While anticipation is built for the Annual Conference of Apple World Developers (WWDC) on June 9 will be held in the United States, the upcoming changes in the company’s range of products continue to surface, feeding additional excitement.
In a recent article on X, Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman revealed that in this year’s WWDC, Apple plans to rename all of its operating system overhaul by replacing the version numbers with suffixes based on the year.
“Apple will announce its greatest software dismissal to WWDC, linked to the redesign of the operating system. Apple goes from version numbers to years (like Windows in the 90s). The New Oss: iOS 26, iPados 26, MacOS 26, Visionos 26, TVOS 26, Watchos 26,” said Gurman in a position on Thursday.
This will be part of the overhaul of the major software which should be revealed at the conference. The new brand image will come alongside the updated user interfaces between Apple operating systems, aimed at creating a more coherent experience as users move between devices. In -house “solarium” internally, the updated design will extend to Tvos, Watchos and parts of Visionos.
“Apple brings change to bring consistency to its brand image and move away from an approach that can be confusing for customers and developers.
The main difference in Apple’s new name strategy is that, like car manufacturers, it plans to use the coming year to label its current software versions. Thus, although the next wave of operating systems should take place around September 2025, they will be marked as 2026 editions.
Currently, Apple devices such as iPhones and Macs use version numbers like iOS 18.4.1, macOS 15.4.1, TVOS 18.4.1, Watchos 11.4 and Visionos 2.4.1.
Did Apple learned that from his peers?
The latest strategy of named Apple Echoes approaches previously adopted by Samsung Electronics Co. and Microsoft Corp. In 2020, Samsung renamed its flagship range of Galaxy S to align with the launch years, jumping from the Galaxy S10 in 2019 – obtaining the 10th generation – to the Galiny S20 for its operations to the major. Windows 95, followed by Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
Meanwhile, Apple’s counterpart in the space of the mobile operating system, Google, initially appointed its Android versions after desserts in alphabetical order, starting with cupcake (Android 1.5). This tradition continued through Android 9 (PIE), but in 2019, Google went to a simpler digital name system – starting with Android 10 – Cite comments according to which dessert names were often clear or culturally unknown to its world users.
Apple, however, adopted an approach similar to the denomination and grouping in the past with its productivity and creativity software. For example, in August 2007, he introduced iWork ’08 and Ilife ’08 – marking a passage from version numbers to the brand based on the year. This allowed users to more easily identify the most recent versions of the software. The strategy continued with Ilife ’11, published in October 2010. These beams included key applications such as pages, figures, Keynote (for iWork) and Iphoto, Imovie, Garageband (for Ilife), and the name of name helped to strengthen the idea of annual refreshments linked to specific years.
The expected passage from Apple to the name of the operating system based on the year at WWDC seems to rely on this same logic: simplifying the monitoring of versions while unifying the software experience on all platforms.
What should else change?
As part of future changes, Apple should offer the iPad an experience more of Mac type, which makes it potentially more practical for office work. The company also opens its AI models to third-party developers, allowing them to access the basic technology behind the Apple Intelligence platform. The other new features expected this year include a live translation mode for AirPods and the Siri voice assistant, as well as an option to scroll for the vision pro helmet. In AI space, Apple will develop health -related features and a battery management mode powered by AI. Additional updates can also include a new bidirectional Arabic-English keyboard, a digital calligraphy pen for Apple Crayer users and a dedicated application for games on Apple devices.
