This iOS 17 / iPhone 15 "leak" isn't fooling anybody

(Image credit: 4RMD)

published 27 January 2023

You don't need to be an iPhone fan to be interested in what Apple's up to, and that means there's a lot of demand for Apple leaks and rumours. But that demand can sometimes mean that idle speculation is presented as stolen secrets, and that appears to be the case with the latest set of iPhone 15 and iOS 17 rumours.

The latest supposed leak comes via LeaksApplePro, who has a spotty reputation for breaking Apple stories. And it doesn't read like a leak to me: just a list of things that you can be very confident Apple will do in any new version of its iPhone operating system. This isn't so much a list of things Apple doesn't want you to know as a list of things that are really rather obvious.

Apparently with iOS 17 Apple is focusing on "stability and efficiency" and it'll look very like iOS 16 without "many visual changes". Apple might make Mail and Music easier to use, there will probably be a companion app for the Apple AR/VR headset... you get the idea.

So what does this "leak" actually say?

When you read the detailed report, the language it uses is a giveaway: it's "as far as I'm concerned", "I can't share anything very specific", "from what my sources can see it appears..." And there are a couple of statements that just don't make sense: it claims that the iPhone 15 Pro Max / iPhone 15 Ultra will have a vastly improved image system and cooling system, but Apple won't make either public. What?

When you boil it down to what the "leak" actually says, it's pretty weak sauce: iOS 17 will be slightly different, the iPhone 15 will be slightly better, Apple's going to tweak some apps. That's like saying "we'll have some nice weather soon" and claiming it's a Met Office leak. It's not. It's just stating the bleeding obvious.

There's nothing wrong with speculation; it's part of the job and I do it all the time. I can sit here and predict pretty well what we'll see in the iPhone 15 range, from which models will get which processors and what features Apple will charge a premium for. But that's not a leak; it's me reading the tea leaves and should be labelled as such.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).