Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
With WWDC 2025 on the horizon, the iOS 19 leaks are starting tomorrow come thick and fast. FPT’s Jon Prosser has been leading the charge with these visuals, but other high profile sources like the Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the leaks don’t match what he’s seeing and hearing. But, What if EVERYONE is right? (Oh, and we’ll talk iPad and MacOS later too)
Watch Jon's full video here: youtu.be/YGI8sZqWEl0?si=bNq8_05WiPlDyW20
So it looks like right now, iOS 19 is set to get the biggest visual overhaul since iOS7, which was not at all controversial and I think we can all agree that there’s two things iPhone users hate. A stale looking operating system, and change. Though I have to say, I prefer iOS7 over the weird skewmorphism every day of the week, and as great as Apple’s San Fransisco font family is, Helvetica Neue Ultralight is just peak. Helvetica will never be toppled.
The early mock-up have shown the same rounded squares that we currently have, while other sources said we’re getting round icons - and then in the last builds we’re seeing, they’re kind of more round squares… with a more pronounced radius and pretty close to circles.
Those versions of the icons though are hidden in these early versions of iOS 19, so at a glance they’re the standard icons, for example if an engineer is in the wild testing, but when tapped they reveal the new shape. BUT. I said everyone could be right. How?
Well, right now when you pop into the customise options for your Home Screen and go past the light mode, the correct, or dark mode, auto which is just for indecisive people and all the way to Tint like an absolute monster, you’ll see a couple of sliders that appear for the colour and the saturation. What if there was a third there that was just Radius?
It does feel like we’re due an overhaul again though, all our devices will feel fresh and new overnight and that’s joyful. I’m also super excited to see what changes we get to iPadOS and MacOS though too - and we’ve had a couple of clues that something I suggested years ago may be happening too.
Have you heard the whispers about iPad getting a “little more Mac like” and potentially getting a menu bar when connected to the Magic Keyboard and trackpad? It’s a strange change to make, and it certainly would be odd without a trackpad, but are you ready for my hypothesis? As I said in the past, iPad won’t run MacOS, but I think it WILL run MacOS Apps.
Let’s just consider, iPads in general are now running the same chips as Macs, the Pro and Air iPads run the exact same M3 and M4 chips, and the lower end iPads use the same cores, but just with less of those performance cores comparatively. So we know the cores can handle it and process the same instructions - it’s just that iPad OS hasn’t had all the core technologies and frameworks that the Mac does. And I don’t think they’ll add them all either. We’re not making the iPad into a Mac.
But my theory is that we could well see a system like Catalyst which allows iPad and iPhone apps to run on the Mac, but working the other way. Essentially a software wrapper that grabs any dependencies that the App will need but isn’t a part of iPadOS, and also modifies things like the MacOS traffic light buttons that aren’t needed on an iPad.
And in terms of the Menu Bar, it does make sense for those Mac apps when you have a trackpad, but I don’t see you only being able to use these apps fully with that accessory, so without the keyboard attached, I could see just an Apple logo in the top corner where it would be on the Mac, but a little bigger, which tapping will give you all the menu bar headings in an iPhone Settings style list, then you tap into each for those layered menus. That way it’s not quite a quick, but still works with the meat styluses that we all have just as Steve Jobs hoped.
We’ve also heard about Stage Manager 2 coming to iPad, which I couldn’t be much less excited for, first because I have an iPad mini which doesn’t use stage manager, and second because its such a car crash that I wouldn’t even if I could. Does stage manager 2 mean full Mac like window management on iPad? Maybe, but even the biggest iPads have a smaller display than the smallest Mac, and a less precise input system so it would still be horrible. In my humble opinion. But, perhaps Apple will absolutely blow me away and I’ll eat my words.
Not holding my breath though. Let me know what you’re most excited for at WWDC in the comments, thanks to the extremely sexy patreons, and I’ll see you in the next one.
How I record the Podcast? Riverside fm. Support the show by using my link if you're signing up :)
icavedave.com/riverside
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With WWDC 2025 on the horizon, the iOS 19 leaks are starting tomorrow come thick and fast. FPT’s Jon Prosser has been leading the charge with these visuals, but other high profile sources like the Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the leaks don’t match what he’s seeing and hearing. But, What if EVERYONE is right? (Oh, and we’ll talk iPad and MacOS later too)
Watch Jon's full video here: youtu.be/YGI8sZqWEl0?si=bNq8_05WiPlDyW20
So it looks like right now, iOS 19 is set to get the biggest visual overhaul since iOS7, which was not at all controversial and I think we can all agree that there’s two things iPhone users hate. A stale looking operating system, and change. Though I have to say, I prefer iOS7 over the weird skewmorphism every day of the week, and as great as Apple’s San Fransisco font family is, Helvetica Neue Ultralight is just peak. Helvetica will never be toppled.
The early mock-up have shown the same rounded squares that we currently have, while other sources said we’re getting round icons - and then in the last builds we’re seeing, they’re kind of more round squares… with a more pronounced radius and pretty close to circles.
Those versions of the icons though are hidden in these early versions of iOS 19, so at a glance they’re the standard icons, for example if an engineer is in the wild testing, but when tapped they reveal the new shape. BUT. I said everyone could be right. How?
Well, right now when you pop into the customise options for your Home Screen and go past the light mode, the correct, or dark mode, auto which is just for indecisive people and all the way to Tint like an absolute monster, you’ll see a couple of sliders that appear for the colour and the saturation. What if there was a third there that was just Radius?
It does feel like we’re due an overhaul again though, all our devices will feel fresh and new overnight and that’s joyful. I’m also super excited to see what changes we get to iPadOS and MacOS though too - and we’ve had a couple of clues that something I suggested years ago may be happening too.
Have you heard the whispers about iPad getting a “little more Mac like” and potentially getting a menu bar when connected to the Magic Keyboard and trackpad? It’s a strange change to make, and it certainly would be odd without a trackpad, but are you ready for my hypothesis? As I said in the past, iPad won’t run MacOS, but I think it WILL run MacOS Apps.
Let’s just consider, iPads in general are now running the same chips as Macs, the Pro and Air iPads run the exact same M3 and M4 chips, and the lower end iPads use the same cores, but just with less of those performance cores comparatively. So we know the cores can handle it and process the same instructions - it’s just that iPad OS hasn’t had all the core technologies and frameworks that the Mac does. And I don’t think they’ll add them all either. We’re not making the iPad into a Mac.
But my theory is that we could well see a system like Catalyst which allows iPad and iPhone apps to run on the Mac, but working the other way. Essentially a software wrapper that grabs any dependencies that the App will need but isn’t a part of iPadOS, and also modifies things like the MacOS traffic light buttons that aren’t needed on an iPad.
And in terms of the Menu Bar, it does make sense for those Mac apps when you have a trackpad, but I don’t see you only being able to use these apps fully with that accessory, so without the keyboard attached, I could see just an Apple logo in the top corner where it would be on the Mac, but a little bigger, which tapping will give you all the menu bar headings in an iPhone Settings style list, then you tap into each for those layered menus. That way it’s not quite a quick, but still works with the meat styluses that we all have just as Steve Jobs hoped.
We’ve also heard about Stage Manager 2 coming to iPad, which I couldn’t be much less excited for, first because I have an iPad mini which doesn’t use stage manager, and second because its such a car crash that I wouldn’t even if I could. Does stage manager 2 mean full Mac like window management on iPad? Maybe, but even the biggest iPads have a smaller display than the smallest Mac, and a less precise input system so it would still be horrible. In my humble opinion. But, perhaps Apple will absolutely blow me away and I’ll eat my words.
Not holding my breath though. Let me know what you’re most excited for at WWDC in the comments, thanks to the extremely sexy patreons, and I’ll see you in the next one.
How I record the Podcast? Riverside fm. Support the show by using my link if you're signing up :)
icavedave.com/riverside
Join the conversation
iCaveDave.com/twitter
iCaveDave.com/facebook
iCaveDave.com/instagram
iCaveDave.com/youtube
iCaveDave.com/merch
iCaveDave.com/discord
