A curious new feature that has gone unnoticed in iOS 15 is the ability to continue running iOS 14. Even after the official launch of iOS 15 and later (.1, .2, .3.2, etc.) Apple plans to offer the option to stay on iOS 14. A most curious movement for which we will try to identify the reasons.
A movement for which we do not see the reason, at least now
I’ll start the article by saying no, I don’t see the reason for this decision from Apple. As far as I have read on the net, the truth is, no one sees it. Surely in the future, when Apple announces a change or a launch in a few months or years, we will look back and say “ah, for that reason we could stay in iOS 14”, but currently seems to make little sense
A few days ago, igamesnews published an article by Jason Snell asking exactly this question: why would Apple now allow us to keep old versions of the software? One of the reasons discussed is for people who just don’t want to update. There are a lot of urban legends about the updates and there are some users who stick to quite old versions of the operating system. The truth is, I don’t believe that Apple, that has always been characterized by encouraging updates, now you want the devices to fall behind. Because? By fragmentation.
At the user level, we can see very well staying in a previous version of the operating system, and we will have our reasons, but at the ecosystem level, no. At the ecosystem and development level, that doesn’t make much sense. News, from new APIs to interface redesigns, needs to reach the more devices the better. Because? So that developers can focus on using the best and latest tools to build apps and that your target audience is the majority of users
One of the possible theories about this change is that iOS 16 is going to represent a really big compatibility change. It is possible, for example, that 3 GB of RAM is required to run iOS 16. It seems clear that at some point all Pre-iPhone X devices will be left out
If so, offering the option to stay on iOS 14 and continue to receive security updates makes sense. Either way, a question arises here. Can we stay on iOS 14 when iOS 15 is released, on iOS 15 when iOS 16 is released and so on or just we can choose between iOS 14 or the newer version? I’m betting on the latter, I’m relying on avoiding the fragmentation that we commented on a moment ago as the main argument.
With what we know so far, iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 could represent a major change, a turning point in the evolution of the software of our iPhone or iPad. A change that can be accompanied by hardware requirements, new hardware or simply mark a before and after in the operating system.
