Leaks of new features have been a staple of Apple news for years. There has been speculation that Apple is doing this deliberately to see how people react to the features before they are announced. But at the same time, Apple is taking more and more measures to ensure that fewer Apple products are leaked. With iOS 15, that seems to have been successful to a large extent, because we knew little about the improvements beforehand. 9to5Mac discovered a possible way how Apple did this.
‘This is how Apple prevents the leak of iOS 15’
The first beta of iOS 15 shows that Apple has devised a system that also hides new functions from engineers. Every major new feature in iOS 15 turns out to have its own unique identifier. With this, Apple can only activate certain new functions in the early test version of iOS 15. For example, an Apple employee who has worked on the new notifications, for example, will not see the new functions in FaceTime.
When testing the early version on devices, an employee must download a special profile. But for each profile, Apple determines which features are visible and which are not. As a result, an Apple employee is not aware of all new improvements, with less risk of features leaking. Presumably Apple uses a similar system for the other operating systems.
Apple would also use this system to prevent early hardware-related features from leaking. Think, for example, of a special health function for a future Apple Watch, which requires new sensors. This new system is probably the reason that we had little information beforehand about the new features in iOS 15.
More about iOS 15
iOS 15 is the major update for the iPhone and iPod touch. If you want to know whether your iPhone is suitable for iOS 15, you will find the answer in our article. We expect the official iOS 15 release in September/October 2021. Find out what else was announced during the keynote in our WWDC 2021 recap!