Apple is already working on the next version of the iPhone software: iOS 18. Development has reportedly experienced some turbulence, but the firm remains very ambitious.
After an iOS 17 that is a little light on new features, but which clearly prepares for the future, Apple seems to be more ambitious for its next version expected in 2024. Mark Gurman, journalist for Bloomberg was able to obtain some information on the tracks of this new version.
The era of AI at Apple?
According to the journalist, Apple has worked hard to catch up with Google and OpenAI in the field of generative AI. It’s one of the biggest trends in the smartphone space, and if Apple adopts it, it will undoubtedly be here to stay.
A bit like for the Apple Watch in 2023, Apple would not be banking on many new features for the iPhone 16 and would therefore mainly want to impress with the release of iOS 18.
At this stage, we do not yet know what might be new in iOS 18. Apart from the arrival of AI, we can also hope for a graphical update of the interface. Today iOS no longer fully corresponds to the interface elements presented by Apple in other systems such as that of the Apple Vision Pro. It has also been several years since the firm last touched the aesthetics of its operating system. A graphic redesign generally makes it possible to impress and give a new impression when the new iPhones are launched.
How is iOS developed?
Mark Gurman also reveals that Apple took a break from the development of iOS 18 to fix bugs in the first internal M1 version of the system.
The journalist explains that generally a version of iOS goes through four internal versions, M1, M2, M3 and M4, before the presentation at WWDC in June and the launch of the beta. Each of these stages takes approximately 6 weeks of development, four to add features and two to fix bugs.
With the one-week break in the development of iOS 18, Apple allocated a few extra days to better refine the M1 version before moving on to the development of M2. However, this should not, at this stage, have too significant an impact on the development of the update or its release date.
So we just have to wait to find out more about iOS 18. It’s interesting to imagine Apple jumping on the AI train. Like social networks or Internet research, this is a specialty that does not entirely fit into the historical domain of the firm. She generally prefers to wait longer for a technology to become mature before adopting it.
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