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iOS

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This article is about the mobile operating system developed by Apple. For the router/switch OS developed by Cisco Systems, see Cisco IOS. For other uses, see IOS (disambiguation).

iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPod Touch; it also powered the iPad until the introduction of iPadOS, a derivative of iOS, in 2019. It is the world's second-most widely installed mobile operating system, after Android. It is the basis for three other operating systems made by Apple: iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It is proprietary software, although some parts of it are open source under the Apple Public Source License and other licenses.[10]

iOS

Commercial logo as used by Apple, since 2017

Screenshot

iOS 13 running on an iPhone X

DeveloperApple Inc.Written inC, C++, Objective-C, Swift, assembly languageOS familyUnix-like, based on Darwin (BSD), iOSWorking stateCurrentSource modelClosed, with open-source componentsInitial releaseJune 29, 2007; 13 years agoLatest release13.7[1] (17H35)[2] (September 1, 2020; 12 days ago) [±]Latest preview14.0 beta 8[3] (18A5373a)[4] (September 9, 2020; 4 days ago) [±]Marketing targetSmartphones, tablet computers, portable media playersAvailable in40 languages[5][6][7][8]Update methodOTA (since iOS 5), Finder (from macOS Catalina onwards)[9] or iTunes (Windows and macOS prior to Catalina)Platforms

ARMv8-A (iOS 7 and later)ARMv7-A (iPhone OS 3 – iOS 10.3.4)ARMv6 (iPhone OS 1 – iOS 4.2.1)

Kernel typeHybrid (XNU)Default user interfaceCocoa Touch (multi-touch, GUI)LicenseProprietary software except for open-source componentsOfficial websitewww.apple.com/ios/Support statusSupportedArticles in the seriesiOS version history

Unveiled in 2007 for the first-generation iPhone, iOS has since been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPod Touch (September 2007) and the iPad (January 2010). As of March 2018, Apple's App Store contains more than 2.1 million iOS applications, 1 million of which are native for iPads.[11] These mobile apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times.

Major versions of iOS are released annually. The current stable version, iOS 13, was released to the public on September 19, 2019; it brought user-interface tweaks, a dark mode, a redesigned Reminders app, a swipe keyboard, and an improved Photos app. iOS 13 cannot be used by devices with less than 2 GB of RAM, including the iPhone 5s, iPod Touch (6th generation), and the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which as of June 2019 made up more than 10% of iOS devices.[12] The latest preview and beta version is iOS 14 beta 8, released on September 9, 2020.[13]

Contents

History

See also: IOS version history

First iOS logotype (2010–2013)

 

Second iOS logotype (2013–2017)

 

Third iOS logotype (2017–present)

In 2005, when Steve Jobs began planning the iPhone, he had a choice to either "shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod". Jobs favored the former approach but pitted the Macintosh and iPod teams, led by Scott Forstall and Tony Fadell, respectively, against each other in an internal competition, with Forstall winning by creating the iPhone OS. The decision enabled the success of the iPhone as a platform for third-party developers: using a well-known desktop operating system as its basis allowed the many third-party Mac developers to write software for the iPhone with minimal retraining. Forstall was also responsible for creating a software development kit for programmers to build iPhone apps, as well as an App Store within iTunes.[14][15]

The operating system was unveiled with the iPhone at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 9, 2007, and released in June of that year.[16][17][18] At the time of its unveiling in January, Steve Jobs claimed: "iPhone runs OS X" and runs "desktop class applications",[19][20] but at the time of the iPhone's release, the operating system was renamed "iPhone OS".[21] Initially, third-party native applications were not supported. Jobs' reasoning was that developers could build web applications through the Safari web browser that "would behave like native apps on the iPhone".[22][23] In October 2007, Apple announced that a native