That’s fine and all, but if this is the direction they’re taking, why not just call it AppleOS 26 across all platforms? Even if each platform gets a “specialized” version.
Part of me wonders if this is related to the EU CRA. It mandates software support lifecycles. It’s a lot easier to say xxxOS 26 is supported until 2032, 27 until 2033, etc as opposed to iOS 19 is supported until 2032, macOS 15 is supported until 2033, etc etc
Especially the consistency it brings.