Unless you specifically enabled it, iOS does not get automatically updated.

They might have enabled it without understanding what could (and did) happen. Victim-blaming isn't the answer here -- that was a genuine clusterfuck that hosed a lot of working installations for no good reason.

You mean if you enable “automatic iOS updates” you don’t expect automatic iOS updates?

Or do you mean that when the user specifically enables “automatic iOS updates”, Apple shouldn’t automatically do iOS updates?

If we don’t “blame the victim” for explicitly making a choice , who is at fault?

There was no reason to think you'd be effectively cut off from half your apps if you enabled automatic upgrades. Or that many of the apps you could still use would be forcibly "upgraded" to subscription models, as iTeleport tried to pull.

How old was that device?

par for the course? I’ve literally never had this happen and I always keep the OS updated, this is certainly a confusing one.

I'm not an iOS expert; I've talked to my colleagues who have iPhones and iPads and they indicated "it happens". Quick Google search indicates my experience is hardly unique. Different people with different apps may have different experience and I don't know what the median experience is.

To be fair, it also obviously happens on Android, and every other platform, though for me on Android it was far more common that device itself stops getting new OS updates and new devices might not run old apps. I was caught by surprise that what seemed to me a small OS security patch or whatever, had an unanticipated and immediate effect on already installed apps.

I have no idea if "Automatic OS updates" was the default setting or if I clicked it at some point when I got the new iPad. I will take the responsibility for that choice, obviously, but my point was that "You can run old apps indefinitely on existing hardware" is not perfect advice.