> This is precisely the same issue with Android where people mistakenly blame Google instead of Qualcomm (driver authors) for the lack of Android upgrades.

Does this also apply to iOS devices?

The same principle technically applies, but when the SoC developers, kernel developers, and OS developers are all in the same company they don't really have the same problem.

With Android you have the Linux kernel team providing the mainline kernel, the SoC team providing the drivers, and Google providing the rest of the OS.

If the SoC team don't care about mainlining their drivers then those devices will only ever support the kernels that the SoC vendor releases packages for.

If Google wants to move Android along to a newer kernel and the SoC vendor isn't playing ball it comes down to hacks that may be acceptable in a community ROM but I wouldn't want to support in a commercial device.

No, Apple make their own SOC and corresponding drivers.

Maybe RISC-V will save us at some point?

I'm hoping the same. But even then, the CPU is only a relatively small part of the whole system.