Things still aren’t looking good for Apple’s iOS 19 update

Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

The latest version of iOS 18.2 rolled out to (most) iPhone users yesterday, and it brought with it a slew of new features that fans have eagerly waited for. These include Visual Intelligence for iPhone 16, Genmoji, and Image Playground. However, this slower rollout of iOS 18 features is having an impact on development times for its next iteration, and that means iOS 19 might be delayed.

There have been whispers of delays before, so this doesn’t come as a huge surprise — particularly when you think about how the production flow at Apple usually goes. In a Threads post, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said: “I continue to hear that the gradual rollout of features across iOS 18 to iOS 18.4 is leading to delays of some features scheduled for iOS 19. That will lead to a long-term rollout of features next cycle as well. Engineers are stuck working on iOS 18 projects when they’d usually already be on to the following OS.”

Experience tells us that iOS 19 would probably go into beta around June 2025, with a release in fall of that year. Most of the major features are included upon release, but that wasn’t the case with iOS 18; users had to wait until iOS 18.1 before Apple Intelligence was accessible, and even then, many of its features weren’t yet available.

Apple

It’s beginning to look like some of the features intended for iOS 19 might not be ready in time, which could result in the OS being delayed or following a similar release pattern as the current version. If iOS 19 releases in fall of 2025, then some of its biggest features might not show up until early 2026, in the same way that iOS 18.4 won’t drop until April 2025.

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Apple’s delays are becoming frequent, with headlining features pushed back more and more often. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; a longer release road map means more consistent feature drops throughout the year and less crunch for the developers, but it also means that perhaps it’s time for Apple to drop the yearly release schedule and instead focus on finishing features before announcing them.

There have also been reports that Apple is developing its own server chip designed to speed up Apple Intelligence calculations, and we know that work on the iPhone 17 is underway. All of these different projects could be dividing Apple’s attention and contributing to the delays in their own way, but despite all of this, we know that the iPhone 17 and a new OS are in development.