iOS 12: New iPhone software update to leave out big features and focus on performance and security

Apple's next iPhone update is going to be a little more boring than usual – which could be good news, at least for Apple.

With iOS 12, the company is intended to focus on improving the quality of its update with new security fixes and performance gains. That will mean that new features – a number of which had been planned for later this year – will take a backseat and get pushed into next year.

The decision comes soon after a troubled couple of months for Apple. In early December, it was hit by a range of bugs on both Macs and iPhones; later that month it emerged that the company had been secretly slowing down some phones if their batteries were old, a controversy that has continued into January.

Now multiple reports suggest that the company will take this year to focus on such bugs and ensure that they are cut out before iOS 12 is released. The software will be released in the autumn as usual, but with fewer new features and more performance improvements, both Axios and Bloomberg reported.

A number of the biggest new features now won't be available until next year, reports claimed. They include changes to the in-car interface for phones known as CarPlay, a refresh of the home screen, multiplayer modes for the augmented reality features introduced last year and alterations to the photo and camera apps.

iOS 11, which was released in September, brought with it a range of new features. But some were delayed at launch, and have continued to be – neither the ability to sync your iMessages over the cloud or a payment system called Apple Pay Cash have made it to people's phones.

In the meantime, security researchers have found vulnerabilities in Macs and smart home software that could potentially allow hackers to access devices. And iOS itself has been hit by problems, including a bug that left people unable to write the letter "I".

Employees have now been told that they need to avoid such problems with the next release, and switch their focus to ensuring that all parts of the software work properly. The change in focus will also lead the new update to macOS to be more conservative, reports claimed, but updates to the Apple Watch and Apple TV will continue as normal.

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Apple has undertaken similar efforts with its operating systems before. Most famously, it released Snow Leopard, which followed after Leopard and was intended primarily as a way of speeding up and improving that operating system.

While some of the updates to its mobile operating system can be more or less revolutionary and feature-packed, there has never been any similar update to iOS. The ninth version of the operating software did focus on speeding and tightening up the operating system, but it still brought a range of new features to the iPad, which underwent a complete revamp.

Apple's latest minor update to its iPhone operating system was iOS 11.3, which has been trailed on the company's website but hasn't yet made it to the public's phones. That brings a number of changes to augmented reality, health and other features – but easily the most notable was more transparency about Apple's performance throttling features, and the ability to turn it off.