Ahead of WWDC, Apple hits its ‘dead cat’ moment

What’s a company to do when it faces a multitude of existential crises and seems unable to regain control of the media message? It throws a few dead cats on the table to distract everybody.

This aeons-old approach to public relations has recently been rechristened as “flooding the zone” — and it is what I think Apple is doing as news surfaces that it plans to announce a change to the way it names its operating systems in June at its big developer event, WWDC.

That means we won’t ever see iOS 19 but will see iOS 26 instead.

It also means:

A new Apple OS order

iPadOS 26

macOS 26

tvOS 26

visionOS 26

watchOS 26

homeOS 26

You can see the pattern, I hope. The 26 refers to the main year in which an operating system exists, which is a little confusing, as it means we need to look forward to iOS 27 (et al.) in 2026. 

I don’t think there’s anything particularly contentious about this change: it’s great for me, as it makes it far less likely I’ll use an incorrect OS version number in my work. But for Apple it’s led to a tidal wave of reports around the decision, and while not all of those are positively spun, the fact that the yarns are being worked at all restores some of Apple’s control over the narrative.

Existential threats

That’s a degree of media management the company needs, given that almost every other story being written about it at this time involves tariffs, regulation, or its problems with artificial intelligence. Even its bigger stories that should have been good news are delivering unexpected results — for example, what should be seen as huge success in pivoting its manufacturing to India is being seen through the lens of nativist US regulation and tariffs. 

Also in politics, Europe’s regulators seem to want to turn Apple regulation into a weapon for use in negotiations over US trade. And in the background, the company’s former Chief Designer Jony Ive’s move to get to work on new devices with OpenAI raises all the ghosts of Expos past.

What’s Apple to do? Well, right now it can’t ask Siri for comfort, but maybe that will change next year — and we don’t want people paying too much attention to AI, do we?

Apple certainly doesn’t seem to want to discuss any of these challenges too much. The decision by Apple executives not to take part in John Gruber’s traditional WWDC ‘talk show’ represents a company whose leaders feel the need to manage the messaging. Apple has participated in these conversations for a decade, so the change is noteworthy.

Waiting for the sun (in the Solarium)

That Apple chooses these moments just before WWDC to use its official unofficial news and speculation reporters at Bloomberg to share news about the future of its operating system names represents something similar.

First, it gets people talking about something else in the here and now.

Second, it begins to set relatively low expectations for Apple’s big developer event. The operating systems will get a facelift (Solarium) designed to make them all work a little more similarly, the iPad will gain tools to make it more Mac-like, and Apple will adopt a new nomenclature culture for its operating system names.

What is Solarium? This is a UI update that changes the look of icons, menus, windows, buttons, and more. The idea is to deliver a consistent visual interface across all the devices, intentionally a little translucent like sitting in a glass-walled room dappled by sunlight. Which sounds nice, and probably also means rounder icons, floating controls, spatial depth, and visual cues strongly reminiscent of visionOS 1.0. 

Prepare for more shocks

Will any of this be enough for Apple to regain control of the narrative? I don’t think so.

There’s an outside possibility that Apple will introduce exciting digital health tools and maybe other services that provoke deep interest. But, assuming these do not transpire and Solarium is the hot spot for WWDC, then I strongly suspect Apple will play for time (and control of the media narrative) by throwing a few more dead cats into the ring — at least until Siri is at last capable of telling it when to stop. 

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