Yes, in a much rather bizarre report, Bloomberg reports that Apple is going all in with a radical and consistent version number scheme across all of its platforms. We originally expected this year’s releases to be dubbed iOS 19, iPadOS 19, tvOS 19, visionOS 3, watchOS 12, and macOS 16, but for this year, all platforms will be dubbed by year, which in this case iOS 26, watchOS 26, and so on. Now why 26? If we look at Apple’s release schedule, Apple publicly releases major software versions every fall, and Apple continues to provide software updates through that season and into the following year. For example, we’re in the year 2025, and Apple would introduce iOS 26 this fall, and Apple will provide subsequent updates until around the summer of 2026.
I can see how this may confuse some people when it comes to referencing to iOS versions, but I believe this change will provide a lot more consistency for users to understand, especially when they have various Apple devices whose operating systems had mismatching version numbers since they were initially developed at different times (e.g. visionOS in 2023 vs. watchOS in 2015).
Believe it or not, Apple wouldn’t be the first company to feature a version number scheme identified by year. In fact, Microsoft once did it in the early decades of Windows:
- Windows 95: became publicly available on August 1995
- Windows 98: became publicly available on June 1998
- Windows 2000: became publicly available on February 2000
Furthermore, we could potentially see this versioning scheme apply to hardware-based iPhone series as well as some sources indicate (considering that car models have been doing this if you will) for potential iPhone buyers to understand which would be the latest iPhone model.
Along with the major change in the versioning scheme, this could also reflect Apple’s drastic new visionOS-inspired redesign that will finally be consistent across all of its platforms. With macOS, Apple had stuck with 10.x since the earliest days of Mac OS X (2001) until Apple switched to starting with 11 with Big Sur to reflect its redesign.
All in all, we’re less than two weeks away until WWDC where Apple is expected to introduce iOS 26 along with other platforms, so that event is going to be super exciting for sure. June 9 is to mark your calendars for.
