macOS Sequoia Release Likely to Be the Earliest in Years

macOS Sequoia will be one of the earliest new macOS launches in over a decade, likely releasing within as little as just a week.

sequoia
Internal Apple documentation obtained by MacRumors suggests that macOS 15.0 Sequoia will be officially released to the public by mid-September. The release dates of major macOS updates in recent years are listed below:

  • OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) – October 22, 2013
  • OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) – October 16, 2014
  • OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) – September 30, 2015
  • macOS 10.12 (Sierra) – September 20, 2016
  • macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) – September 25, 2017
  • macOS 10.14 (Mojave) – September 24, 2018
  • macOS 10.15 (Catalina) – October 7, 2019
  • macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) – November 12, 2020
  • macOS 12.0 (Monterey) – October 25, 2021
  • macOS 13.0 (Ventura) – October 24, 2022
  • macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) – September 26, 2023

The release of macOS Sequoia by mid-September this year would be the earliest since OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), which was released on July 25, 2012.

The new annual version of iOS has historically always been released at least a week before the new version of macOS. Sometimes, Apple leaves a considerable gap between the releases; in 2020, the company left nearly two months between the release of iOS 14 (September 16, 2020) and macOS Big Sur (November 12, 2020).

New major versions of iOS are always released before the launch of a new iPhone lineup in September. This year, the iPhone 16 lineup is expected to launch on Friday, September 20. As a result, macOS Sequoia could not only be the earliest macOS release in over a decade, but also the first simultaneous iOS/macOS release ever, or even the first time a new version of macOS has been released before the new version of iOS.

Apple is almost certain to share more information about the release of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia at its event on Monday, September 9, where it is also set to unveil the ‌iPhone 16‌ lineup, new Apple Watch models, and the fourth-generation AirPods.

Popular Stories

apple oct 2024 mac tease

Apple Expected to Announce These Two to Three Products 'This Week'

Sunday October 12, 2025 7:05 am PDT by
Apple plans to announce new products "this week," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple's "Mac Your Calendars" teaser last October In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the products set to be updated this week include the iPad Pro, Vision Pro, and "likely" the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, with all three likely to receive a spec bump with Apple's next-generation M5 chip. Gurman...
Apple TV Plus Feature 2 Magenta and Blue

Apple TV+ Being Rebranded as Apple TV

Monday October 13, 2025 8:25 am PDT by
Buried in its announcement about "F1: The Movie" making its streaming debut on December 12, Apple has also announced that Apple TV+ is being rebranded as simply Apple TV. A single line near the end of the press release states "Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity," though Apple's website has yet to be updated with any changes, so we're unsure on the details of the...
M5 MacBook Pro

Apple Announces New 14-Inch MacBook Pro With M5 Chip

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:07 am PDT by
Apple today updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, which is also available in updated iPad Pro and Vision Pro models. In addition, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro can now be configured with up to 4TB of storage on Apple's online store, whereas the previous model maxed out at 2TB. However, the maximum amount of unified RAM available for this model remains 32GB. Like...
Apple iPad Pro hero M5

Apple Debuts New iPad Pro With M5 Chip, Faster Charging, and More

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:16 am PDT by
Apple today announced the next-generation iPad Pro, featuring the custom-designed M5, C1X, and N1 chips. The M5 chip has up to a 10-core CPU, with four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It features a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerator in each core, allowing the new iPad Pro to deliver up to 3.5x the AI performance than the previous model, and a third-generation ray-tracing ...
iOS 26

Apple Preparing iOS 26.0.2 Update for iPhones

Saturday October 11, 2025 6:59 pm PDT by
Apple's software engineers are internally testing iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. iOS 26.0.2 will likely be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet. The update will likely be released within the next few weeks. Last month, Apple released iOS...
maxresdefault

Here's Everything Apple Announced Today

Wednesday October 15, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We didn't get a second fall event this year, but Apple did unveil updated products with a series of press releases that went out today. The M5 chip made an appearance in new MacBook Pro, Vision Pro, and iPad Pro models. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up our coverage and highlighted the main feature changes for each device below. MacBook Pro M5...
joz macbook tease

Apple Teases Upcoming M5 MacBook Pro Launch: 'Something Powerful is Coming'

Tuesday October 14, 2025 11:59 am PDT by
Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak today teased the launch of an upcoming product, saying "something powerful is coming" on social media. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. A short animation accompanying Joswiak's teaser reveals a brief glimpse of a MacBook Pro along with the words "coming soon." The shape of the MacBook Pro is a V, which is the Roman numeral...
airpods max 2024 colors

AirPods Max 2: Everything We Know So Far

Tuesday October 14, 2025 8:43 am PDT by
Apple's AirPods Max have now been available for almost five years, so what do we know about the second-generation version? According to Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the new AirPods Max will be lighter than the current ones, but exactly how much is as yet known. The current AirPods Max weigh 0.85 pounds (386.2 grams), excluding the charging case, making it one of the heavier...
iPhone 17 Pro Colors

iPhone 18 Pro Already Rumored to Have These 6 New Features

Saturday October 11, 2025 10:10 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are still nearly a year away, a handful of new features and changes have already been rumored for the devices. Below, we have recapped some of the early iPhone 18 Pro rumors so far. Smaller Dynamic Island The standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be equipped with a slightly smaller Dynamic Island, but the devices will...
Vision Pro M5 Announcement

Apple Updates Vision Pro With M5 Chip, Dual Knit Band, and 120Hz Support

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:14 am PDT by
Apple today updated the Vision Pro headset with its next-generation M5 chip for faster performance, and a more comfortable Dual Knit Band. The M5 chip has a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and a 16-core Neural Engine, and we have confirmed the Vision Pro still has 16GB of RAM. With the M5 chip, the Vision Pro offers faster performance and longer battery life compared...

Top Rated Comments

ps3zocker Avatar
15 months ago
It also has the least amount of new features in years, probably since Snow Leopard.
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
souko Avatar
15 months ago
September 26 is mid september?
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cjsuk Avatar
15 months ago
Not touching this one with a 6 foot stick for at least 6 months. Just got everything working how I want it!
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cgs1xx Avatar
15 months ago
Anyone else feels really nostalgic about how MacOS and iOS used to look like 15 years ago? I mean, dwelling in the past can be a fruitless exercise but don’t you wish there was a “skin” or something we can apply??
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nt5672 Avatar
15 months ago
Nope, I am expecting a hot mess, but hoping for a stable release. I've been disappointed for years, so I don't expect anything different.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Edgecrusherr Avatar
15 months ago
Overall there isn’t really much in 14.0, and 14.1 isn’t that much better. Apple really put their focus on AI in this release, and looks like they’re really far behind. So, it looks like they’ll just be releasing Sequoia unfinished, just to buy time while they work on getting the AI stuff done. That doesn’t look like it’ll happen until 14.2.

The .2 releases generally release from December and January (usually January), with as late as February. Since 14.0 is looking to be released early (14.0 it’s very much finished, and all the focuses on 14.1 and 14.2 right now), I’m going to guess that we will get 14.2 in December, maybe late November for lucky.

So while Sequoia may be released early, the real bulk of the features promised are looking to be released very late.

I’m a huge proponent of Apple needing to stop the yearly OS upgrade cycle, at least for macOS. Forcing the development team to release something new and great once a year is drastically diminished the overall quality and stability of the operating system, and has generally led to overpromising and underdelivering on features. I’m still running macOS 12 and 10.15 on some computers, because they were much more bug free than 13 and 14. My Mac studio on 13 and 14 has been a nightmare. it doesn’t appear that they’re going to fix the issues in 15, so I may roll back to 12 (but that’s going to be a pain).

Apple really needs to move to a year and a half to two years cycle, and the next release should be all about bug fixes and performance. Considering that the marketing people are mostly in charge of the company now, I don’t think there’s a chance of that happening unless they market it to us as a feature, perhaps when they drop all Intel Support. Similar to how it worked with 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I’m really hoping they get this figured out, I’m really hoping they get this figured out, Linux doesn’t quite do it for me, no matter how hard I try to use it, and Windows is a pile of garbage.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)