Upgrade… Or Not

iOS/iPadOS 14: Apple May Be Heading for a Windows 7 Situation

But a fragmented user base might not hurt the company’s bottom line after all

Apple is giving hundreds of millions of consumers the option to never upgrade to its newest mobile operating systems — wait, what? (Image: Pixabay, Pexels)

WWDC 2021 echoes are still heard across the Web, apparently, and one of the most interesting tidbits unearthed by some media outlets a couple of days after the developers sessions ended and the conference wrapped up, is this: Apple will give iPhone and iPad users an option it has never given before. Come fall, everyone now using iOS 14.6 and iPadOS 14.6 can either upgrade to iOS/iPadOS 15, or… remain on iOS/iPadOS 14 and never upgrade to the newest version of those operating systems.

It is a choice that surprised a lot of people and for good reason: Apple never exactly forces consumers into installing the newest version of its mobile operating systems, but it practically does by not supporting the old one with security updates. There have been some exceptions here and there, yes: serious security vulnerabilities that absolutely had to be patched on older devices as well as the more recent ones. But, as a rule, the only version getting updates regularly over the period of the year between two iOS/iPadOS versions is the new one, not the previous ones.