To comply with the law, manufacturers are expected to provide compliance statements; Apple provides its pledge via the company’s regulatory website, where it offers documents pertaining to Apple’s iPad, iPhone, Watch, TV and Home products. In all the filings I checked, the company says it will support these devices for a “minimum five years from the first supply data.”
Five years, that’s what we’ve got
What I hope Apple is doing with its five-year promise is under-promising so it can deliver better. Company critics have already noted that the support commitment is on first sight lower than the promise made by Android smartphone manufacturers, Samsung and Google, both of which seem to promise five years. Except, that’s not quite true — Google’s compliance statement offers numerous schedules, from two years to seven, depending on which product you choose. Given the breadth of Samsung’s smartphone catalog, it’s possible the company offers different support periods for some of its products.
What makes the idea that the five-year term Apple promises should be seen as a minimum it will guarantee — and not the maximum it will deliver — is that iOS 17 (the current iteration of Apple’s smartphone software) supports devices up to six years old, including the iPhone XS. That’s a trend Apple set in motion a few years ago when it decided to make its operating system compatible with as many device iterations as it could.
