This Week in Apple: Reworking the system

Apple flips the board on OS numbering and gets its game on. Then, Tim Cook gets some help from the system.

What’s in a number?

Hang on to your hats because your nicely ordered list of Apple operating system releases is about to get all messed up again.

“No iOS 19: Apple Going Straight to iOS 26”

Yes, Apple is hurtling over the integers from 19 to 25 in favor of having release numbers match the last two digits of the year. It’s only been a quarter of a century and we have already forgotten the lessons of the Y2K bug. Sucks to be you, iOS users 75 years from now.

This is, of course, a bit of a hassle for developers, but in the long run it makes some sense. Also, it’d be nice if they went back to animal names instead of places in California but I’m not holding my breath.…