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Comment by tantalor | Hacker News Reader

Supporting Android 6 would be like supporting iOS 9.

Apple is only supporting latest version of iOS (17.5).

> Supporting Android 6 would be like supporting iOS 9.

1. Your point still stands, but this is because this update is probably shipping as a Google Play Framework update, which works on >= 6.0. Google is not (to my knowledge) releasing a new firmware.

Apple would do well to decouple certain software components from iOS, IMHO.

2. In case others are curious about iOS version market share, statcounter's stats for April 2024:

17.4 (current until today): 51%

17.3: 22%

16.6: 4.3%

16.7: 3.18%

16.1: 2.8%

16.3: 2.12%

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/ios/mobil...

Android 6: 0.79%

As a developer, that long tail of folks on the previous major version really sucks with fast-moving frameworks like SwiftUI. There's no way my company (a banking app) would drop 10% of customers, so we typically do N-1 for iOS support.

Our Android app shipped almost 3 years ago with minSdk=24 (Android 6.0) and we haven't had to update it.

The web browser is a big issue with this, too. A Safari release broke IndexedDB and they didn’t release a fix for over two months because browser updates are tied to the OS.

If there's a critical security update they can release an update within days. So it's got nothing to do with the complexity of releasing a new OS, it's just that they found IndexedDB not important enough to warrant an out of cycle update.

I write apps for a large regional grocery store chain, and we have to support N-2. Even then we get support emails every time we bump it up.

I work on Android apps for a food company turned media network.

We, to this day...with no talks of changing it any time soon, support all the way back to Android 5.0 (released in November on 2014).

I mostly work on Windows apps. People still complain when software drops support of Windows 7 released in 2009, or Windows 8 released in 2012. Despite none of them are supported by Microsoft.

It'd be a more fair comparison to take into account Windows 7's EOL which was just a year ago IIRC if you coughed up Extended Support money, its broad install base, and it being the last actually truly decent Windows that had a consistent UI across the place and no ads.

Windows 7 didn't have a consistent UI, though. In multiple places you could find Vista and XP-decorated panels. Your nostalgia is wrong.

https://ntdev.blog/2023/01/01/state-of-the-windows-how-many-...

Goes back to 3.1

That only continued to degrade with Windows 8 and 10 though.

So this has the downside of not being supported for Androids that don’t use Google Play services right? Like the Amazon tablets?

Still a big win overall I’m just curious what number of devices basically don’t get important upgrades due to this method. (Surely a tiny amount compared to what you’d have if you relied on device manufacturers to update the OS.)

> Apple would do well to decouple certain software components from iOS

I'm not really convinced of this. When you control the entire hardware and software stack, and already provide updates for 7+(?) years per model, would doing this really change much? Google needed to do that because some cheapo manufacturers weren't really providing any updates to speak of, and Google has limited ability to force manufacturers to provide updates on any particular schedule.

It's funny, because to me this is really just the Linux model vs. BSD model, in a way. Linux base systems are cobbled together from various bits of software maintained by different people and groups. Many of those components can be updated independently of one another, including the kernel. The BSD model is to ship the entire base system as a versioned unit, and only update the entire thing monolithically. Android does the Linux model, iOS does the BSD model. Both models work just fine, depending on what your goals are and your distribution model.

I think the one thing I'd argue Apple should decouple from the OS is Safari. A web browser (and the underlying OS web view) should be independently updateable, even after a device stops getting OS-level security updates.

Google and Apple have fairly different platform software update strategies so I was curious how the support windows line up. Android 6 was the last supported release on devices like the Nexus 5 and Xperia Z3 from 2013 and 2014. iOS 9 was the last version supported for devices like the iPhone 4s and 3rd gen iPad that shipped in 2011 or 2012. Going forward to 2013 iPhones you have the 5s which was last supported in iOS 12. It sounds like Google is able to ship this directly rather than as an OS update that would need to go through manufacturers, while Apple typically deploys these type of fixes by pushing an OS update. I'm curious how far back they'll go, they rarely ship security fixes more than two major versions behind the current release (so maybe down to iOS 15, supporting devices released in 2015).

You’re right iOS 15 got an update earlier this year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_15

> they rarely ship security fixes more than two major versions

Every flagship iPhone since 2011 has gotten at least five years of OS updates, with additional years of security updates after that.

For instance, the original version of the iPhone SE is currently in its eighth year of support, and just got another security update a couple of weeks ago.

Two different things, Apple provides a pretty long window of OS updates for each device but doesn't ship updates for older OS versions. For example the 1st gen SE shipped with iOS 9 which has not been getting updates for a few years, but it can run iOS 15 which still seems to be getting security updates.

It probably seems odd when you're coming from a history of devices with a very short support window, but you don't need to worry about years when you only get a security update until you run out of years when you get the OS AND security updates first.

For instance, that original iPhone SE came out in 2016, the same year as the original Pixel phone. The iPhone is still supported by Apple today, while the Pixel phone was dropped from support by Google five years ago.

Google had to come up with a way to backport features to older unsupported versions of the OS because their support window was so abysmally short.

Hopefully, this won't be an issue going forward, with Google promising a comparable support window in the future.

One issue with iOS vs Android is that iOS has the browser tied to the OS ala Internet Explorer. Once iOS is no longer supported, you're now using an unsupported insecure browser. And all other iOS browsers sit atop the unsupported insecure browser in iOS.

On Android, the browser is separate and you can install alternative browsers. The current release of Chrome for Android works with Android 8 which was released in August 21, 2017 and dropped January 2021. Android System Webview (the browser engine that other apps can use so they don't have to ship their own) works the same way and is independently updated from the OS.

Updating an app doesn't fix an issue that requires a security update, or a replacement driver.

> Virtually any Android, Linux, or Windows device that hasn't been recently patched and has Bluetooth turned on can be compromised by an attacking device within 32 feet. It doesn't require device users to click on any links, connect to a rogue Bluetooth device, or take any other action, short of leaving Bluetooth on. The exploit process is generally very fast, requiring no more than 10 seconds to complete

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/bluet...

A browser update doesn't fix that and that and Blueborne was disclosed during the era when an Android device only had a support window of two of three years.

iPhones from over a decade ago were getting security updates, including for the browser, for seven or eight years.

This was from 2017, and nothing came out of it.

Every month or so someone (usually a security company that wants to sell something) find a domesday exploit for android that is unpatchable, and then it gets patched or turns out to be a non issue.

> the browser tied to the OS ala Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer was usually only loosely tied to the OS. Yes, many versions of Windows came with some version of IE, but you could usually install a newer version if you wanted. Every once in a while, a newer version of IE required a newer version of Windows, but that wasn't typical.

As I understand it, on Apple systems, Safari comes with the OS and is updated together --- Safari updates come in OS updates. Mobile IE was very similar though, at least on Windows Phone 7 and newer.

> Safari comes with the OS and is updated together --- Safari updates come in OS updates.

That’s true on iOS but not exactly true on macOS. Upgrading macOS also upgrades Safari, but you can also install newer versions of Safari on older versions of macOS. You just can’t have older versions of Safari on newer versions of macOS.

iOS 17.5 supports devices back to the iPhone XS released in 2018.

iOS 17 runs on 80% of current iPhones in use

https://telemetrydeck.com/blog/ios-market-share-03-24/#:~:te....

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