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.

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skygazer 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		to be an even more annoying pedant. they technically said "monotonously" not monotonically, though skipping to 26 still seems pretty monotonous.

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bix6 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	reactordev 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Semver has always been king