Apple postpones the release of iPadOS 16 to October, the new version will not come with iOS 16

Bad news for iPad users. Apple will delay the release of the iPadOS 16 software update for iPads until October, about a month after the September release of iOS 16 for iPhone.

Although Apple has so far rolled out a new version of iPadOS right after the release of a new iOS version, it seems that the update for tablets has been delayed this year. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who heard from people who “asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private,” Apple plans to release iPadOS 16 and iOS 16 on separate schedules.

Evidently, Apple plans to delay the release of iPadOS 16 by about a month compared to iOS 16. The latter would be released in September with the new iPhone 14s, as usual with a new version of iOS, while iPadOS 16 would not arrive until October.

Why would Apple delay the arrival of iPadOS 16?

According to Mark Gurman, the culprit behind this delay would be the new feature called Stage Manager. As a reminder, it provides users with more ways to view and interact with multiple applications on an iPad. The problem is that people who have tested this feature in beta for the past few months have often complained that it is buggy and confusing.

Gurman thinks early criticism of the feature has made Apple concerned about the public reception of Stage Manager on the iPad, especially since Stage Manager on iPadOS 16 only works on M1 iPads. This feature should bring the iPad closer to the true laptop replacement that Apple has promised. So the company probably wants to make sure all bugs are fixed that were reported before the new update was rolled out.

If Stage Manager were the main new feature in iPadOS 16, there would be plenty of other additions, including a built-in Weather app, something iPad users have been asking for for years. Many features of iOS 16 are also integrated into iPadOS 16, such as Unsend in Mail, SharePlay in Messages, and a new Shared Photo Library in iCloud.