The American corporation Apple is planning the most significant change in the names of its operating systems. It concerns their numbering.
Bloomberg writes about it, citing sources.
The following operating systems of Apple devices will be identified by the year of release, not by the version number. The current iOS 18 will give way to “iOS 26”. The other updates will be iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26.
Apple is making these changes to align its branding and abandon an approach that could confuse customers and developers. The current operating systems, such as iOS 18, watchOS 12, macOS 15, and visionOS 2, have different numbers because their first versions did not debut simultaneously. The company plans to announce the changes at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9.
The updated strategy resembles Samsung’s and Microsoft’s approaches. In 2020, Samsung changed the naming system of its flagship Galaxy S smartphone, linking it to the year of release, which is how the Galaxy S20 was born. The previous model, released in 2019, was called Galaxy S10 and was the tenth generation. Microsoft followed a similar path back in 1995 when it began naming its operating systems by the year of release – first Windows 95, then Windows 98, and Windows 2000.
However, the difference between Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft is that Apple will use the following year, not the current year, to name its operating systems. This is what car manufacturers do when promoting their cars. If Apple keeps this strategy, the next set of operating system releases will have “27” in the name.