Apple Intelligence in iOS 18
The launch and development of Apple Intelligence and other iOS 18 features could impact iOS 19, due to engineers working on the AI push.
Apple’s development of features for operating systems usually reaches a crescendo with their introduction in a major fall release. However, the amount of work still being carried out in iOS 18 could cause problems for iOS 19.
In a post to X, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claims he continues to “hear that the gradual rollout of features across iOS 18 to iOS 18.4 is leading to delays of some features scheduled for iOS 19.”
With engineers tied up on iOS 18 projects, including the intensive work on Apple Intelligence, this means they aren’t working on projects for the iOS 19 release, Gurman adds.
In turn, the long iOS 18 engineering slog will also lead to “a long term rollout of features next cycle as well,” with Apple’s teams fighting to catch up. To users, this could translate into more features being announced for iOS 19, but a longer wait before they actually get implemented in the operating system.
Gurman doesn’t directly mention Apple Intelligence, but given that the bulk of the new features in iOS 18 are associated with it and its extended rollout period, there’s little else the continued work could refer to.
While this is a rumor based on one source, it is something that is entirely believable. Slips in development are extremely common thought the software industry, both for single-run software launches and more regular updates like operating systems.
Bigger slips also have the potential for features to miss an intended release date, or even an entire version. Slips are practically a fact of life for developers, and something that is constantly battled.
For Apple, the risk is in missing out on adding enough new features or other improvements to iOS 19 that it becomes a lackluster update to users. However, with users fairly used to the idea of features arriving months after launch, this shouldn’t be a massive problem for Apple to deal with.
Even with this risk, Apple does have a well-established development process and cycle, which it has previously demonstrated it can adapt to meet its needs.
In late October 2023, Apple stalled development of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and its other major 2024 updates for a week. It was later explained that it was a week of debugging, in a bid to make the releases as bug-free as possible.
In 2019, after observing software glitches after an iPhone launch, Apple made a series of development procedure changes. This also occurred after Apple had to postpone several features destined for iOS 12 to arrive in iOS 13 instead.
