iOS 12

Update: The second iOS 12.2, watchOS 5.2, tvOS 12.2, and macOS 10.14.2 betas are now available. Apple also has new betas for its Classroom apps.

Apple will be releasing the second developer betas of iOS 12.2 and watchOS 5.2 later today. On the first iOS 12.2 developer beta, we found evidence of a new generation of AirPods with voice-activated Hey Siri, the Apple News Premium subscription service, new iPads and iPod touch that could be released with this update, and many other changes and improvements.

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Apple is releasing the first public beta of iOS 12.2 later today, three days after releasing its first iOS 12.2 developer beta on Thursday.

With its first developer beta, we found evidence of a new generation of AirPods, the Apple News subscription service, new iPads and iPod touch, and many other changes and improvements. It’s likely that tvOS 12.2 public beta 1 and macOS 10.14.4 public beta 1 will also become available; we will update the post if they are released.

For customers, iOS 12.2 introduces support for the recently announced AirPlay 2 and HomeKit smart TVs while introducing a handful of other changes and improvements.

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The most significant change to Apple’s developer ecosystem this decade has been the introduction of the Swift programming language – and we’ll probably see the next big change come during this year’s WWDC with the introduction of third party UIKit apps on the Mac.

As for Swift, the new language was announced at WWDC 2014. With contributions from both Apple engineers and the open-source community, it has seen constant updates and is now in version 4.2.1.

An important aspect of Swift that has been affecting users since its first version is that its application binary interface, or ABI, is not stable. What that means in practice is that Apple can’t include the Swift language support in its operating systems, because an app written with Swift 3 won’t work with the language support binaries for Swift 4. The solution to that is to include the Swift language libraries inside the app bundle that gets downloaded from the App Store, increasing the bandwidth and storage required by the app.

That’s finally changing for Apple and Swift soon…

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Apple released the first beta of iOS 12.2 earlier this week and we’ve already highlighted a lot of new features. One small but useful feature that hasn’t yet been widely noted is more granular control of Screen Time’s Downtime feature.

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Earlier today, we reported that new iPad models had been registered with the Eurasian Economic Commission. The registration indicates that Apple plans on releasing several new iPads sometime this year. Recent reports have suggested that these may include an updated iPad mini and 10-inch iPad. We’ve also found a reference to what could be the 7th generation iPod touch. However, it doesn’t appear to include Face ID or Touch ID.

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Apple today released the first developer beta for iOS 12.2. The update is loaded with several new features and changes that are worthy of discussion. Watch our brief hands-on video walkthrough for a look at what’s new in this exciting iOS 12.2 beta update.
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Update: Developer betas are now available including iOS 12.2, watchOS 5.2, tvOS 12.2, macOS 10.14.4, and Xcode 10.2 beta 1.

Now that Apple’s bug fix beta updates to iOS 12.1 are now available to all users, it’s time for the next big point release of iOS 12. Apple will release iOS 12.2 developer beta 1 today. watchOS 5.2 beta 1 for developers is also arriving today. The software update should be available at the top of the hour. We’ll update and report back any changes that we discover inside.

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[Update: Now available (and labeled beta 2 after the initial iOS 12.1.2 beta cycle). The second macOS 10.14.3 and tvOS 12.1.2 betas are also out today. watchOS 5.1.3 beta 2 and public betas for iOS and tvOS are also available.]

Apple is releasing the first iOS 12.1.3 developer beta later today, after releasing iOS 12.1.2 earlier this week following patent claims by Qualcomm which threatened iPhone sales in China. This new beta is actually considered beta 2 because it follows the same train of the previous iOS 12.1.2 beta, but since that version number was taken by the unexpected release, Apple had to increase the patch number. The release notes only mention bug fixes, but we’ll update if anything notable is discovered on the new beta.

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iOS 12.1.1 was released to the public today, and it contains a variety of new changes, features and bug fixes. Watch our brief hands-on video walkthrough as we consider what’s new.
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Apple has today released its numbers regarding total number of devices running iOS 12. As of early October, 60% of total devices were running iOS 12 while 63% of devices introduced in the last four years were running iOS 12. According to Apple’s latest data, those numbers are up roughly 10 points now.

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iOS 12 adoption continues to steadily increase, outpacing iOS 11 by several weeks. Last year, Mixpanel recorded 75% share for iOS 11 on December 17th. iOS 12 reached the same milestone yesterday, or about three weeks faster.

Mixpanel data comes from analytics frameworks inside apps and mobile websites, logging the OS version for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices it sees in the wild …

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Apple Support has responded to a report of an exploding iPhone X – occurring immediately after being upgraded to iOS 12.1 – by stating that this is ‘definitely not expected behavior’ …

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