No support, no problem
The decision to end support now is unlikely to cause major problems in practice, as only a very small number of these devices are still actively used. However, some developers still use older devices for compatibility testing. With this step, it is obviously asking Apple to limit support for older devices.
It is also a comprehensible system maintenance measure: maintaining the infrastructure for signing operating system versions for security-patched software that is more than ten years old is not free. Apple itself justifies such steps by removing outdated software from circulation that could potentially contain known security vulnerabilities.
Android promises, Apple delivers
Apple has always enjoyed a good reputation for product support, which is one reason why the devices retain such a high resale value over a long period of time. This commitment has been deepened in 2024 in response to new regulations in the UK: the company now guarantees security updates for a period of at least five years.
Around the same time, Google and most major Android device makers went a step further and promised security and operating system updates for seven years.
Smaller manufacturers often cannot keep up with this commitment. Support for inexpensive Android devices is sometimes only limited to two years. Added to this is the generally questionable user experience on older Android devices, while Apple’s close integration of software and hardware ensures that even older devices can usually still be operated relatively smoothly.
The bottom line is that Apple is rather cautious when it comes to supporting older devices and often delivers more than announced. The result is that only now are customers who actually still use a 15-year-old iPhone coming to the end of official support. (tf)
