Apple announced a flood of updated operating systems at the recent WWDC; what stood out was the reduction in support time for devices.
OK, the iPhone 6s is an old beast that has been around for many years. That Apple is stopping support for it is understandable. You can wonder anyway how many of those devices still have any usable battery capacity at all. What makes it a noteworthy fact though, is that the 6s was the last phone from Apple (and the vast majority of other brands) to have the 3.5mm headphone jack on board. Successor iPhone 7 (which, by the way, is also not getting any updates after fall of this year) was “revolutionary” in that regard. Partly ridiculed for the disappearance of the headphone jack, other brands very quickly followed suit. Meanwhile, it is almost impossible to find a smartphone with a physical headphone connection. The reason? Well, half a millimeter thinner, a few cents saved on production costs and perhaps a bit more waterproof phones.
Shorter support
What was striking about the last WWDC is that Apple is rapidly dumping old devices in terms of support. This will partly have to do with the switch to their own CPUs, but there will undoubtedly also be commercial reasons. Particularly annoying for people who bought one of the last Intel Macs somewhere between 2017 and 2019 of course, those devices will probably only get a total of four or five years of OS updates.