Apple just released another security update for the 2014 iPhone 5s.
I don’t really get it either. You want to charge a premium for your handsets, why not let there be a secondary market all the way down the value chain for prices below where you want to go? It just means you’re selling more iCloud services and locking people in that way so that when they finally do need that upgrade it’s an iPhone rather than an Android.
I think they should support even very old iPhones with updates because:
1) They can’t afford to make an iPhone for $50.
2) Even if they could, they don’t want to make a $50 iPhone because it would be terrible and the margin minimal.
3) Supporting old phones allows a second-hand market for iPhones to thrive in the Chinese-Android-phone-bargain price tier where Apple can’t compete with new devices (this is in fact already the case given that there’s a used market for old iPhones).
4) Once someone buys (e.g. an iPhone 6S) used for $50 you can immediately start making them an iCloud customer for recurring revenue.
tldr; I think Apple views used device sales as a lost purchase for them instead of the massive subsidy that it is in terms of the cost associated with onboarding a new customer. (Apple should be overjoyed that someone is willing to sell a first-time prospective Apple customer an iPhone 6S for $50. The factory couldn’t make them the phone wholesale for that price, and it gets someone into the ecosystem).
As opposed to Google only offering two years of OS updates and an additional three years of security updates after that on the Pixel 6?
Sorry, but every single flagship iPhone since 2011 has gotten between five and seven years of OS updates. Then there are additional years of security updates after that. For example, the $399 OG iPhone SE got seven years of OS updates.
Google needs to step up their game. They don't even have the Qualcomm excuse now that they are having their own custom SOC fabbed.
My laptops (Linux) last until they die, and it takes a long time for them to die. I’d love a phone that does that.
We can't treat the exception as the rule. It would be misleading to claim that Apple is still supporting iOS 12, or 13, or 14. Every other security patch in iOS 15 has been left vulnerable in pre-15 versions.
For a very simple reason. All devices that can run iOS 13 and 14 can be updated to iOS 15, which is still being patched.