Safari is a shinning example of how wrong this is. Sorry.
The fact that they tie the mobile version to the OS version is just ridiculous.
Safari is a shinning example of how wrong this is. Sorry.
The fact that they tie the mobile version to the OS version is just ridiculous.
not only Safari, several other apps such as Music (which also has several annoying quirks) never understood why they did not get their own lifecycle if they have dedicated teams for each of those apps
If you're interested, it's to reduce cost. It's incredibly expensive to build something like Music or Maps. If each version is tied to an OS version, it keeps you from having to explode your testing and fixing cycle over time.
This is especially notably when you want to support all the latest OS features.
My company keeps the testing cycle smaller by only adding new OS-dependent features to its mobile app when the minimum supported OS version gets incremented and a feature is supported in every supported OS version. That means that the iOS app is only now getting features that were added in iOS 15 in 2021.
So exactly why is that a big deal when unlike Android - they actually keep their phones updated?
It's a deal when they stop updating. It is true they provide OS updates for longer than most, but many people use devices, especially ipads for way longer than the OS supported period. And those people are stuck on an old unsupported browser without being able to update or install a 3rd party one.
As I said in another reply, Apple just did a security update for the iPhone 5s released in 2013 January of this year.
The latest version of iOS runs on iPads back to 2919.
The latest version of Chrome requires the version of Android - released in 2019.
So how is it better?
Chrome and Google being bad doesn't make Apple's restrictions good. That said, Android lets you install a 3rd party browser which can choose to keep supporting old devices. iOS locks everything to using the safari engine.
And the latest version of Firefox requires the version of Android released in 2017… is that really a win?
Unlike Android indeed, when you maintain a perfectly working phone that happens (by accident or force of nature) to live longer than the official lifetime some executives in a remote office had decided to grant it, the web browser cannot be updated any more. Just the single most security sensitive piece of software of any computer. Who would have guessed people were going to complain!
The iPhone 5s - released in 2013 - just got an update January 2026.
The latest version of Chrome requires the version of Android released in 2019. Even phones that old aren’t getting other security updates.
Is that really the argument you want to make?
They give occasional security patches for the most critical bugs. They don't do full ios/safari updates. The iphone 5s is on ios 12.
And neither does Google. The latest version of Chrome requires the version of Android released in 2019. The latest version of iOS supports my iPad released in 2019.