Apple would possibly really ship my solely ‘iOS 19’ characteristic request

I love Mark Gurman’s scoop that Apple plans to introduce iOS 26, not iOS 19, alongside version 26 of macOS, visionOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It’s a different flavor of the same solution I thought about a few months ago but thought might be too much of a reach to share.

The problem is obvious: version numbers are not.

Case in point:

iOS 18

iPadOS 18

tvOS 18

watchOS… not kidding. I’d need to look this up to be certain. 11, right? Series version plus one? What a formula.

macOS… same deal. Sequoia, though, right?

visionOS 2 (nailed another one!)

Evidently, I’m capable of remembering iOS as well as which systems use the iOS version number. Apple’s rumored system of assigning 26 to each system will work well for me.

I had a similar idea but never shared it because it made more sense for next year.

My thought was that Apple should switch all systems to the iOS number next year, when iOS 20 would have been the new version. Why not this year? Twenty sounds cooler and less random than nineteen.

When I was toying around with this idea, my next thought was: “Wait, why wait? Apple could just skip 19, iPhone 9–style, and jump to 20 this year!”

That’s when I realized I would probably lose the audience and my colleagues.

“Let me get this straight. You want Apple to skip over years of macOS, watchOS, and visionOS version numbers and just go to 20? And just to have the same version numbers this year, you want Apple to skip iOS 19? And you want other people to think this thought too?”

I even had a concept headline: My only iOS 19 feature request is that Apple calls it iOS 20. Fun!

I figured the solution was too silly, unlikely, and just better saved for floating next year.

If Apple does what Mark Gurman reports is being planned, though, it beats my thought process anyway. Neatly reflecting the year ahead in which the OS versions will be most current is an even tidier way to remember them.

No more having to work from 2013 being mostly iOS 6, the version that was current when I started at 9to5Mac, when thinking about which year saw which iOS version.