- Owners of vintage iPhones stuck on iOS 11, old Macs and various other products threaten to bear the brunt of a decision over online services
- Apple could indeed very soon deprive them of access to iMessage, FaceTime, Siri, App Store and Apple Maps – among other services
- Behind the scenes, the firm is about to completely review its service offering
Apple is known to be pretty serious about the length of support for its products. iPhones are supported for an average of 6 years for major updates and security patches. After five years after their release, Apple considers that its products pass into the “old products” category – the firm then no longer provides hardware repairs except for certain products in certain areas.
Then, beyond 7 years, the products go into the “obsolete” category. They are then no longer entitled to any updates or hardware repairs. However, for now, even outdated Macs and iPhones can still use some Apple online services. This is the case, for example, of iMessage, FaceTime, their latest available version of Siri, in addition to access to the App Store and Apple Maps – if these applications were available during the latest updates delivered on these devices.
Apple threatens to unplug its “old” online services
Apple maintains many “obsolete” cloud services for this, without which the operation of these services on these devices would be impossible. But according to a 9to5Mac info (taken from leaker StellaFudge’s tip) this could change very quickly. With the exception of iCloud, all online services still available on these devices would soon be shut down by the firm.
All Apple products stuck on iOS 11, macOS High Sierra, watchOS 4, tvOS 11 and earlier are affected. The leaker’s info is generally reliable, and the info itself seems quite credible. Especially since Apple seems to have confirmed the change by publishing a new technical support page on March 18, entitled “If a notification indicates that your software version will no longer support Apple services”.
For now, however, Apple does not communicate further on the subject. But we can think that a big update of the service offer is preparing behind the scenes. Knowing whether this is a redesign or rather a security update is therefore complicated at this stage. However, that would not be surprising. For example, WhatsApp has removed support for older devices due to updates.
Beyond that, 9to5Mac tells us that iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 should stop supporting iPhone 8 and iPhone X as well as 5th generation iPads. Apple – and to its credit – maintains a 6-year support period when its Android competitors only fully support their devices for, at best, 3 years. With the exception of Fairphones which go up to 7 years of support.
