I don’t think it’s crazy for any company to want more than 3 months to support a new OS.

This specific situation is unfortunate, but I’d expect many other companies to have a mildly broken app for a few months. In particular, the punch hole gimmick was kept a secret and I’d expect apps who expected no touch target in that area to have to rethink a bunch of assumptions.

Out of ignorance I ask:

Why aren’t there LTS versions of iOS?

As a long time iOS user each year brings a bit of change with improvements just barely better than regression. Under the hood, what changes so much as to consider it a major upgrade with breaking changes?

The MS pattern of deep support of legacy API for applications seems too extreme in the other direction. However iOS has long sense reached a point of maturity where annual breakage is also an extreme.

> LTS versions of iOS

I think that would be cool for users that want security and don't want the new features or new design.. But it'll be used as an excuse for certain apps to not keep their up to date with the newest APIs.

As for the company, they often use the OS version to drive more sales. The new OS almost always requires a little bit more performant hardware. The older the phone, the slower it gets with the newer OS.

There is, once your phone can’t support the latest version of iOS, you are de facto on the LTS version where Apple will provide security patches as needed for years. iOS 12 just got a security patch for the iPhone 5s (circa 2013) last month.

How does it benefit consumers, developers, or Apple to support older OS’s on phones that can support the newest version?

If value of new features is less than lost value in regression then a change doesn’t benefit consumers.

For example, I wish that they didn’t support OG SE on 15 since there were goose-egg OS level improvements and giant regression in battery with 15.6.

Case in point: this morning I visited a recipe website and my phone is now hot to the touch.

Bilal_io's point on driving phone sales is spot on.

To add to that, phones have no OS downgrade process, so even if as an app provide you decide you won't support the latest OS, every new phone bought from now will still come with it, and the user can't do anything about that.

A LTS would require to also get read of the version up rachetting.

oh really? Three whole months? Shame on them /s

That's been how it's been for years now. Every year. I'm sympathetic to the argument that that's not enough time, but if your company has a mobile app on iOS and you're not planning to do this work every summer in time for the September release then it's a pretty major failure of planning.

If you need to do months of work every summer to keep up with iOS updates you need to look at what you’re doing wrong, unless you’re simply adopting new features every time. Things should generally just work. Apple doesn’t usually break well-behaved apps (usually).

For sure, but you at least need to plan to maybe have work to do. Either to proactively support new features/devices or any necessary updates. If you're hitting September and your app is still broken, something has gone wrong.

You just need to plan to test your apps every Summer. And maybe extra time for implementing new platform features, like log-in with Apple and whatnot. But it’s still a yearly routine!

To be fair, iOS version increments usually aren’t rocket science if you don’t want to take advantage of all the new features right away.

Why the /s? Three months is a _very_ long time in software. This isn’t retooling physical metal for a new car model year; it’s minor software tweaks at best. Most developers don’t actually need to do anything.

> Three months is a _very_ long time in software

No, its not. For example, I use an open source app called fd:

https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

I have not updated it since 2020. Yeah, new versions are available, but the old one works fine, so no need to even upgrade. You shouldn't have to get every single version of software just because its available.

What exactly is the point of all these releases if you don't upgrade?

Do you think Apple just releases new versions of iOS with API changes to keep developers shipping new versions or something?

I don't understand this mentality that just because v1.6.3 is available you don't HAVE to upgrade from v1.2.1.

There's obviously new bug fixes and features available to you.

The only reason I would say not to upgrade is because your device doesn't support the new version and in that case you CANT upgrade.

Right, but since when does Apple (or any company) get to dicate what versions of software that I use? Granted in some cases, forced upgrades are a thing. But I am a human being with agency, I can make my own decisions on what to run on my own computer/devices.