Apple will be hosting this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) soon, and one of the expected announcements is an overhaul for the company’s operating systems. Apparently, part of this change will include a new numbering system for the software versions.
A new report by Bloomberg claimed that the next Apple operating systems will be identified by year. The publication’s sources stated that the successor to iOS 18 will not be iOS 19, but rather iOS 26. In the same vein, the next iterations of the company’s other operating systems will be known as iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26 and visionOS 26.
According to the report, Apple is making this change to make its branding more consistent. The new naming scheme should also prevent confusion among consumers and developers. At the moment, the company’s operating systems do not use the same numbers as the initial versions debuted at different times.
This naming strategy is not exactly a novel idea, as other companies like Microsoft have named their products according to the year of release. However, it is worth noting that Apple’s approach to this naming convention differs slightly as the numbers match the following year, and not the current one. This is likely because the first public versions of the operating systems are typically launched late in the year.
