Sit me down and ask me to tell you what I think is wrong with the iPhone, and I’ll rattle off a long list.
A really long list.
But there’s one thing that Apple has that’s spot on — and that’s delivering patches to older handsets.
A very serious vulnerability was discovered recently that affected the iPhone and iPad (along with the Apple Watch and iPod touch). Apple quickly pushed out a patch, not only for the current iOS 14 release, but also for older devices stuck on iOS 12.
Devices getting the update include the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPod touch (6th generation).
That’s support going back to September 2013.
Devices stuck on iOS 12 have seen a number of updates over the past year, including security updates and also the framework for COVID-19 exposure notifications.
And that’s very impressive.
Apple did not update iOS 13 because devices running this version are all able to update to iOS 14 (iPhone 6s and later). However, if I have one complaint here, I wish Apple had released a specific patch for iOS 13 users (as it did with iOS 13.7 in order to bring COVID-19 exposure notifications to the platform).
According to Apple, some 12% of devices in use run iOS 13, with another 8% running iOS 12 or earlier.
If you’re running iOS 13, I strongly recommend updating, as the risk is real running an unsupported platform, especially if you keep important data on the device or use it for financial transactions.
