[jryio]

There are not 8 major versions between iOS 18 and iOS 26. Apple skipped the monotonously increasing version numbering system since iOS 1 during WDDC 2025 to adopt a year suffix based versioning system.

iOS 17, then iOS 18, then iOS 26, then iOS 27.

You're not the only party confused.

[bix6]

Haha thanks! Good to know they are on years now. Back to random version numbers in 5 year? :p

[sunnybeetroot]

How is increasing by 1 every year random? :P

[happymellon]

At some point they will decide to release two versions in a single year and have figure out how to distinguish them.

It's inevitable because they decided on year, and Murphy's law dictates that'll they will encounter this problem.

[reactordev]

Semver has always been king

[skygazer]

Edit: Oop, I misread! Right, yes, the change up was arguably not entirely boring. Some people were excited at least.

Originally: To be the annoying pedant, version numbers did still monotonically increase, even with the gap, because each version is >= to the last. The mono means a single direction, not a step size of one.

[ticulatedspline]

to be an even more annoying pedant. they technically said "monotonously" not monotonically, though skipping to 26 still seems pretty monotonous.