The iOS 13 is Coming — Are You Ready?

The latest upgrade to Apple’s operating system for iOS will debut in less than a week. The exact date has been pegged for Monday, September 10th. Along with the usual raft of sparkling smartphones will emerge the iOS 13 — which the company claims contains all of the latest and most penetrating security updates available. But the ballyhoo glosses over the fact that for Apple customer’s nearly one billion iPhone users who opt to stay with anything less current than the iPhone 6s the new security measures are meaningless. And that’s going to be a potentially serious problem for a lot of people.

For example, Apple has reportedly already shipped nearly two-hundred million iPhone 6 or 6 plus. And all of that immense number can conceivably fall into an OS limbo when the iOS 13 begins to function in a few days. The phones themselves will function, of course, but their security updates cannot be activated. In other words, all those millions of users are up the creek without a security paddle. 

Apple claims the reason for this planned obsolescence is clear. Better hardware, they say, drives performance improvement requirements. And there is just so much hardware capacity able to be covered in a single OS issue. Meaning that for aging devices, the company has decided, with reference to their bottom line, that a five year window of compatibility is enough.

To cut to the chase, the iOS 13 will only be security compatible with the following:

iPhone XS Max; iPhone XS regular; iPhone XR; Iphone X; iPhone 8 plus; iPhone 8 regular; iPhone 7 plus; Iphone 7 regular; iPhone 6s plus; iPhone 6 regular; iPod Touch (Generation Seven); and iPhone SE.

All other smartphones are out of the running, when it comes to the newest security tech. No use for consumers to complain about it — they’ll just need to head to the nearest Apple store and empty out their wallets if they want guaranteed security for their data.