Apple is relying on an “ambitious” iOS 18 release to lift up what could be an underwhelming series of hardware updates for next-year’s iPhone 16.
That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman who provides more details on why Apple briefly shut down feature development in order to deal with a larger number of bugs than usually present within the very first version of iOS 18.
In his weekly Power On newsletter, the well-connected reporter says this year’s update has to be “extra impressive” considering “the iPhone 16’s hardware won’t have any major advances next year.”
So, Apple is “banking on” iOS 18 to pick up the slack. Considering iOS 18 will be available for the iPhone 15 range (and 14, 13, 12 and probably 11), it’s unclear how this will sell the iPhone 16, unless there are some features exclusive to that hardware.
Gurman writes: “In light of that, Apple is treading carefully, which helps explain the recent delay. By pausing work on iOS 18 — along with iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11 and other next-generation operating systems — engineers could spend a week focused exclusively on rooting out glitches.”
He says ensuring this solid base, that’s as bug free as possible, will allow the company to work towards a more groundbreaking iOS 18 update that will enable the company to catch up with Google’s generative AI advances.
He has been told by sources to expect an “ambitious and compelling” update bringing major new features and designs, as well as big performance and security boosts.
So, rather than worrying about the pause in development to sort out these bugs, it could actually enable the most eye-catching iOS update in years.
Of course, there’s still a long way to go until we get our first look at the software. Apple won’t take off the wrappers until June next year at WWDC.
