Roger Fingas
As of Wednesday Apple is no longer signing iOS 9.3.5, effectively preventing anyone already on iOS 10 from downgrading to iOS 9.
The company has also stopped signing iOS 10.0.1, making the latest versions of iOS — iOS 10.0.2, and 10.0.3 on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus — the only releases anyone can install without unsupported workarounds.
Apple regularly stops signing updates as a security measure, but today's step could theoretically cause problems for people with older devices who are experiencing performance or compatibility problems with iOS 10. New versions of iOS typically don't perform as well on devices that are several years old — some tests have suggested though that iOS 10 is friendlier in this regard than past updates.
Separately, Apple has stopped signing tvOS 9.2.2 for the fourth-generation Apple TV. tvOS 10 introduced features like a dark mode, and upgraded Siri and HomeKit functions.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Stephen Silver
Charles Martin
7 Comments
Oh jeez, here it comes from the apple haters:
I owned an iPhone and and the original iMac (and ever apple model since) but Im trading my iPhone for android now. Apple ecosystem is loosing now, its a a walled prison where you can't even decide what OS you want to run. they are horrible, ever since Steve died... They are looser.... -o crap-... Eeeeiiiiiiiiiii!
(frantically running around in circles as the samesung phone in back pocket bursts into flames) ;-)
This is a problem since there are still bugs in iOS 10 that Apple hasn't addressed. There is a significant bug on the iPad that for many apps the font resizing doesn't work. This was known for a long time even before the release and still hasn't been fixed. Only workaround is the downgrade to 9