This is an important factor, and maybe the fatal flaw in android's carrier relationships. Google is always very fast to push a fix out, but the carriers always drag their feet in getting the fix to the actual devices.
Having a better security architecture works (to stretch the metaphor) like immunization: past a certain adoption level you reach a "herd immunity" state where the marginal benefit to an attacker of a specific flaw drops rapidly to zero even though there are still "old" devices out there in the market in small numbers.
Basically, the market refresh cycle is still at something like 18 months, so even given that OEMs are slow new Android releases are reaching the public in large numbers fairly promptly.
It would be beneficial if carriers could come up with updates faster however. I've seen Verizon drag its feet on more than one occasion, especially with phones that are a generation or two behind.
Are you referring to the year-ago iCloud “hacks” or is there a really surprising twist to the whole XCode Ghost thing that I haven’t heard about? :)
Indeed. There is an army of naked celebrities dancing around the internet today because of an "iOS" hole that didn't even involve the device OS at all.
Picking on specific features to announce "Apple is more secure" is very much missing the point.
That said, yeah: I'm not a big fan of Android's security architecture either, though it has been improving rapidly.