We know that Apple is working on iOS 17. And that’s all we know about iOS 17. Since the development of operating systems happens internally in Cupertino, it is very rare that we see leaks about it. All the news usually comes to us by surprise during the opening keynote of the developer conference.
At WWDC 2023, which will take place next June and for which invitations should arrive soon, we will see the new iOS 17 presented, as well as the rest of the systems. An update that, according to Gurman, will have several significant improvements.
A change of direction for the iPhone operating system
Mark Gurman claimed this weekend that the iOS 17 operating system will have several features that users have long requested. As he writes in the latest edition of his weekly newsletter, Apple has changed its strategy during the development process to add these new features, suggesting that the update may be more significant than previously thought.
Previously, a few weeks ago, Gurman told us that iOS 17 could be a less significant update than previous updates. That would be because Apple was focusing all its attention on the new extended reality headset and also on changes to that system to adapt to the proposed changes in the new European legislation. However, now Gurman explains that during the development of the update, the strategy changed and several “nice to have” features were added, with the goal of giving us several of the features most requested by users.
“When Apple began developing iOS 17, the initial thinking was to call it a staging release, one focused more on fixing bugs and improving performance than adding new features (not unlike the approach the company took with Snow Leopard on Mac OS X in 2009). The hope was to avoid the problems of iOS 16, an ambitious update that suffered from missed deadlines and a buggy start.”
“But later in the development process, the strategy changed. Now the iOS 17 release is expected to have several “nice to have” features, even if it lacks a star improvement such as last year’s revamped lock screen. The goal of the software, codenamed “Dawn,” is to bring several of the features most requested by users.”
For now we know little more about Apple’s plans with iOS 17, but we do have some clues. One of the most important is that we expect the arrival of sideloading support and also alternative stores. Changes that come marked by the new European regulations and that will arrive, almost certainly, accompanied by support for Apple’s new extended reality helmet: the Reality Pro.
Beyond this, we can expect changes in Siri, especially now that we know that Apple is developing its own natural language processing engine and the arrival of the new CarPlay system that we already see outlined during the last WWDC.
We know little beyond this, but Mark Gurman’s simple sentence commenting that we expect to see several interesting new features and the arrival of some of the most common user requests is excellent news. A maintenance update is always welcome, but some new features to complete that tune-up even more so.
We will still have to wait a few weeks to see the new operating system in action. Then we will start the developer beta program, the public beta program and finally the system will officially arrive after the launch of the iPhone 15 this fall.
