As whinged final week, I’m not anticipating a lot at WWDC 2025 this June. I’m sick of Apple Intelligence and depressed by the chance it is going to dominate the dialog for a second yr in a row. However there’s one other potential subject that scares me much more: the rumored iOS 19 redesign.
The truth is, the diploma to which Apple will revamp iOS’s look (and doubtlessly navigational parts) this yr is the topic of some dispute. Final month leaker king Mark Gurman described iOS 19 as “the most important redesign since iOS 7,” and predicted that controls, icons, buttons, even “person interface dynamics and mechanisms” would all be altered to attain higher consistency between iOS and macOS. That’s earlier than we even get to system-wide glassy results and “rejiggering some purposes for a brand new era of customers to higher perceive.”
That sounds fairly main. However Jon Prosser, who’s extra of a leaker jester, promptly confirmed off alleged screenshots of iOS 19 and insisted that the modifications wouldn’t quantity to very a lot in any respect. And Gurman responded to that response by saying the screenshots weren’t consultant and that the working system wasn’t completed but. All of it turned somewhat tit for tat. Is iOS 19 altering radically, or is it staying primarily the identical? Proper now we don’t know.
Personally, I hope it’s the latter. Relating to working system interfaces, the means by which we navigate tech units each day, sudden radical change is mostly a nasty thought. It ought to solely occur when it completely has to.
Take that iOS 7 replace talked about by Gurman, a less-than-positive expertise for the overwhelming majority of iPhone customers. WWDC would possibly appear to be an enormous deal to members of the Apple media advanced, however most iPhone house owners didn’t watch the keynote that summer time and didn’t know what was coming. Therefore, the whole aesthetic overhaul, full with new app icons and garish colour palette, got here as a horrible shock, and search visitors for phrases like “how to return to iOS 6” spiked on Macworld for weeks afterwards. It didn’t assist that focusing a lot on the broad design language meant elements like productiveness and movement illness went unconsidered, however the appears to be like alone would have ensured a combined reception regardless.
We are able to debate about whether or not it was a greater or worse design than iOS 6 (and do keep in mind that the preliminary launch was particularly garish, and was toned down in later variations), however above all, it was totally different: radically, all of a sudden, and disconcertingly totally different. When an interface is totally different it’s laborious to get issues performed as a result of all of the signposts you employ to orient your self have modified. You turn into sluggish, cautious, fearful. It’s like being a tech beginner yet again. It’s disempowering, no less than within the quick time period.
It’s believable, in any case, {that a} machine may need an interface revamp six years after launch. It might be nearly unattainable to get every little thing proper first time, and the context for 2007’s first-gen iPhone, a groundbreaking new machine for early adopters, was very totally different from 2013’s iPhone 5s, which offered 9 million items in three days. However an enormous interface revamp now, a full 18 years into the product’s lifecycle? That will be insanity.
In the long run, in fact, it might be argued that iOS 7’s modifications have been obligatory and optimistic. Cellphone OS’s unique design language— created for a much less digitally literate period that enjoyed note-taking apps to appear to be bodily notepads—had since outgrown its objective. iOS 6 lately now appears to be like oddly quaint, like a historic artifact and the design rules established by iOS 7 have turn into omnipresent since its 2013 arrival. iOS 7 gained, and all of us have to talk its language. Apple might have dealt with the transition extra sensitively, however skeuomorphism’s time had run out and alter was obligatory.
But when Apple feels it essential to rebuild the very foundations of iOS at this stage, my first three questions would all be variants of, “Oh God, why?” however my fourth query could be “Why didn’t you do that years in the past? Like, perhaps in 2013, while you have been altering issues anyway.” As a result of as dangerous as main interface change may be, it’s an entire lot higher than repeated main interface change.
Nonetheless, it may not be as dangerous as I’m making out. If Jon Prosser is true and Mark Gurman is fallacious, we needs to be trying as an alternative at mild iterative change, which is the one type of change an working system of this age ought to undergo. Which is able to unlock Craig Federighi to spend most of WWDC25 speaking about Apple Intelligence, and permit me to sleep in peace.
The one drawback is that this depends on the accuracy of a person who as soon as claimed Apple was going to rebrand iOS as iPhoneOS, and acquired one other prediction so badly fallacious that he needed to shave off his eyebrows. So you possibly can most likely see why I’m not trying ahead to WWDC.
Foundry
Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which incorporates all of the Apple information you missed final week in a helpful bite-sized roundup. We name it Apple Breakfast as a result of we predict it goes nice with a Monday morning cup of espresso or tea, but it surely’s cool if you wish to give it a learn throughout lunch or dinner hours too.
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