By: Nick Gambino
Apple releases new operating systems for each of their devices every year. We get a familiar but new version of iOS, iPadOS and MacOS with cool new features. They even send out regular updates in the intervening months. But every few years they decide to shake things up and redesign the whole thing. It looks like the next overhaul on design is coming real soon.
Sources who work at or with Apple told Bloomberg that the company is tooling away at a total redesign that will launch as iOS 19, iPadOS 19 and macOS 16 later this year.
We haven’t seen a complete iPhone software overhaul like this since iOS 7 was released back in 2013, according to Bloomberg. As for the Mac, this will be the biggest change since macOS Big Sur in 2020.
The new OSes will include brand-new buttons, icons, menus, windows, the works. The main goal here is to more properly align all of the different platforms so the Apple environment feels cohesive across the boards.
They will reportedly use the visionOS as their jump-off point. This is what Apple is using in the new Vision Pro mixed reality headset. While it’s not the most popular hardware product in their inventory, Apple would like it to be. By aligning everything from your iPhone to your iPad to your Mac with the headset, that’ll help.
Apple has been hit-or-miss on their software design choices over the years. For example, their new Photos app that launched with iOS 18 on the iPhone is atrocious. I get what they were going for, but this never should have made it through beta. It is harder to navigate and doesn’t allow for multitasking within your Photos library.
If these rumors of a complete OS redesign are true we’ll hear at least a little about it at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) over the summer. If they decide to scrap the redesign or push it to a later year, then we won’t even get a glimpse of it at WWDC. They usually use the June event to hype everyone up for the upcoming releases in the fall.
