About two months after the Cupertino giant released iOS 17, reports suggest that iOS 18 is already in the works and Apple fans can expect some major upgrades in the new 'ambitious and compelling' version of the operating system.
When iOS 18 will be released at Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) event around June next year, Apple will be hoping to attract customers by equipping the iPhone models with generative AI features in a bid to catch up with Google and OpenAI, says Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman claims that iPhone 16 models won't have any major hardware upgrades, so it's important that Apple will focus on the software parts. Pointing out the recent weeklong halt in the development of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 and watchOS 11 due to quality-related issues, he said Apple Head of
Software Engineering Craig Federighi had tasked engineers will be busy fixing the glitches during this period.
However, Gurman believes that the delay won't result in the postponement of iOS 18 launch but he doesn't rule out the possibility of Apple struggling to address last-minute issues ahead of release.
Apple had previously put a halt on iOS development in 2019 to iron out bugs in a major overhaul and the situation got out of hand that even on launch day the new iPhone 11 models were plagued by the glitch-ridden iOS 13.
There are typically four six-week milestones before the June announcement and right now iOS 18 has completed the first cycle, M1 (not to be confused with Apple's M1 chip). The first four weeks deal with features while the last two focus on bug fixing. Now, the M1 cycle got extended to its seventh week ahead of the M2 cycle.
