The iPad and iPhone are growing apart. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge
Apple has confirmed that iPadOS 16.0 won’t be getting a public release and that the tablet-centered OS won’t be coming out until after iOS starts hitting phones. In a statement to TechCrunch, attributed only to “the company,” it said: “we have the flexibility to deliver iPadOS on its own schedule. This Fall, iPadOS will ship after iOS, as version 16.1 in a free software update.”
Despite Apple traditionally releasing iPadOS and iOS together, it’s always felt like this decoupling was a possibility ever since Apple split out the iPad’s operating system as a separate entity in 2019. (And indeed, the first version of iPadOS released as 13.1, less than a week after iOS 13’s messy initial rollout.) Still, it’s a pretty big change of pace for…
