Report: macOS redesign is coming, but not this year

In the latest version of the paid edition of the Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple has OS redesigns in mind. The company is focused on one for iOS 18, which will debit this summer at WWDC. Gurman also reports that a macOS redesign is in the works, too.

However, the iOS 18 facelift is Apple’s priority (as usual), and the macOS one won’t be ready for WWDC. More likely, it’ll be introduced within the next two years. Since the macOS redesign has just begun, no specifics are provided as to what the redesign will entail. Apple last redesigned macOS with Big Sur in 2020, which would be more than five years old when this new design overhaul is expected to arrive.

Apple’s approach isn’t surprising–it’s what the company has done over the past several years. iOS takes the lead, and then Apple incorporates many of the ideas developed there and implements them into macOS. So once iOS 18 is released, we’ll get an idea of what could be coming to macOS. Gurman specifically claimed that Apple isn’t looking to bring visionOS’s design language to iOS but he didn’t mention whether the headset’s circular design elements would be coming to macOS. Vision Pro and the Mac are very closely aligned due to the ability to share screen via a virtual display, so it’s possible Apple looks to unify the two interfaces.

However, let’s hope Apple takes this opportunity to put the iOS-ification of macOS into perspective. Sometimes the carry overs don’t work as well as they could–the System Settings redesign introduced in macOS Ventura is one example. While using iOS-inspired elements can work in macOS, Apple needs to remember that people use the Mac in a much different way than the iPhone, and the UI needs to reflect that.

Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor