Apple has adjusted the early development schedule for iOS 28 and its other next-generation operating systems, providing engineering staff with additional time to investigate and construct fresh capabilities.
The upcoming iPhone and iPad software is codenamed Bell. macOS 28 is known internally as Poppy.
Apple traditionally runs development through three major milestones—M1, M2, and M3—each lasting eight weeks. Typically, those phases consist of four weeks dedicated to writing code and four weeks devoted to convergence, during which functionalities are merged into the platform. For this cycle’s first milestone, engineers instead spent six weeks coding, exploring ideas, and developing features, followed by two weeks of convergence, as reported by MacRumors.
Employees say they like the change, indicating it creates more time for coming up with ideas and exploring them before needing to lock things in.
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg
The extra time does not mean Apple has added two weeks to its overall development schedule. Rather, the enterprise is allocating a greater portion of the current timeframe to constructing features and a lesser portion to integrating them into a functional build of the platform.
Gurman stated in his newsletter that the company changed how it builds its 2027 operating systems, applying the six-week coding and two-week feature convergence format to iOS 28, iPadOS 28, and macOS 28.
Thus far, the adjustment has only been documented for the initial milestone and has not been established as a fixed routine for every phase.
The second milestone begins Monday, November 9, when Apple will start finalizing which features to include. Work on the 2027 software is currently proceeding in parallel with Apple’s testing of iOS 27.3 and iPadOS 27.3, whose initial developer preview builds were released on November 3.
The revised development process comes as Apple considers a broader overhaul of Siri and a more ambitious future for its AI capabilities. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is investigating an agent-style Siri capable of pursuing tasks on a user’s behalf.
Gurman previously pointed out a feature shown at WWDC 2026 as Apple’s first truly agent-like iOS feature, which involves software analyzing passwords saved to a user’s Apple account, identifying weak or compromised credentials, and going from website to website to change them.
While Apple works toward moving Siri in an agent-style direction, Gurman noted in his November 8 newsletter that the company could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year. At the same time, Apple’s John Ternus has been publicly positive about the company’s AI progress while privately asking his management team to accelerate development plans.
Following Giannandrea’s failure to fulfill Apple’s artificial intelligence goals, he assumed leadership of Siri and successfully launched a poorly functioning version of the assistant within a brief timeframe. Based on its established annual schedule, the iOS 28 update is expected to be previewed at WWDC in June and released publicly around September.
Earlier coverage: iOS 27.3 Beta: Standby Mode Expands to iPhone 11 and Later
