Most years around this time, Apple chatter is focused solely on two things: the new version of iOS set to be unveiled at WWDC in June, and the new iPhone models that will debut a few months later in September. In 2020, however, things are a bit different. For the first time since 2016, Apple is expected to announce its first new iPhone model of the year in March rather than September, as it normally does. That’s right, Apple fans are finally about to get the followup to the iPhone SE that they’ve been craving for so long. We’re still not sure if it’ll be called the iPhone SE 2, iPhone 9, or something entirely different. In fact, the latest rumor suggests it’ll surprise us all and just be called “iPhone,” which would be quite interesting. Whatever Apple ends up calling it, all that matters is it’ll be a new iPhone with modern specs, Touch ID, and pricing that’s expected to start at just $399.
Apple is expected to unveil the new iPhone at a press conference in late March ahead of a release date in early April. Once that happens, the focus will shift back to Apple’s next big event: WWDC 2020. As it turns out, however, we don’t have to wait until June to get our first taste of the new iOS 14 operating system Apple is currently cooking up behind closed doors. A huge leak has seemingly just given us our first look at iOS 14 running on an iPhone, and it shows a massive change that Apple fans will definitely be excited about.
Even the most avid Apple fans out there will admit that iOS 13 has been a bit messy since it was released last September. Apple’s iOS 11 software was far worse, but then the company really cleaned things up with iOS 12 back in 2018. In 2019, however, iOS 13 brought back many of the problems people had to deal with in iOS 11, such as RAM management issues and multitasking problems. It has also been a very buggy release in general, with so many little issues that wouldn’t be a huge deal on their own, but they compound in iOS 13 and really get on people’s nerves.
As it did with iOS 12, Apple will be expected to cut down on these annoying bugs in iOS 14. But whereas iOS 12 was a bit of a boring update since it focused almost entirely on bug fixes and optimizations, it appears as though iOS 14 will also be packed with some fresh new features.
A blog called 91mobiles has posted what it claims to be a video of an iPhone 11 Pro Max running an internal development build of iOS 14. While the authenticity of the video cannot be confirmed at this time, it is widely believed to be genuine. Some people dismissed it as a jailbreak tweak when the video was first posted, but the multitasking tweaks they posted as “evidence” look nothing like the multitasking UI shown in the video. Watch it for yourself below.
The video shows a completely new multitasking UI running on an iPhone 11 Pro Max. Instead of a single row of large thumbnails depicting iOS apps with saved states in the background, this new supposed iOS 14 multitasking interface is similar to the one Apple uses on its iPad tablets. Two rows of app thumbnails are visible on the screen, and the user can close apps by flicking them upwards.
Again, it’s unclear if this video really does show an internal iOS 14 build with a redesigned multitasking interface, or if it’s just some new jailbreak tweak. The video’s biggest advocate so far has been Twitter user Ben Geskin, a graphic designer and Apple enthusiast who has posted various Apple leaks in the past. His track record isn’t very good at all, but he has had a few leaks that ended up being genuine. Here’s what he had to say on the matter:
https://twitter.com/BenGeskin/status/1231718775642316800
This is hardly concrete proof that the leaked iOS 14 video is authentic. Geskin shows an image of a settings page that could also be tied to a jailbreak tweak, though he says it’s part of an internal iOS 14 build being tested at Apple. The fact that “App Switcher” is cut off in the top-left corner of the image he shared certainly isn’t helping his case. Then again, we’ve seen plenty of errors like this in actual beta versions of Apple’s iOS software, so the bug also isn’t proof that this new iOS 14 leak is fake.
