Why don't Apple allow us to use what ever IOS we want?

[FeliApple]

And if you stay behind, your phones are garbage as well.

Just read the release notes, there are always numerous security fixes.

And each time there is a security fix, hackers reverse engineer the code change to be able to perform targeted attacks on those that stay behind

No, because

A) that doesn’t happen in practice
B) I don’t need compatibility to listen to music

And

C) sure, if it’s my main iPhone compatibility eventually falters, but in my extensive experience running original iOS versions, you have long enough to allow Apple to introduce significant iPhone changes that make the device upgrade even more worthwhile.

That is my whole point: I use an iPhone 6s on iOS 10 for music because for my secondary devices, I don’t care about compatibility. I just want music.

 

[HouseLannister]

No, because

A) that doesn’t happen in practice

Amen. 90+% of security exploits are targeted (and most need the phone in the hacker's physical possession too), and no one has a reason to target me. I'm just not that interesting, trust me. If you have an important job and government secrets on your phone, by all means, keep your phone updated. Sure, 18.7.2 has some unpatched WebKit vulnerabilities, but the odds of anyone using it against me are loooooow. If you really want my dog photos, have at it!

 

[!!!]

You own the hardware not the software.

Right, so I should be able to do whatever I want with the hardware. If your argument is, "Apple does not give you the right to install older OSes" then fine enough let me install another OS.

 

[FeliApple]

I think there's a difference between vulnerable/higher risk and garbage. To me the latter means unusable. Some updates seem to reduce a phone's performance/battery life to unusable (or conversely, the inability to update say the WebKit means it can't practically browse the web). On the other hand, staying behind multiple major versions generally means one is accepting higher risk from vulnerabilities but the overall tradeoff many be worth it to that person if the device otherwise performs similar to original.

The issue is compatibility. Not only WebKit. I can circumvent Safari issues easily enough with other devices. The thing is that eventually most necessary apps stop working. When Safari, YouTube, a game you play, your bank app, your electronic payment app if you use one, your chat app of choice (if it’s not iMessage), social media, etc, all stop working, you have to update the device or upgrade. No solution.

I have repeatedly highlighted the benefits of using an original iOS version that’s not TOO old. And that depends. iOS 12 was supported for noticeably long. Comparatively speaking, iOS 13 had a significantly shorter support lifespan. Today, the earliest possible version I’d be able to use on my main iPhone is some version of iOS 15.

Performance and battery life will NEVER worsen, regardless of battery health, on an original iOS version.

Also let's not assume that the latest versions are invulnerable. Some of the fixes only available for the latest iOS are to fix vulnerabilities only applicable to the latest iOS. Without contrary results of a deep security audit, I would have trusted iOS 18.7 over iOS 26.0 simply because the former probably fixed all the same known issues while it's unknown what iOS 26.0 introduced. At that moment in time, iOS 18.7 was better understood and battlehardened.



For the versions of iOS that Apple is still supporting (e.g. iOS 15 received security updates up until earlier this year and iOS 18 is still supported on the iPhone 11 and XR), I believe Apple should let people downgrade back to those versions if their needs warrant.

Apple might find more people would be willing to try a new major version if they knew it isn't a one-way ticket. And if someone wants to go to the trouble of a full reset (e.g. DFU reinstall) to do a downgrade after trying out the new version, they probably have a real reason.

Apple should allow downgrading to every single version, supported or otherwise. In fact, what I mentioned earlier directly plays into this.

Why? Because if you use an iPhone as a main iPhone, you presumably need some unfettered compatibility. You may need a chat app, or a banking app, or a social media app you use, or any other number of examples.

If, conversely, you use a phone as a secondary phone, for music for example, you’d probably like the earliest possible iOS version, for performance and battery life reasons.

I use an iPhone 6s and an iPhone 8 on iOS 13 and 14 respectively. I’d like them on iOS 10 and 11. I need the Music app with a fully functional Apple Music. That’s all. For that I need iOS 9. The closest to that the better (iOS 9 does NOT activate on A9 devices, that’s why I’d downgrade the 6s to iOS 10 if I could. My 6s on iOS 13 ran iOS 9 until apple deactivated it and forced it out).

I have an iPhone Xʀ on iOS 12 (that I could use as a music device but whatever), that I had to upgrade (to the 16 Plus on iOS 18 I’m typing this on), because compatibility just isn’t enough anymore.

So I (and arguably, most people) only need a relatively recent iOS version on a relatively new (main) iPhone.

This 6s on iOS 13 I have? Battery life is garbage. Around 40-50% of the battery life I get on my 6s on iOS 10. For a 6s with a small battery, that’s absolutely massive. I need better battery life on that iPhone far more than I need a working web browser.

 

[FeliApple]

Apple do, and devs care about minimising their support burden.

This is the reason for their actions per the OP's question.

Honestly I think that the userbase having better iPhones (especially as secondary devices, or as main, older iPhones, which are the most affected by this policy), FAR trumps the devs’ codebase support argument.

Today, I reckon iOS 15/16 are fully usable. An iPhone 15 user on the garbage that is iOS 26 (if they indeed dislike it), wouldn’t see a significant change in compatibility, and usability, battery life, and performance, would all see significant improvements.

 

[FeliApple]

Regardless of all of this conversation, you’ve gotta learn eventually folks.

All of this is solved by staying behind from day one, at least until compatibility is really an issue.

Remember: you can always update later. You can update whenever you want, in fact. You can’t downgrade.


I think that the complaints today, if they come from people who willingly updated a relatively modern iPhone from iOS 18 to 26, are rather lacking in argument.

You must know by now that iOS updates impact devices. Should Apple allow downgrading? Yes. It’s a lost battle by now. They’ll never do it. You must do it yourself.

 

[throAU]

just sayin'...

Why iPhone users should update and restart their devices now

Apple has confirmed active exploitation, but full protections are limited to iPhones running iOS 26+ (yes, the one with Liquid Glass).

www.malwarebytes.com

 

[I7guy]

[…]

Performance and battery life will NEVER worsen, regardless of battery health, on an original iOS version.



[…]

False. See EV batteries losing range. You will get the same performance mostly, but you’ve get the same range. Ability to support heavy loads also diminishes by ie using the phone in bright sunlight in a bad cell area.

 

[I7guy]

Regardless of all of this conversation, you’ve gotta learn eventually folks.

All of this is solved by staying behind from day one, at least until compatibility is really an issue.

Remember: you can always update later. You can update whenever you want, in fact. You can’t downgrade.


I think that the complaints today, if they come from people who willingly updated a relatively modern iPhone from iOS 18 to 26, are rather lacking in argument.

But I praise Apple for the same / similar performance and battery life going from iOS 18 to iOS 26. For me since I got the phone performance and battery life have been remarkably consistent across iOS upgrades.

You must know by now that iOS updates impact devices.

Yes older devices more than newer devices.

Should Apple allow downgrading? Yes. It’s a lost battle by now. They’ll never do it. You must do it yourself.

Apple might do it, but “might” is a slim possibility.

 

[I7guy]

Right, so I should be able to do whatever I want with the hardware. If your argument is, "Apple does not give you the right to install older OSes" then fine enough let me install another OS.

My argument is you bought the device and you own it. Apple doesn’t have to help you “hack” the device. They give you a two week return window for any reason.

 

[!!!]

My argument is you bought the device and you own it. Apple doesn’t have to help you “hack” the device. They give you a two week return window for any reason.

Ask yourself, why is it "hacking" to install a different OS onto an iPhone? Because Apple has specifically designed it to make it hard/impossible for the user to install what they want. Compare with the AS Macs: There's a difference between Apple not publicly releasing drivers for their hardware, yet you can install whatever you want. We have Ashai linux developing their own drivers to run Linux on AS. Now let's take a look at the iPhone, you cannot boot into a different OS. Why? There is no security argument, since we see on the macOS side external boots are by default blocked. No reason this can't be applied to iOS.

Why would I return a device after two weeks for this when I'm most likely wanting to install a different OS at the end of its life? So many Intel Macs have extended their lives significantly thanks to installing Linux on them. iPhones? they're landfill. Funny how Apple brands themselves as "green" when they lock down iOS devices so that when they decide to stop supporting them, they quickly become paperweights.

Again, it's not about them going out of their way to "help" us by doing stuff, it's about them going out of their way to reduce our ability to use our hardware we purchased. Locking down the iOS bootloader to this level requires quite a bit of engineering, they've gone far out of their way just to ensure they are in complete control of the lifecycle of the device.

Imagine a car, in which you drive it for a while, until the engine blows. In the 'Mac' case, we are able to replace the engine after market, with whatever we want. In the 'iOS' case, we find that the engine is welded to the frame in such a way that makes it impossible to replace, essentially totaling the car when the engine blows. In this scenario, we also have to assume that the car mfr has installed a time bomb in the engine, which they will set off when they feel like your car shouldn't be useful anymore. Right now they're being nice and letting you drive it for 7 years before blowing it, but they're a corporation and if they start hurting for sales, well, they can do whatever they want.

 

[Non-Euclidean]

Reasons why…
1) Compatibility with hardware
2) Security
3) Removes extra cost to support older OS releases
4) Limit Apple’s liability
5) Product sales growth

6) Foster creation of discussions like this

 

[FeliApple]

Apple might do it, but “might” is a slim possibility.

Come on. The chances are practically zero at this point. There’s no might. They’ve decided that it is this way. So my point remains: complaining about iOS updates (pretty much always after updating) whilst relentlessly installing everything that Apple ships is the worst strategy ever.

Accept it. Accept the issues and the drawbacks or stay behind.

The OP said “Why don’t they allow downgrading, after reading so many people unhappy with iOS 26?”. The question is a different one: “why do they complain if they know how this works?”

 

[I7guy]

Ask yourself, why is it "hacking" to install a different OS onto an iPhone? Because Apple has specifically designed it to make it hard/impossible for the user to install what they want. Compare with the AS Macs: There's a difference between Apple not publicly releasing drivers for their hardware, yet you can install whatever you want. We have Ashai linux developing their own drivers to run Linux on AS. Now let's take a look at the iPhone, you cannot boot into a different OS. Why? There is no security argument, since we see on the macOS side external boots are by default blocked. No reason this can't be applied to iOS.

Why would I return a device after two weeks for this when I'm most likely wanting to install a different OS at the end of its life? So many Intel Macs have extended their lives significantly thanks to installing Linux on them. iPhones? they're landfill. Funny how Apple brands themselves as "green" when they lock down iOS devices so that when they decide to stop supporting them, they quickly become paperweights.

Again, it's not about them going out of their way to "help" us by doing stuff, it's about them going out of their way to reduce our ability to use our hardware we purchased. Locking down the iOS bootloader to this level requires quite a bit of engineering, they've gone far out of their way just to ensure they are in complete control of the lifecycle of the device.

Imagine a car, in which you drive it for a while, until the engine blows. In the 'Mac' case, we are able to replace the engine after market, with whatever we want. In the 'iOS' case, we find that the engine is welded to the frame in such a way that makes it impossible to replace, essentially totaling the car when the engine blows. In this scenario, we also have to assume that the car mfr has installed a time bomb in the engine, which they will set off when they feel like your car shouldn't be useful anymore. Right now they're being nice and letting you drive it for 7 years before blowing it, but they're a corporation and if they start hurting for sales, well, they can do whatever they want.

Some of what you say is not wrong. However it doesn’t seem Apple is doing anything illegal else they would get the pants sued off of them. iPhones shouldn’t be landfill. Apple specifically mentions they recycle them. All you have to do is turn them into Apple.

One buys Apple in spite of this stuff.

 

[FeliApple]

Some of what you say is not wrong. However it doesn’t seem Apple is doing anything illegal else they would get the pants sued off of them. iPhones shouldn’t be landfill. Apple specifically mentions they recycle them. All you have to do is turn them into Apple.

One buys Apple in spite of this stuff.

Technology is eventually obsolete. All technology is. I don’t really have a problem with that.

My issue when it comes to this is devs. They suck. I will never get tired of saying this. They pull support ridiculously quickly, oftentimes even dropping support for everything barring the latest iOS version.

If they were better, this whole thing would be far less of an issue.

It is completely unacceptable that you pretty much need iOS 15 or newer to have decent functionality. Apple is not to blame here. Devs are.

I don’t care if you have to support several versions at the same time. I also can’t name a specific lifespan, but I think that ten years per iOS version should be the bare minimum. iOS 10 should practically be fully compatible. Devices would be far better if that were the case.

Telegram does it. Many other apps never break. There’s no valid excuse or reason.

 

[UliBaer]

(...) It is completely unacceptable that you pretty much need iOS 15 or newer to have decent functionality. Apple is not to blame here. Devs are. (...)

I have to object. This is definitely Apple breaking older APIs (maybe even on purpose), not the developers!
Take a look at Windows: Even the most very old Windows programs from Win95/98, NT, 2000 or XP are running fine on Windows 10, because Microsoft didn't break the old APIs, the old programs were written against. Of course there are also a lot of programs, that don't run on Windows 10 anymore, but they were written "around the APIs" or used some undocumented features, that were undocumented by Microsoft on purpose, cause they could change.

 

[bzgnyc2]

I have to object. This is definitely Apple breaking older APIs (maybe even on purpose), not the developers!
Take a look at Windows: Even the most very old Windows programs from Win95/98, NT, 2000 or XP are running fine on Windows 10, because Microsoft didn't break the old APIs, the old programs were written against. Of course there are also a lot of programs, that don't run on Windows 10 anymore, but they were written "around the APIs" or used some undocumented features, that were undocumented by Microsoft on purpose, cause they could change.

And I would challenge how much the APIs need to change year-to-year, version-to-version. We're not talking about a new OS that's barely past 1.0. iOS is on version ~ 19 and derived from Mac OS X which was already 6 years in production at the time and itself based on NeXtStep and BSD/UNIX, which goes back decades. The basics should have been stable for years by now, and most apps should be happy sitting in the basics.

iOS 11 broke 32-bit compatibility but that was ~ 10 years ago.

If iOS makes it hard to write a typical app that runs on iOS 10 - iOS 19/26 then there's a problem. If a developer feels the need to rewrite their app to use the latest API/framework to do the same thing their app did last year then there's a problem.

 

[Bazza1]

And I would challenge how much the APIs need to change year-to-year, version-to-version... If iOS makes it hard to write a typical app... then there's a problem.

Ditto for MacOS.

 

[ScanTheNavian]

So many Intel Macs have extended their lives significantly thanks to installing Linux on them. iPhones? they're landfill. Funny how Apple brands themselves as "green" when they lock down iOS devices so that when they decide to stop supporting them, they quickly become paperweights.

This is 100% why I can't take their claims about greenness seriously. I think most Apple users have felt what a waste of tech it is to have, for example, iPads unusable despite the hardware still being basically pristine. And it's all a choice Apple has consciously made, not something carved in stone or physics.

If there's something I wish EU would focus on it'd be to force companies to open up their obsolete devices to Linux. It'd probably do more for the planet than many other initiatives. Of course it'd eat into profits, but EU could fine every company that doesn't comply.

 

[FeliApple]

I have to object. This is definitely Apple breaking older APIs (maybe even on purpose), not the developers!
Take a look at Windows: Even the most very old Windows programs from Win95/98, NT, 2000 or XP are running fine on Windows 10, because Microsoft didn't break the old APIs, the old programs were written against. Of course there are also a lot of programs, that don't run on Windows 10 anymore, but they were written "around the APIs" or used some undocumented features, that were undocumented by Microsoft on purpose, cause they could change.

But then why does Telegram work on iOS 5? Why is there full iMessage compatibility for every version ever?
Why do older versions of Netflix work?

You’re telling me that the rest of the app developers cannot do the same?

As long as there are apps that work, I’ll call devs garbage.

Some require iOS 26. There’s no technical reason to require iOS 26. There’s no technical reason to require iOS 18 as a minimum.

Devs do it anyway because they’re pathetic.

If an app can work on iOS 12, then all apps can work on iOS 12. You just have to prioritise that.

It’s a loop. “Devs require higher versions because everyone updates”.

Listen dev, why the hell do you think everyone updates? Because you make it impossible to stay behind.

Why aren’t my family members using their respective iPhone 11 on iOS 14 and 15? Because apps forced them to update to iOS 18.

I can guarantee that if devs weren’t so pathetic, those iPhones would still be on iOS 14 and 15. So you have no users on iOS 14 because devs as a collective won’t let us.

That’s not Apple’s fault.

 

[FeliApple]

If a developer feels the need to rewrite their app to use the latest API/framework to do the same thing their app did last year then there's a problem.

This is my point. Apple is at fault for many things.

But not for this. They rewrite it so their app can do the exact same thing it did last year whilst using the newest API.

“But now we have to drop support for every iOS version before it”

Then you are garbage, it’s not Apple. You could maintain support but you are choosing not to.

 

[platinumaqua]

Seems like so they can execute their planned obsolescence plans since there's no effort needed on their part to keep the last release of an OS signed for installs.

Newer OSes always get slower on the same device and the last supported version they offer never gets optimized so it runs very slowly even though it runs.

 

[UliBaer]

But then why does Telegram work on iOS 5? Why is there full iMessage compatibility for every version ever?
Why do older versions of Netflix work?

You’re telling me that the rest of the app developers cannot do the same?

As long as there are apps that work, I’ll call devs garbage.

Some require iOS 26. There’s no technical reason to require iOS 26. There’s no technical reason to require iOS 18 as a minimum.

Devs do it anyway because they’re pathetic.

If an app can work on iOS 12, then all apps can work on iOS 12. You just have to prioritise that.

It’s a loop. “Devs require higher versions because everyone updates”.

Listen dev, why the hell do you think everyone updates? Because you make it impossible to stay behind.

Why aren’t my family members using their respective iPhone 11 on iOS 14 and 15? Because apps forced them to update to iOS 18.

I can guarantee that if devs weren’t so pathetic, those iPhones would still be on iOS 14 and 15. So you have no users on iOS 14 because devs as a collective won’t let us.

That’s not Apple’s fault.

Well, I can only talk for Windows, cause I've developed a lot on it for many, many years and still do it! For example, to get the new skin or surface of Windows 10 or 11, the old apps have to do absolutely nothing at all, if they internally confirm to the (even meanwhile years old) documented APIs, they simply have the new design and outfit, if you start them on the new OS! For iOS apps to get for example the Liquid GlAss design, the old apps have to be recompiled with the new APIs, thereby breaking the compatibility with the old APIs. This is not the fault of the developers, this is only Apples fault!

 

[ScanTheNavian]

Seems like so they can execute their planned obsolescence plans since there's no effort needed on their part to keep the last release of an OS signed for installs.

Newer OSes always get slower on the same device and the last supported version they offer never gets optimized so it runs very slowly even though it runs.

*cries looking at my iPad 3 which became obsolete in one year*

 

[I7guy]

Seems like so they can execute their planned obsolescence plans since there's no effort needed on their part to keep the last release of an OS signed for installs.

Newer OSes always get slower on the same device and the last supported version they offer never gets optimized so it runs very slowly even though it runs.

The above is not true 100%. With 32 bit devices there was little headroom in the chips, and it’s true iPads and iPhones did slow own.

But with the advent of 64 bit processors in iPhones, since the iPhone XS newer operating systems have less impact on the phones performance. Of course it’s a truism the older the phone the more the disparity. But with recent chips 5 or 6 iOS updates won’t really impact the phone. The real impact is calendar aging on the battery.