iOS 18

Apple's upcoming iOS 18 software update could be "the biggest" in the company's history, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. iOS 18 is expected to be announced at Apple's annual WWDC event in June.

"I'm told that the new operating system is seen inside the company as one of the biggest iOS updates - if not the biggest - in the company's history," Gurman wrote in his latest Power On newsletter. "With that knowledge, Apple's developer conference in June should be pretty exciting."

The news comes a few months after Gurman reported that Apple hopes iOS 18 will be its most "ambitious and compelling" update in years.

Although the latest report doesn't go into specifics, Gurman has previously reported that Apple plans to launch a newer version of Siri that uses a new AI system. Apple is also expected to roll out new features that will improve how both Siri and the Messages app can auto-complete sentences and ask questions. Additionally, Apple Music is expected to get auto-generated playlists, something that Spotify introduced last year.

Apple is said to be looking at integrating generative AI into development tools like Xcode, to help developers write new apps faster. In addition, Apple's productivity apps like Pages and Keynotes are also expected to get generative AI updates.

iOS 18 could also bring RCS support, but what is RCS? The RCS standard, or "Rich Communication Services," is an initiative by the GSMA to be the successor to SMS and MMS. Apple announced back in November that it plans to add support for the RCS standard to iOS in 2024. At the time, Apple said it believed "the RCS Universal Profile will provide a better interoperability experience compared to SMS or MMS". The major reversal follows public pressure on Apple to add RCS support to iPhones. It's worth noting that while Apple plans to adopt RCS, it has confirmed that messages sent from an Android user to an iPhone will still be displayed in green bubbles.

We're still four months away from the big iOS 18 reveal, so we may learn more about the software update as we get closer to the official announcement over the next few months.