At WWDC24 last month, Apple unveiled new features for its operating systems that will be released this fall. However, technology is always looking to the future, and as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports, Apple has “officially begun work on the major operating systems of 2025,” even before the operating systems the company just revealed have even hit the shelves.
Gurman says the operating systems Apple is working on have the following code names:
- iOS 19/iPadOS 19: Luck
- macOS 16: Encouragement
- watchOS 12: Nepali
- visionOS 3: Discovery
(Notably missing from the list is tvOS 19, but that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t working on it. It likely means Gurman didn’t discover that codename.)
Codenames sometimes have hidden meanings. For example, the codename for Mac OS System 7.5 was Capone (probably a reference to gangster Al Capone) in response to Windows 95’s codename, which was Chicago. And often, companies choose a theme for their codenames, such as colors, historical locations, or countries. But Apple’s codenames for next year’s operating systems seem random.
But maybe not. Apple will probably develop Apple Intelligence features, so maybe there will be a connection between AI and “Luck” and “Cheer”: they will work so well that you will clap every time you use them, and you will feel lucky to have them! Discovery, well, that could mean a lot of things. Maybe Apple will make a big deal with the Discovery channel to make its content a major part of visionOS, or maybe it will have a bunch of features that will make you feel like an astronaut!
The Nepali name for watchOS 12 is interesting because it has been reported that Apple is using beach names for its watchOS codenames. Lighthouse was the codename for watchOS 10, and there are Lighthouse beaches in California and Florida. The codename for watchOS 11 was Moonstone, and there are a few beaches with the same name. I haven’t been able to find a beach named Nepali, but there is Napili Beach in Hawaii, although Apple may be referring to Ngapali (pronounced “Napally”) Beach in Myanmar.
More seriously, we don’t know what these codenames mean, or even if they have any meaning. It seems possible to associate them thematically with their features, but as Gurman points out, “it’s way too early to tell what the actual features will be.” We’ll have to wait until June 2025 to find out.
