Gurman: Apple to Overhaul iPhone, iPad, and Mac UIs

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported today that Apple will soon unveil a “dramatic software overhaul” for its iPhone, iPad, and Mac platforms to take them simpler and more consistent with each other.

The new user interfaces will represent the biggest changes that Apple has made to these systems since iOS 7 in 2013 and macOS Big Sur in 2020. Apple will announce the changes at its WWDC event in June–no doubt hoping to take everyone’s minds off the delays in the conversational Siri it promised at WWDC 2024–and then ship them in iOS 19 and iPadOS 19 (which Gurman says are collectively code-named “Luck”), and macOS 16 (code-named “Cheer”).

There have been rumors of a massive Apple user interface shift since the debut of its Vision Pro spatial computing headset in 2023. And Apple watchers have pointed at two of its most recent new apps, Sports and Invites, as examples of a new design aesthetic that may point at the broader changes coming across the impacted platforms.

According to Gurman, the new user interfaces “go well beyond a new design language and aesthetic tweaks.” They are “loosely based” on the Vision Pro’s software, VisionOS, and will more closely resemble that system–which features circular icons, simplified windowing, translucent navigation panels, and a more prominent use of 3D and shadows for depth–than is the case today. The design is being overseen by Alan Dye, who joined Apple in 2006 and became the company’s vice president of human interface design in 2012, under Johnny Ive.

Apple still plans to keep the three platforms separate–or, in the case of iOS and iPadOS, separate-ish, I guess–instead of “merging” them, in part because Apple feels this results in better products and in part because customers would have less incentive to buy multiple devices if they all ran the same software.