I know everyone hates liquid glass but isn’t that better security wise than being on an iOS that’s 8 versions behind?
iOS 17, then iOS 18, then iOS 26, then iOS 27.
You're not the only party confused.
It's inevitable because they decided on year, and Murphy's law dictates that'll they will encounter this problem.
Originally: To be the annoying pedant, version numbers did still monotonically increase, even with the gap, because each version is >= to the last. The mono means a single direction, not a step size of one.