This is 100% the reason I have an iPhone. I can usually eek out 5 yrs on an iphone before it’s taken one too many falls. Which has also been why any iPhone of mine has died, no other reason than I fumbled it around with no case on it…. Also much to my pleasure, the 13 mini was still available for my most recent upgrade, so now I don’t have a gigantic phone anymore either.

> I think this is a major factor that is driving market share towards iPhone.

Few people outside of the tech nerd bubble care about this.

Yes. I'd argue most people hate or are annoyed by updates. "Ugh, another update??" I hear this all the time. Or "X company updated my phone and everything is different, I hate updates!"

I'd argue that Google wouldn't keep gaslighting users about how it's fixed the update issue "for sure this year" if they didn't know that users care about updates.

You’re right, few people care about how long the phone will be supported.

What they do want is an inexpensive phone that still runs the latest software. Because Apple models are supported so long, people can buy used, old iPhones that still run the latest software.

Others trade in their phones often because they always want the new shiny. Because Apple models are supported so long, the used phone they trade in has more value, allowing them to fork over less cash for the latest Pro phone.

These are the sort of factors that drive Apple’s market share up.

> Because Apple models are supported so long, people can buy used, old iPhones that still run the latest software.

You (usually) can run the latest software on an old Android nowadays - the reason is that many of the functions which were previously baked into the system are now part of Google Play Services, which are upgraded like any other software package.

The only app to tell me that it will stop updating on my 5-year-old Android phone was... Slack.

I disagree. I know a bunch of people who buy cheap iPhones and use them forever because of this. And I know even more that buy old iPhones off Craigslist for $100-200 and use them for years.

> I think this is a major factor that is driving market share towards iPhone.

I personally couldn't care less about this. I just want a phone that works well for me.

Maybe I’m just old, but the idea of have a device on the internet that no longer gets security updates just seems wrong. Learned too many lessons back in the 90s and the oughts.

I'm a graybeard too (with a security background), and I got over this. The problem started when companies combined forced updating with no longer issuing security updates separately from other updates.

If it were just security updates, I wouldn't mind automatic installations. But feature updates are too disruptive. So I avoid automatic updates where I possibly can.

I accept that there's a security risk associated with doing this, but for me, it's a risk that's worth taking.

Didn't some recent Google Pixels have a baseband issue that allowed a remote takeover of an unpatched device by hackers knowing nothing more than the device phone number?

Security updates are not optional.

I had an iPhone SE 2016 model for about 5 years, really the only thing that caused me to get rid of it was apps no longer supporting the screen size. I wasn't able to use my banking app properly because things would be cut off, amongst various other apps.

I am still using an iPad Air 2 from 2014. In that same time span, I've had at least 4 different Android phones.

I'm considering an iPhone for my next phone, although I'm a Google Voice user which makes me a little nervous about that prospect, plus I've been less than impressed with Safari's extension ecosystem.

I have an iPhone SE. It might still be getting security updates but the actual user experience is quite bad now; new features and apps are just not designed for it. Meanwhile the original Google Pixel doesn't have the newest security updates but Play store apps and features still work properly on it.

If you read the OP linked report, contrary to the popular sentiment here and on Apple sites, that more people hold on to their Android phones longer than iPhones despite the lack of security updates

That 2016 phone couldn't be protected from Spectre family attacks without a ridiculous performance penalty.

What is the point in "security updates" for a CPU that can't be made secure?

This misses the point completely. Regular security issues happen often, in 2023 alone we've already had 809 CVEs in Android [0]. Saying we should overlook addressing those because sometimes a CPU level security issue comes along is absurd. Spectre and other similar families of attacks are comparatively rare enough that they have names not numbers, that should say enough.

[0] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224...