Report: Apple to shift it’s operating system branding
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg wrote the following post on X:
“NEW: Apple will announce its biggest ever software rebrand at WWDC, tied to operating system redesigns. Apple is moving from version numbers to years (like Windows in the 90s). The new OSs: iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, visionOS 26, tvOS 26, watchOS 26.”
I am 100% in favor of this. Apple’s current operating system branding is all over the map with macOS at 15, watchOS at 11, visionOS at 2, and iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS all at 18. Making it all year-based will make all of the version numbering consistent, and will also make it much easier to remember what was released when. Personally, I hope this all coincides with getting rid of the marketing names for macOS (Big Sur, Sonoma, Sequoia, etc.) in favor of just numbers.
At first blush, it might seem weird that Apple would go with 26 given that these releases will be announced and shipped in 2025, but I think it’s a bit like the convention for releasing the next model year car this year. And after all, if these releases ship in September, they’ll be the current release for much more of 2026 than they will be of 2025.
Now if I’m getting really greedy, can we get rid of “macOS” and return to “Mac OS?” A man can dream…
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As an Apple Photos coach I think the switch to a uniform OS naming system makes a lot of sense. It will be another floppy disk or Lightning port debacle for a few months, but in the end it will make everything much more manageable for both support and for the end users. On the macOS/iOS naming, though, I’m in favor of staying the course. The OS designations have a nice graphic style and honor Apple’s history of thinking different. In the same way, I like the place naming scheme (much more than the cats) and the implied connection to California culture. Who knows how long they can run that out, but for those of us who lived through the platform wars, it creates a memorable historical journey that sequential numbers alone do not.