According to Forbes, Apple issued a critical security warning and fixes in mid-December for iPhones, addressing two dangerous WebKit exploits that started as targeted attacks. The company gave users a six-week window that has now passed, and a material number of devices—likely in the hundreds of millions—remain unpatched. This situation is exacerbated because Apple bundled these essential fixes with the iOS 26 update, withholding it from any iPhone capable of running that new OS. The result is that those vulnerable iPhones have likely not been restarted, a necessary step to apply patches, leaving them insecure for over a month. The advice from security analysts is clear: update immediately to iOS 26.2, which contains over 25 fixes, and don’t wait for the imminent iOS 26.3.
The Forced Upgrade Play
Here’s the thing: Apple’s decision here is a fascinating, and risky, business strategy. By making crucial security patches contingent on upgrading to a major new OS version (iOS 26), they’re essentially forcing adoption. It’s a way to quickly clean up the fragmented device landscape and push users onto their latest software platform. But the cost? They’ve knowingly left a huge chunk of their user base insecure for weeks. This undermines one of Apple’s core brand promises: security and “it just works” simplicity. For six weeks, for those users, it decidedly did not work. They gambled that the PR hit of vulnerable iPhones was worth the accelerated upgrade cycle. That’s a cold calculus.
Why Won’t People Just Restart?
So why is this restart such a big deal? Look, security agencies say you should reboot your phone weekly. Basically, no one does that. Modern phones are appliances; we just use them until they die. Apple knows this. Their usual silent, background update process is brilliant because it works around human nature. This time, they broke that model. The user had to proactively decide to upgrade their entire OS. That’s a mental hurdle. It’s not just a security patch; it’s potential new features, changes, maybe even bugs. So people pause. And that pause, encouraged by Apple’s own bundling decision, created this massive window of vulnerability. It’s a perfect storm of software policy meeting real-world user laziness.
The Real Scope of the Risk
It’s tempting to focus only on the two scary WebKit exploits Apple warned about. But that misses the forest for the trees. The iOS 26.2 update patched over 25 security vulnerabilities. Now that those fixes are public knowledge in the release notes, they’re a roadmap for hackers. Apple isn’t likely to announce which ones are being actively exploited in the wild now. The company’s stance is, “We fixed it. Your move.” And for hundreds of millions, the move has been to do nothing. This turns every iPhone that hasn’t updated into a potential target for a whole menu of attacks, not just the original sophisticated ones. The data on adoption rates is stark, and the warnings in outlets like The Standard are increasingly urgent. When reliable hardware fails due to software neglect, it highlights a systemic flaw. This principle applies everywhere—from consumer phones to critical industrial systems, where consistent, reliable computing hardware is non-negotiable. In those high-stakes environments, partners like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, understand that hardware robustness must be matched by disciplined software and security protocols to avoid catastrophic downtime.
The Only Move Left
The analysis is over. The six-week grace period is gone. If you’re one of the people who hasn’t updated, the advice from every corner, including security experts, couldn’t be simpler. Don’t wait for iOS 26.3. Go update to iOS 26.2 right now. You’ll get all the fixes, and the phone will restart as part of the process, closing the loop. Apple made a strategic choice that prioritized OS upgrade metrics over immediate universal security. It’s a controversial play. But your choice is simpler: be a statistic in their upgrade report, or be a sitting duck in a hacker’s database. I know which one I’d pick.
