AppleOS Is Coming

One operating system to rule them all.

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WWDC fast approaches and the news Apple is going to re-label all its version numbers to the post-year of their release. Think iOS ‘26 instead of iOS 19, just like EA Sports brands their annual game updates. Alongside this is a more unified visual identity between products. But what if Apple is going one better and unifying all its operating systems into one?

Apple’s biggest rival on the market is Android. Able to flexibly switch between a phone, watch, handheld or desktop environment Android has found a home across a whole swathe of products. Whilst the merits of this practice are perhaps left for another day it does mean that companies can deploy it knowing that existing apps need little modification.

From the first day of its reveal, the then iPhoneOS 1.0 shared a codebase with MacOS. This meant that the first iPhone was in many ways a Mac in the shape of a phone, with familiar apps like Safari and Mail. Once the App Store was launched it meant developers could build apps using their Mac coding skills.

iOS has now been modified into different ‘forks’, pathways into new products. WatchOS, VisionOS, tvOS and iPadOS are all built on the groundwork of the iPhone. In fact developers can already deploy a single binary (that is, working app) that supports all these platforms from one file. Why then do…