At WWDC in June, Apple will continue to announce new versions of its operating systems for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. (There may also be updates for Vision Pro, but that’s another story.) All of this is very important for software developers who will be learning about new system features available for their apps, but software developers It may be a little bland for some people. Owner of the device. However, this year everything looks like it’s going to be a lot more exciting.
Bloomberg reporter Mark Garman says in the Q&A section of his latest newsletter that the iPhone’s impending iOS 18 software update could be the biggest in the device’s history.
“I’ve heard internally that this new operating system is considered one of the biggest iOS updates, if not the biggest, in company history,” he said.
What that hugeness actually means is less clear at this point. Garman promised to provide more details in due course, but kept the exchange brief. But fortunately, we already know quite a bit about how iOS 18 will be a very big deal, or as Garman put it in his November, “ambitious and compelling” I know. RCS cross-platform messaging support will be introduced in iOS 18 and will revolutionize interactions between iPhone and Android owners. Apple is only doing this reluctantly, but as I’ve explained elsewhere, this is a win for almost everyone, including Apple fans.
As for the ill-fated Siri, which we’ve criticized time and time again, the release of iOS 18 could be the moment when it finally starts to pull its weight. While it may seem like the company has been ignoring Siri for years, behind the scenes it’s been working on an extensive AI strategy that’s expected to bear fruit, especially with improvements to Siri’s performance. . Generative AI in particular could be a game-changer for beleaguered voice assistants.
June is still more than four months away, but pre-launch software products are subject to change with much less notice than hardware due to supply chain shortages. In other words, Apple’s plans may still change. But most experts predict June’s WWDC will be a big event for iPhone owners. Although the “what if” seems resolved, we are interested to know more about the “how.”