The Apple rumor machine cranks into gear for iOS 19

WWDC event marketing intensifies, and as we head toward that event in a little over two months, it looks as if we’re being told to expect a new paint job (aka user interface change)s for iOS.

But will those tweaks really be enough to move the needle on flatlining iPhone sales?

Is Apple concerned in case these changes don’t impress? Is there any reason the big names in Apple rumor all jumped into this freshwater pool of speculation at more or less the same time, like synchronized swimmers?

Somewhere in the Apple Universe there must now be a place where all rumors go to die. There must also be at least one place where they all get created in the first place.

Across the universe

If you’ve been watching Apple over the last few years, you will have seen that the vast majority of its news announcements all seem to get leaked in advance, with a tiny minority of tales that never get officially teased but could still happen. I’ve not added it up, but I now think that the number of times any given Apple speculations are shown to be false can probably be measured on one hand. Even the rumors that don’t happen in one time frame turn true later. 

The connection between speculation and fact seems so strong it’s hard not to think Apple is planting at least some of these rumors to seed speculation. Well, it’s that, or at some high-level point within Apple there is a civil war going on and rumor has become a weapon to undermine company leadership. Apple is made up of some of the most talented and competitive people on the planet.

Perhaps controlling click bait is just another string to the company bow?

It is also quite amusing that Apple has managed to carve out a global reputation for secrecy at the same time as leaking just about every step it takes. Can both things be true?

Words like rain

Speculation is such fun; however, this is what we’re currently being told to expect in iOS 19  – and, no, it’s not about AI. 

Changes across the interface might include:

A more rounded aesthetic (no, I don’t know what that really means, either).

Glassy reflective surfaces.

An interface similar to visionOS for apps, buttons, and more.

A new interface for the Camera app — again, more in tune with visionOS.

A sense of what it looks like in existing tools, including the new Apple Sports and Invites apps.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has previously promised iOS 19 will be the “most significant upgrade” in years, and now says the latest crop of speculation misses key details and Apple has even more planned.

I certainly hope so. I imagine one surprise might be the addition of more Accessibility options, potentially including gesture and movement-based controls bought over to iOS from visionOS. We know these work on Apple’s headsets; can some also logically work on iPhones? Accessibility isn’t just about doing the right thing at Apple; again and again, the tools Apple provides there end up feeding into its products, too.

Change my world

It is also interesting how much of the work Apple did on visionOS is now feeding outwards across the company — Apple Intelligence is, after all, now run by the former leaders of Vision Pro development, and if the ideas they had around user interfaces are now to be deployed across the rest of the company’s products then this reflects the importance of spatial computing to Apple’s future.

However, if all Apple is promising does turn out to be some slight user interface changes, then 2025 may yet go down as a slightly fallow year. That’s going to hurt Apple financially, though it’s big enough to take a little headwind; it may still benefit it in the long term with more time to bring Apple Intelligence up to speed. A few months in calmer waters could also give Apple’s teams a little breathing space as they prepare the biggest iPhone redesign yet.

But no doubt we’ll know all about all of these announcements well before they are officially announced, thanks to the Apple speculation machine.

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