Apple halts iOS 18 development while working on gen-AI for iPhones: Report

The delay is not expected to postpone the release but might give Apple less time for last-minute glitches

Apple has reportedly halted development work for upcoming software updates, including iOS18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 and watchOS 11. According to Apple analyst Mark Gurman, head of software engineering Craig Federighi has decided to freeze the development work on the company’s next major software updates last month due to quality-related issues.

Gurman says that the American tech giant is planning to compete with the likes of Google and OpenAI by bringing generative-AI-based features to iPhone and other devices. He adds that the iPhone 16 will not have any major advances in terms of hardware, thus requiring the next major iOS version to be more effective.

The report also said that Internally, Apple’s senior management considers the upcoming operating system as ‘ ambitious and compelling’ with new features and design changes.

The reported delay has given Apple an extra week to fix bugs and glitches within the development cycle and is not expected to postpone the ultimate release of the software. However, it might give Apple less time at the end of the development cycle to eliminate last-minute glitches.

Apple generally announces new software and releases beta versions for testing at Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and the iOS 18 version is expected to follow the same pattern before rolling out next year.

Recently, it was also reported that Apple has started testing spatial video on the iPhone 15 Pro models with the iOS 17.2 beta update. According to some news reports, the new beta update for iOS 17.2 adds a new feature for recording spatial videos on the iPhone 15 Pro models that can be viewed in the Photos app. The spatial recording can be enabled from the Camera section in Settings by toggling on the ‘Spatial Video for Apple Vision Pro’ option under camera formats.