Front Page Tech on a New UI Style for iOS 19, Back on January 17

Jon Prosser, in a YouTube video with mocked-up animations showing exactly what he’s talking about, 51 days ago:

Today we have your very first exclusive look at the changes coming to iOS 19 — with a redesigned camera app and possibly ... a redesigned iOS.

Basic idea is something very much akin to the look and feel of VisionOS, but brought to the Camera app, and perhaps throughout the entire system (or just parts of it) in iOS 19. Seems cool, seems fresh, and seems aligned with where Apple has been heading.

Here’s Parker Ortolani, himself a talented designer with a particularly keen eye for trends, writing on his blog February 4 after Apple Invites debuted:

The rumored Apple Invites app has arrived. While I obviously haven’t had much time to play with it, I have quickly browsed through the UI and wanted to share some observations. The last new Apple app, Apple Sports, already felt out of place in iOS 18. It has a more visionOS or watchOS-like design language utilizing colorful backgrounds, glassy floating UI elements, expanding buttons, and lots of layered shapes. Apple Invites takes it all even further. It’s got big beautiful cards, translucent cells, big bold buttons, and an emphasis on content. It feels so clearly like a hint of what is to come in a future iOS update. It’s almost screaming it in our faces. It seems awfully suspect that Apple’s two latest apps have a whole new design language that does not mesh with the rest of the OS.

Now comes today, with Mark Gurman dropping this vagueness at Bloomberg:

The revamp — due later this year — will fundamentally change the look of the operating systems and make Apple’s various software platforms more consistent, according to people familiar with the effort. That includes updating the style of icons, menus, apps, windows and system buttons. As part of the push, the company is working to simplify the way users navigate and control their devices, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been announced. The design is loosely based on the Vision Pro’s software, they said.

That’s it. No screenshots. No mockups. No specific description of the changes. Just “loosely based on the Vision Pro’s software”. Jon Prosser not only said this was coming, but commissioned full, realistic animations to illustrate it, 51 days ago. And astute observers like Ortolani and others have observed, for over a month, that Apple itself is starting to hint at this new design language in its own already-shipping new apps for iOS.

I’m so old I remember when YouTubers made videos about months-old Gurman stories, not the other way around. There’s weak sauce, and then there’s eating paste.

★ Monday, 10 March 2025