Apple is releasing a series of updates to its latest operating systems today, including iOS and iPadOS 17.1, macOS Sonoma 14.1, watchOS 10.1 and more. The company is also releasing security updates for some previous-generation operating systems, so that people who aren’t ready to upgrade (and older devices that can’t be upgraded) will still be protected from new exploits.
These updates include iOS and iPadOS 16.7.2 and 15.8, macOS Ventura 13.6.1, macOS Monterey 12.7.1, and the Safari 17.1 update for those two macOS versions. For now, the iOS and iPadOS 16 updates cover older iPhones and iPads that can’t run iOS 17, and newer devices whose owners simply don’t want to install iOS 17 yet. Apple will eventually stop supporting newer hardware with iOS 16 security updates, but for now the grace period is still in effect.
This is the first security update Apple has delivered for iOS 15 since mid-September, suggesting that the company plans to support the 2021 version of iOS with further security updates for at least a while longer. The iOS 15.8 update will only run on phones and tablets that can’t install iOS 16 or 17, including the iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, original iPhone SE, iPad Air 2 and the latest iPod Touch.
Apple doesn’t publish official end-of-life announcements for any of its software, so software updates for older operating systems tend to end with little notice. Apple at least behaves predictably with macOS; Apple provides security and feature updates for the current version (in this case macOS 14 Sonoma) along with Safari and security updates for the two previous versions. This policy is unwritten, but Apple has stuck to it for decades, so you can plan around it with some confidence.
There’s less of a track record for iOS and iPadOS. It used to be that Apple didn’t update older versions at all, apart from extremely rare one-off fixes for specific problems. But Apple provided regular security updates for iOS 12 for nearly two years after it was replaced, the same timeline it uses for Mac updates. We haven’t had another data point since then – anything that ran iOS 13 and 14 could also run iOS 15, so Apple didn’t provide extended security updates for either of those versions.
Today’s release doesn’t confirm that Apple is planning another full year of iOS 15 updates, but it is a sign that Apple plans to treat old iOS releases in the same way it treats macOS; the rollover from 15.7.x to 15.8.x also follows the numbering pattern Apple has used for recent macOS releases.
As of 30 May, Apple’s statistics show that 13 percent of all active iPhones and 20 percent of all active iPads are running iOS 15. A significant number of these are newer devices that can be upgraded to versions 16 and/or 17. But given Apple’s sales volume, that still leaves millions of devices that can benefit from continued iOS 15 security updates. If you keep hardware for a long time, or pass it on to children or other family members for extended use, it’s worth keeping track of which operating systems Apple still actively supports.
Devices that no longer receive security updates will continue to work, and app developers can continue to target older versions of iOS for as long as they like. But they will gradually become less safe to use on the internet, and new app updates and websites will gradually leave them behind.
Regardless, Apple has said in the past that only its latest operating systems are guaranteed to be fully patched. Sometimes older versions get the same patches later, and sometimes they don’t get patches at all, even if they’re actively updated.
For example, the iOS 15.8 release lists a single kernel-level security issue, CVE-2023-32434, while the iOS 16.7.2 update fixes 17 vulnerabilities across the operating system, and iOS 17.1 fixes 21. Sometimes older operating systems aren’t affected by the same vulnerabilities as newer ones, but that’s also information Apple doesn’t usually provide.
