HouseLannister
macrumors 68040
Looking forward to seeing what Tim Cook’s impression of a “Rave” is.
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iOS 27 'Rave' Update to Clean Up Code, Could Boost Battery Life
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madmin
macrumors 6502a
It’s a difficult situation because of re-writing most of the code for efficiency would push older models out of scope.
Apple's iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system's internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
The effort is said to be similar to what Apple did with its Snow Leopard Mac update years ago, and will involve removing old code, rewriting existing features, and subtly upgrading apps to improve their performance.
The result should hopefully be a "snappier, more responsive" OS, says Gurman. Apple is also reportedly planning some interface tweaks, but nothing as dramatic as the Liquid Glass overhaul introduced with iOS 26, which will likely comfort some users.
Code-named "Rave" internally, iOS 27 will also include efficiency improvements that Apple hopes will translate into tangible battery gains for users, says Gurman. However, it's unclear whether Apple would market those improvements or simply let users discover them on their own.
Gurman says getting the software into good shape is especially important as Apple prepares to launch new device categories, including a touchscreen MacBook Pro and its first foldable iPhone, both of which are expected in the second half of 2026.
The cleanup effort comes alongside Apple's other major iOS 27 priority of improving its AI capabilities. The revamped, chatbot-style Siri that Apple announced in June 2024 has been repeatedly delayed, and some of its features are now expected to arrive in iOS 27 rather than iOS 26, reports Gurman.
Article Link: iOS 27 'Rave' Update to Clean Up Code, Could Boost Battery Life
I mean I’m no software dev but it would make sense that some of the code equivalent of clutter could be to support older devices.
If that were the case, yes streamlining iOS 27 to only run on code that’s needed and slimmed down where possible would be great for newer devices but if the clutter is for older device support too then older devices are left on iOS 26 which is not a great os to retire a bunch of devices on.
If Apple do have this predicament where iOS 27 will drop a bunch of older devices they may have to commit another year to clean up iOS 26 alongside 27.
No new features just a 26.6 and 26.7 perhaps to squash as many bugs as possible.
But yes, in its current state iOS 26 is not a good OS to retire multiple devices on.
So they've confirmed that iOS 26 is so bad that they need to dedicate an entire iOS version to just cleaning up the mess they made? Makes sense...
And of course we get the carrot-on-a-stick...better battery life.
And of course we get the carrot-on-a-stick...better battery life.
iPad os 26.3 full release has ruined my m3 iPad airs battery.
I’m stuck as to whether I push it to 26.4 beta hoping it fixes my issue or just do a full restore of the iPad.
Lloigorr
macrumors regular
You mean, Safari is getting snappier?
Apple's iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system's internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
The effort is said to be similar to what Apple did with its Snow Leopard Mac update years ago, and will involve removing old code, rewriting existing features, and subtly upgrading apps to improve their performance.
The result should hopefully be a "snappier, more responsive" OS, says Gurman. Apple is also reportedly planning some interface tweaks, but nothing as dramatic as the Liquid Glass overhaul introduced with iOS 26, which will likely comfort some users.
Code-named "Rave" internally, iOS 27 will also include efficiency improvements that Apple hopes will translate into tangible battery gains for users, says Gurman. However, it's unclear whether Apple would market those improvements or simply let users discover them on their own.
Gurman says getting the software into good shape is especially important as Apple prepares to launch new device categories, including a touchscreen MacBook Pro and its first foldable iPhone, both of which are expected in the second half of 2026.
The cleanup effort comes alongside Apple's other major iOS 27 priority of improving its AI capabilities. The revamped, chatbot-style Siri that Apple announced in June 2024 has been repeatedly delayed, and some of its features are now expected to arrive in iOS 27 rather than iOS 26, reports Gurman.
Article Link: iOS 27 'Rave' Update to Clean Up Code, Could Boost Battery Life
I have filed on a bug that was introduced in Snow Leopard every year since then, and it is still not fixed.
When Snow Leopard was released, QuickTime Player was rewritten (using 64-bit AVKit instead of old QuickTime). QuickTime Player remains the default app for MIDI files, but it just flags an error saying it can't open that kind of file.
bradman83
macrumors 68000
Since macOS 27 has already been established as dropping Intel support it makes sense that they're doing a Snow Leopard-style cleanup across all of their OSs since they all sit on the same shared Darwin/XNU foundation and share a large number of libraries between them all.
jdavid_rp
macrumors 6502a
All iPhones use the same iOS version on the same kind of hardware (ARM 64bits if I’m not mistaken) so all of them can execute the same orders so rewriting code won’t affect the compatibility.
Rewriting would be replacing deprecated functions for newer ones, rethink ways of doing things (dumb example: doing 3*3 instead of 3+3+3). That’s the same reason any iPhone can use any app (besides games that require a certain GPU power), because APIs are embedded into iOS so any iPhone has access to them.
Rewriting old code would be an issue if there were still 32 bits devices as they’re truly different in architecture to 64bit devices
Whether or not Apple really intends to improve efficiency, it is a given that they do anything to market the S#@% out of it in hopes of improving adoption rates. iOS 27 will likely get the "best-ever" battery life.
jonnyb098
macrumors 601
Yep, but for my iPad Pro M4 , iPadOS 26 in general has nuked my battery with 26.2 and 26.3 being particularly bad. I used to get 9-10 hours of screen on time now I'm lucky if I get 7.
One thing to try is turn on Reduce motion in Accessibility. It turns off all the refractions of liquid glass and makes it more frosted without the pure ugliness of using reduce transparency. Im going to test out how that works for a couple days but it seems to already be helping. Music and Podcasts are particularly bad with the battery dropping 1-2% just when launching those apps.
Last night I charged to a quick 20% and it was already nearly dead after just 30 min of use.
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That depends.
- Rewriting obj-c to swift is good because the process will identify 100s of bugs per code unit that will need to be fixed before the code will compile.
- Using developers that that are in the bottom 50% will likely cause more bugs simply because most of the developers that understood Apple code (top 50%) have probably left either for better jobs, were fired because Cook wanted cheaper labor, or left because of the poor work environment.
- Apple's strategy with code improvement is to rip out a lot of features so they can get the new release out quickly and with minimal cost. Then Apple drags out bringing the features back to parity because all of the developers are working on something else. Most Apps never get back to parity.
- The problem with Apple doing the update is that they think the current free Apps can be turned into a revenue stream. That is never going to work well because Apple's DNA (Cook) will never spend the money to make Apple Apps full featured and good quality enough to be paid for.
I guess that makes it hard to argue with Volk.JP
Instead Apple should do two things:
1. Open source the free Apple Apps so passionate developers can fix them. Better for Apple because they don't have the cost to maintain the App. Better for users because we can get the functionality they want and more reliable updates since the developers will have more passion for the App.
2. Only focus on converting obj-c to swift. Since this can be done piecemeal it does not rely on schedule. Dedicate and fund a team to just do the conversion. Probably doing this now, but they need a bigger team. Fortunately Microsoft's AI can probably help them do this. Skip the use of SwiftUI because it is still, after years, not ready for production.
jonnyb098
macrumors 601
IF they actually do that. Right now they are freaking out over all their AI not working ,which it won't since AI is actually quite stupid for what they are trying to accomplish so its quite literally a cat chasing its tail situation. So everything else is gonna suffer I fear for another year or two.
TokyoKiller
macrumors 6502
Reverend Benny
macrumors 68000
I wonder if they will try and shrink the size of the OS, it takes up a decent size installed (secondary storage) and looking at phones and iPads with 32GB and 64GB it would be nice if it shrunk a bit.
Another think is memory management. If they could try and optimize the OS for devices with 3 and 4GB of RAM.
Another think is memory management. If they could try and optimize the OS for devices with 3 and 4GB of RAM.
TFrank2
macrumors 6502
Or maybe a nod to the excitement we’ll all have once the bugs and stability issues are resolved 🤣
Frantisekj
macrumors 65816
Too late. It has to be done in v 26 especially for MacOS to leave Intel machines with solid release not lemon.
jonnyb098
macrumors 601
Gurman's full time job is to get people to subscribe and read, by drip feeding partial rumors. That's it. He was far more accurate before he went to Bloomberg. His track record went from 90% accuracy to now maybe 60% at best.
We'll see. iOS 12 was so much better than 11 performance wise that it was noticeable even from the first beta.
I got this great idea. How about no IOS 27 or 28 or even 29. How about they sit on it for a few years, polish and test the crap out of it. Then release it. And commit to releasing when it's ready, not to fill some arbitrary yearly schedule. Users don't care about the marketing and PR appeal of a new OS version, they care about their phone not crashing when checking their mail or while using CarPlay. That of course doesn't mean bug fixes and security releases.
tl;dr lets go back to the way things used to be. There was almost 3 years between Tiger and Leopard and 2 between Leopard and Snow Leopard. And between that there were point releases to improve the current releases and provide security updates.
tl;dr lets go back to the way things used to be. There was almost 3 years between Tiger and Leopard and 2 between Leopard and Snow Leopard. And between that there were point releases to improve the current releases and provide security updates.
jonnyb098
macrumors 601
This makes sense as to why we have to often wait a year or more for simple fixes to apps. They should update apps as they go instead of all these weeks/months between. It's archaic and quite stupid actually. A critical safari bug fix has to go into a X.1 or X.X.1 release instead of just using the App Store to update the app which many have done automatically.
Touchscreen MacBook? So 2000 and late. It's as retro as Cook himself. Apple is now a boomer company.
It's about time. Their software has been a dumpster fire for years.