Has Apple given up on ‘Rapid Security Response’? or has it been regulated to just a “OMG” moment where they need to have 99% of devices updated within 24 hours?
I don’t think we’ve had one in like 9 months or so… and I’m pretty sure it had problems for a lot of people.
This is honestly a enormous disappointment.
I went Apple for mobiles due to superior updates availability which are needed for security.
New OS update = with iOS/iPadOS I can download them without any waiting.
With Android...not sure now but I remember that in old times carriers could delay/block updates if you bought phone from them. Even flagships weren't safe and I'm not talking here even about the carriers but simply producers like Samsung, LG, Xiaomi etc not caring about them.
Of course Android has improved. There is a better availability of updates, longer support time and the system was always more modular so many updates were provided by Play Store/Services updates and you didn't need a full system update to update the system browser like with Apple.
Also as a system the generic Android is pretty solid in terms of overall security.
But Apple still has over edge here IMHO.
So for a person like me RST was basically the most important feature since I've started buying Apple products with my first gen iPhone SE.
We live in a world where public facing servers are hit within minutes after disclosure of vulnerability. There are numerous security issues including critical ones each month and even normal users could be hit by them.
Considering this you could think that we would be getting a new RST once per moth or more or at least once per quarter. But no.
Even those RST that were release had problems which honestly looked pretty basic and suggested lack of proper test coverage. Honestly, checking if few most popular websites simply work isn't that big of a effort. Should be part of automated test suite and a quick check for manual testers.
Apart from RST I'm seeing other issues.
The automatic shuffle of pictures for lock screen never worked for me. It's still processing since iOS 16 lol.
Update to iOS/iPadOS removed by itself any persons detected in pictures.
Honestly Apple is a gigantic company with enormous stock value and very big amount of actual cash. They could do better. I sadly don't see any better options for mobiles but yeah some financial problems maybe could motivate Apple to focus a little on polishing their products instead of forcefully pushing features that could wait (I'm looking at you Journal). Maybe then the famous and memed a thousand times "courage" would appear. But since that probably won't happen in this decade the only "courage" from Apple we will get will be fighting any user positive changes like sideloading, solid right to repair (not only spare parts but also lack of serializing etc).
Sadly don't see any better choices here for mobiles despite all of this.
