If you have an Apple Watch 3 or 4 and are running it together with an iPhone with iOS 12, it is not possible to install the latest security update from watchOS to version 5.3.2.
Here’s the situation: Apple has announced that watchOS 6 will run on all Apple Watches of series 1 to 5 – a good thing. Currently watchOS 6 is already released, but not for Series 1 and 2. Since there is a critical vulnerability here, Apple has released an additional update to watchOS 5.3.2 until watchOS 6 is released for the older models.
Intention or error?
If you now own an older iPhone, maybe an iPhone 5s or 6, you’ll notice that it doesn’t work with iOS 13 anymore and stops at iOS 12. Which is no problem so far, as Apple has released a security update for an older system for the first time. However, there is one limitation in conjunction with the Apple Watch: to update it to watchOS 6 you need iPhone with iOS 13, otherwise you can’t upgrade. But that shouldn’t be a problem, because watchOS 5 is already very powerful.
But it’s annoying if you have a relatively new Apple Watch 3 or 4, which you run on an iPhone with iOS 12. Since watchOS 6 already exists for these models, Apple doesn’t offer to update watches that still run under 5.3.1 to 5.3.2 – this only works with Series 1 or 2. The update to 5.3.2 would still be possible under iOS 12 but is not offered because there is already watchOS 6, which again does not want to run with iOS 12. The Apple Watch App asks for such an update of the iPhone, which already runs under the latest version 12.4.2.
This leads to the absurd situation that an iOS 12 iPhone can patch older Series 1 and 2 Apple Watches and thus close the security problem, but not Series 3 and 4. The vulnerability is open as long as a watchOS 5 Watch is running on an iOS 12 iPhone. Ironically, both systems still get security updates, of which watchOS can only be installed on very old watches – Series 3 and 4 remain vulnerable in this situation until further notice.
Update: It now works!
We tried it a few weeks every now and then, and now the update is shown (5.3.3 in the meantime). We could not find out what the factor is that lead to the problem, having tested it in two different hardware combinations. So if you have this problem: try again and again, maybe with another wifi and after a few restarts of your devices. It seems to be just a glitch, not an intentional behavior.
