Snippet: iPadOS 16 Delayed to 16.1 ☇

Brian Heater for TechCrunch:

In a comment to TechCrunch, the company notes, “This is an especially big year for iPadOS. As its own platform with features specifically designed for iPad, we have the flexibility to deliver iPadOS on its own schedule. This Fall, iPadOS will ship after iOS, as version 16.1 in a free software update.”

In other words, Apple will be skipping the iPadOS 16.0 release in the fall and going straight to 16.1. This means the first version of iPadOS 16 will ship to non-beta users after the arrival of the first iOS version. It seems likely the two 16.1 releases will arrive at — or around — the same time, though Apple hasn’t confirmed the speculation. The move is unique, but not unprecedented, for Apple software releases.

This confirms rumors and if it means that a few more bugs will be worked out, I’m fine with it. In general, I’d actually like to see Apple slow down its release cycles for software (maybe stretching every major release out over 2 years and the .5 release going with the new mid-cycle iPhones) just to work out bugs and let the software mature. We’ve been wanting a “Snow Leopard” moment for years on iOS and iPadOS and this could be the perfect excuse to slowly get to that point.

A fun bit of trivia, iOS 4 was released on June 21, 2010 as 4.0 for iPhones, followed by September 8, 2010 as 4.1 for iPod touches. The iPad finally joined in with 4.2.1 on November 22, 2010. It’s not unheard of to have a longer cycle for software releases—and the contemporary Mac OS X Lion wasn’t released until July 20, 2011.