Report: WWDC interface overhaul will be ‘more widely felt’ than iOS 7

Macworld

Apple will kick off its WWDC keynote in less than two weeks, and we’ll get our first look at the upcoming new versions of Apple’s operating systems: iOS 19, macOS 16, and iPadOS 19, which have been rumored for months to be getting significant redesigns. Now Mark Gurman claims that the new look won’t just be limited to Apple’s biggest products.

According to his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman reports that tvOS and watchOS “will both be redesigned to match their more popular siblings,” while visionOS gets “some adjustments” as well. That means all of Apple’s interfaces are due to a noticeable change, the first time Apple has ever brought such wide, sweeping changes to its products.

Apple has been criticized for failing to deliver several of the biggest Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18, most notably the revamped Siri. Gurman says Apple won’t deliver “any AI breakthroughs” at WWDC, so the star of the show will be the new design. Code-named Solarium, Gurman says it “is slicker and more modern” by adopting elements from visionOS. He says “consistency and unification across the operating systems” will be a major theme of WWDC.

Apple hasn’t introduced a major interface change to iOS since iOS 7, when Apple ditched skeuomorphism and moved to a flatter design. It’s unclear whether this redesign will be as drastic, but Gurman says it “will be much more widely felt” than a mere visual change.