Apple released iOS 26 on [2025-09-15 Mon] and I have few days to still update my iPhone SE 3rd gen to iOS 18, since I still on early iOS 16. I wouldn't want to upgrade to iOS 26 as reports say the performance degrading heavily.
Upgrading to iOS 18.7 within iPhone fails upon downloading. So I downloaded iOS 18.6 (from ipsw.me) which is still signed by Apple.
Instructions:
- Connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac or PC with a cable.
- Open Finder (macOS Catalina or later) or iTunes (Windows/older macOS).
- In Finder select your device.
- Hold Option (Mac) and click Restore iPhone/iPad.
- Choose the iOS 18 IPSW you downloaded.
- Wait 10–30 minutes for the process to finish. Your device will restart with iOS 18.
Then I upgraded to iOS 18.7 from the phone without issues.
The problem appeared that apps were not backed up, so I had to redownload them from AppStore.
But some of the apps that I had were no longer available in AppStore.
The biggest loss is Marvin 3, the best book reader ever. Unfortunately, development stopped and Appstafarian removed Marvin and other apps from AppStore. That's irrecoverable loss. So Marvin 3 and my collection of books there lapsed. Surely I have the same books elsewhere (in the cloud or in backup disks), but still it's a big loss for me.
Slightly less loss is iPassword 7. I still used that version that didn't require subscription and stored passwords in local (in iCloud) vaults. Nowadays I'm migrated off from iPassword to Apple Passwords and using authinfo with GPG on macOS.
Also I lost Sberbank Online, but Sber nowadays provides a tool to "bring back online" called Verni Sber, so I used it.
Okay, the flight is stable now.