apnekoi: Shocker: Apple is working on iOS 7 and the next iPhone!

Apple is working on iOS 7 and the next generation iPhone 6,1. Shocking, I know, considering Apple has released a new version of iOS and a new iPhone each year, every year, since 2007. However, the web being the web, stories are popping up today, and tips are coming in, helpfully reminding us all of just that.

iMore has seen iOS 7 references in our visitor logs for a while now, and Apple has no doubt been working on it since, well, they launched iOS 6 last year, if not earlier.

If Apple holds to their recent pattern, we'll see a beta six months from now, presumably at WWDC 2013 in June. (Originally Apple ran separate spring iOS preview events, so there's always an outside chance they'll "put the petal to the metal" and go back to that, but WWDC is a good fit.)

As to iPhone 6,1, before anyone jumps to "iPhone 6! iPhone 6!" conclusions, internal model numbers only coincidentally correlate to release name. The iPhone 5 is indeed iPhone 5,1, but the iPhone 4S was iPhone 4,1, and the iPhone 4 was iPhone 3,1. The iPad 3 was iPad 3,1, but the iPad 4 was "only" iPad 3,4.

Again, if Apple's past behavior is any indicator of future behavior, than iPhone 6,1 could just as easily be called iPhone 5S when it's introduced. If that's this spring, a similar time frame to when the Verizon iPhone 4 was released, then an incremental iPhone 5S makes even more sense. And if there's more than one new iPhone this year, the way there was more than one new iPad last year, then all sorts of interesting new possibilities spring to mind.

So, yeah, everything looks like it's happening as expected. It's only if Apple wasn't working on iOS 7 and the next generation iPhone that'd it big news.

In the meantime, we've been listing out some of the iOS 7 features we want, and next generation iPhone ideas we could see implemented. Feel free to add your wish lists below!