Andrew Cunningham
When iOS 15 was first unveiled, Apple announced that the upgrade would not be mandatory for people who wanted to stick with iOS 14. The new operating system would still be offered to all devices that could run it, but iOS 14 would still have security. updates so people weren’t left vulnerable just because they were happy with the performance and stability of the operating system they were already using.
But last week, 9to5Mac and others noticed that the iOS 14.8.1 update had stopped being offered to phones running iOS 14. The only upgrade option was to the latest version of iOS 15, currently 15.2.1. We have confirmed with Apple that this is not an error; iOS 14 is no longer being updated, and anyone who wants the latest security updates will also need to accept the other iOS 15 changes.
Apple told Ars that it always wanted the iOS 14 security update option to be temporary. Essentially, people might have a short grace period while Apple irons out the worst of the new OS’s early bugs, but you’ll still eventually have to upgrade to stay fixed.
It makes some sense, but the company has never done it explicitly before. The iOS 15 features page simply states that users can “continue on iOS 14 and still get important security updates,” with no mention of a time limit. It’s also not consistent with the way Apple handles macOS, where the previous two versions of the operating system continue to receive security updates in step (albeit imperfectly) with the latest version of macOS.
There was also a precedent for Apple keeping an older iOS version updated for the long term, namely iOS 12, which received security updates throughout the iOS 13 and iOS 14 lifecycle. is that iOS 12 was the last version of the operating system that could run on multiple iDevices, including the iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus, as well as the original iPad Air and iPad mini 2 and 3 All devices that can run iOS 14 are capable of upgrading to iOS 15. Presumably, the next time an iOS update drops support for a set of devices, Apple will also be more generous with its schedule. security update.
And that brings us back to the main problem with Apple’s security update policy: a lack of transparency, predictability, and communication. Giving iOS 14 users the option to stay safe before pushing them to iOS 15 actually seems like a reasonable compromise, allowing users to ignore the bugs that come with any new iOS update while still giving developers the advantage of a large unified platform where you can reasonably assume that most people are using the same version of the operating system.
But Apple should have been upfront about this strategy if (as the company claims) that was the intention from the start. Users of older hardware and software shouldn’t need to guess, based on past precedents and reading tea leaves, whether their devices will continue to be secure because they don’t run (or can’t not run) the latest version of the operating system. . For example, it looks like support for iOS 12 has ended, since its last update was in September 2021, and Apple has released several new iOS updates since then, but with no real announcements, all that we can do is assume.
Apple likes to keep secrets and hates talking in public about its future plans. But these are all mature operating systems with well-established update patterns. For the sake of the people who use this hardware and software, as well as the developers and administrators who support Apple devices in the real world, a little more transparency would go a long way. And we’ll keep saying it until Apple gives it to us.
