IOS 18 was quite important when it was launched last fall. Although a large part of what Apple has announced when he previewed, the software update would not arrive on the first day – and some of these features are still missing today – iOS 18 was still a leap forward for Apple.
And it is even if you subscribe to the opinion that many AI features included in the update were Apple’s attempt to make up for his rivals.
We start to hear the first rumors on iOS 19, and from the sound of things, Apple expects to splash for the second consecutive year. Only, this time, it seems that the company rethinks iOS (and its other operating systems for the iPad and Mac) to make the entire Apple ecosystem more similar.
It’s great: iOS has had the same appearance for some time, and it could be the right time for a new look. But other rumors that Apple Intelligence does not obtain any significant update with iOS 19 concerns me with Apple priorities.
A redesign could be a great victory for iOS 19
Since the creation of Apple, design has been one of the things that society is proud. It doesn’t matter whether we talk about hardware or software, mobile or office – Apple wants its things to look and feel good.
Things have still not played this way, like the famous butterfly keyboards or everything Newton was supposed to be. But as a whole, Apple did a good job to make elegant and desirable products.
It has been almost 12 years since we saw really significant changes in iOS.
But you can’t always keep things the same forever. Simply ask the fashion industry. Finally, you come to the point where you have to revise everything and adopt a new look.
The rumor is that Apple will do it with iOS 19, and other Apple operating systems, so that all the different corners of the apple ecosystem are more alike. More specifically, Apple would have been inspired by visionos, the software supplying the Apple Vision Pro helmet.
So we can see iOS become a little circular. According to Bloomberg Mark GurmanThese changes probably affect “icons, menus, applications, windows and system buttons”. In fact, Gurman claims that it will be “one of the most dramatic software revisions in the history of the company”.
If you remember the 2013 animation of the original “skeuomorphic” design of the first iPhones with a current look, it was not an easy task. iOS 7 was controversial Due to the quantity of things that has changed, and even if we can be used to this look now, many people were not satisfied at the time.
So say that the IOS 19 overhaul will be even greater than that which suggests that we are for something explosive. This is probably suitable, since it has been almost 12 years since we saw significant changes in iOS.
The new design cannot be done at the expense of features
Although software rumors are not always as common as hardware rumors, even when Apple is involved, it is a little worrying that we did not hear much else about what iOS 19 will imply.
This lack of details is particularly worrying now that Mark Gurman wrote that Apple “will not include significant modifications for consumers made to Apple Intelligence” as part of the iOS 19 update.
Admittedly, Apple still retains on Apple Intelligence. The highly anticipated updates of Siri’s capacities are always incoming. Last year at WWDC 2024, Apple announced that Siri would have more personalized touches, acting more as a real AI than to the voice assistant by signaling.
These changes included responses in natural language, the ability to understand the personal context, an awareness of what is on your screen at a given time and the ability to perform actions in the application on your device. These are all things that had to happen in iOS 18.4, but have since been delayed at an indefinite moment.
Although this has not been confirmed, I would expect these features to arrive at one point in the IOS 19 life cycle, which is at any time before September 2026. And it is not ideal, given the big case that Apple made on the features last June.
The fact is that, even if a brand new design will shake iOS 19, it cannot be the only thing that Apple has to offer this year. Even if Apple only offers basic quality of life updates – similar to the approach adopted by Google with Android 15 – it would be better than nothing. Without these updates, the iOS 19 risks fall into the same traps as iOS 7.
And the problem gets worse if Apple Intelligence really falls on the edge of the path, as the above rumors seem to suggest it.
Do not make an apple intelligence the new Siri
If you look at what Google has done with Android in recent years, you will notice that AI has always played a role in the conversation. For as long as I have been looking at Keynotes Google I / S, there have been questions about artificial intelligence and automatic learning improving various aspects of the software.
Naturally, it exploded a few years ago with the launch of Google Gemini. The Google chatbot and the different other AI models that it has in development now play a more active role in the presentation of E / S. It is undoubtedly one of the largest parts of the speech, with Google presenting how it did AI in the 12 months that followed the last conference.
It is fair to say that Apple was late at the party with Apple Intelligence, and there was a lot of catch-up to do when these first features of AI were announced at WWDC 2024. In this spirit, it is important for Apple that it continues to relaunch momentum and does not let Apple intelligence become a reflection after there.
After all, that’s exactly what happened to Siri. At the time he was released, the vocal assistant seemed revolutionary. Then Apple spent the next 13 years ignoring Siri more or less and its potential. Siri was held in place, as Google and Alexa have exceeded its capacities – in particular in the AI era.
Although Apple’s first priority is to really make the many Apple intelligence promises that it made last year, it still has to think about the future of Apple Intelligence. It is necessary to do more to add AI AS APPLE in the future in the future, even if it only implies small doses.
In addition, taking into account the speed with which the development of AI has progressed during the two years and more since the launch of Chatgpt, Apple cannot afford to take a year of leave. The less he does on the AI front, the more he gives in to competitors like Google and Openai.
Given the end of the end of Apple in the launch of its own AI efforts and the importance of technology, the company cannot leave the new interface of iOS 19 Being an excuse to ignore Apple’s intelligence.
