Apple's Fall Software Updates Will Let Apps Run on iPhone, iPad, and Mac [Report]

Although Apple is shifting its focus to improving the quality of its software, it still has some key features planned for release this fall, reports Bloomberg.

The company is planning to allow a single set of apps to work across iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It's reportedly working on a Digital Health tool to show parents how much time their children have been staring at their screen and it's making improvements to Animojis, popular animations that are controlled by your face.

Unfortunately, the renewed focus on quality will delay some features as well, including redesigns to the Home screens of the iPhone, iPad and CarPlay; as well as, a revamped Photos app which can suggest which images to view.


Engineers are being given more discretion to push back features that aren't ready. Instead of being kept on a relentless annual schedule, Apple will focus on the next two years of updates.

“This change is Apple beginning to realize that schedules are not being hit, stuff is being released with bugs – which previously would not have happened,” when Apple was a smaller company with fewer engineers, customers and devices to manage, says one person familiar with the company.

Under the previous system “inevitably, some things will be late because you underestimated how long it would take. Some things have to be cut, some things have to be rushed. It's the result of having thousands of people working on the same schedule.”

Apple next iOS update will likely be called iOS 12 and it's codenamed 'Peace'. The next update to macOS is internally known as 'Liberty' and will likely be macOS 10.14. Notably, the ability to run iOS apps on macOS could mean that we'll see Apple bring some of its own apps to the Mac, including the Home app.


Apple is expected to bring Animojis to iPad with the launch of a new model that features Face ID. It may also integrate Animojis into FaceTime, letting people put virtual faces over themselves during video calls. The company is looking at updating FaceTime with support for multi-person video conferencing; however, that may not be ready for this year. Additional iPad software upgrades aren't expected until 2019 but they include a feature that would let you run several windows in one app and click between them like tabs in a web browser and a feature that lets two screens from one app run side by side. New features for the Apple Pencil and a toggle in the email app to mute notifications for a thread have been pushed back.

Still expected this year is a redesign of the Stock app and an updated version of Do Not Disturb that gives users more options for automatically rejecting phone calls or silencing notifications. Apple is also working to integrate Siri into the iPhone search view, redesigning the interface to import photos onto an iPad, and making it possible for several people at once to play augmented reality games.

More details in the full report linked below.

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