iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, tvOS 26, watchOS 26 and visionOS 26 at WWDC 2025. But why?
Apple’s Big Software Redesign will be Accompanied with a Change in How it Numbers its Operating Systems
A new report by Bloomberg says that Apple is going to mark the major redesign of its operating systems with completely different version numbers.
Instead of following the conventional order (iOS 19 after iOS 18), Apple is going to give its operating systems version numbers based on the upcoming year they are announced; hence, iOS 19 will be called iOS 26, macOS 16 will be called macOS 26 and so on.
The interesting thing here is, Apple has actually done a thing similar to this before – skipping a very particular number.
Remember there was no iPhone 9 at all, and Apple went straight to iPhone X instead? This seems like a similar pattern where the company wants to avoid using the number ‘9’ completely in its operating system.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPhone ’19’ ends up being called something else entirely.
What really weirds me out is how Apple is planning to do this so that it does not create confusion among developers and customers. I’m just going to leave this one here and not comment on it at all.
But the thing I like here is how all operating systems will finally have a unified version number, which is great.
WWDC 2025 is shaping up to be extremely interesting in many ways. I just hope Apple brings everything back on track and focuses a ton on stability.
