What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death

It feels worse with the iPad because its marketing made an impression of a sleek, "just-works" kind of device. Of course, its utility is tied exclusively to applications from a captive marketplace, and often, to remote services frontended by those apps or the browser, making its elegance a leaky abstraction. Today's Chromebooks, another "just-works" device, will be in the same situation in five years.

But with Chromebooks, or Android phones (if you're lucky), or x86 or x64 PCs, you can replace the stock OS and repurpose the device on the hardware's own remaining merits. An iPad is just stuck.

So the cost of owning this iPad has been less than 20 cents/day over its 5 year usable life. That doesn't even factor in the slight energy savings vs using a full laptop if you want to be nitpickey. Nor does it factor in the current resale value. I just sold an original iPad 1 for $80 on Craigslist. I'm sure this would be worth at least as much, if not more.

"I still use my old iPad for passive consumption: reading, watching videos, checking feeds ...formerly easy tasks have become strained. Social apps have become slow, videos take longer to load and Safari can’t seem to handle the most important and fundamental services of the modern web."

This is all also true of my maxed out 2012 MacBook Air. Final Cut Pro X runs more smoothly editing HD video than browsing Facebook. And, while I agree the uses for an old iPad are limited (photo browser, music player / media controller, eBook reader, kitchen recipe browser), they are more elegant than keeping an old computer around.

The mixed blessing and curse of something like the iPad is that it still looks beautiful and functional long after it isn't. I'm sure it would be easier to part with the device if it was a 5-year-old $300 Celeron netbook.

My iPad is a relatively recent iPad mini which I bought a couple of years ago, but I know from my iPhone 6, I know upgrading to iOS 11 will slow down everything, for example each app taking about 10 seconds to launch--including Apple's own apps like Mail.app and Messages app.

Is there a way to completely block that upgrade to iOS 11 popup so I don't make the mistake?

There are approximately a bajillion 3rd gen iPads out there. Imagine walking into the local screen repair place, having them stick in a new Android board that reuses the digitizer, screen, and case. Maybe they pop a new battery in while it's open. Bam! Renewed iPad.

Given how cheep various SBCs have gotten, I have to imagine there is an economic business model for someone in retrofitting all these old, homogeneous, plentiful devices.

I couldn't find a working solution.

All the apps won't work properly and the browser doesn't work with things like Flikr or Google Photos.

It is a shame since the display is still awesome.

Any ideas on what to do with them?

I really feel it deserves a second life running some kind of alternate OS and can think of several uses for it, but last I checked there wasn't much of that happening.

Spotify works as does iBooks, Google Drive (reading PDFs), Mail, Calendar, etc.

I reset it last year and redownloaded old versions of all the third party apps mentioned above.

Now Safari on the other hand, crashes constantly.

I do have the newest non-Pro iPad and of course it performs better.

I rooted it a few days ago and also installed lineage 14.1 and I'll have to say, it's like a brand new device again. I was very surprised. I'm plan to mount it next to my thermostat and use it as a "solar" dashboard for showing consumption and production.

So what has changed? Nothing much except excellent quality hardware. That hardware can still be used by the way, to display videos, play (old) games. Great toys for little kids?

Is it that iPads are not upgradeable? Well, Apple has an entire system for recycling and credit. Also, an argument could be made that an upgradeable iPad would also cease to be as useful as an iPad, as it would necessitate some level of form-factor change.

Is it that software keeps moving forward? Well, that is not new, and is not unique to an iPad. A five year old computer running a recent browser will also struggle with new websites.

Is it that the author can't give the iPad to someone else who could use it and wouldn't be as frustrated? I fail to see how that is the case.

I'm sure using a five year old computer can get frustrating. But I think the fact that an iPad is still quite functional after five years of use is rather remarkable. No one writes op-eds in the NYT lamenting the slowness of their five year old netbook, because those devices are even more disposable than an iPad.

Edit - that is not to say that there is not an issue with aging iOS hardware. I just don't think the article makes a clear argument, or even statement, of what that issue is.

Hell, I would even settle for using it as a headless box ...

Then again it's only used to stream movies, read news and light browser based activities. Amazingly and to the delight of the kids most games are still playable.

The only other portable electronic devices I own with similar resilience are the original Raspberry Pi and potentially a 2011 Mac Book Pro. Though having to replace the logic boardonce and battery twice probably disqualify the MBP.

Also, some app writers make the app compatible with every iOS. Not Microsoft. Even newer versions of Skype aren't for iOS 9. But the last for iOS 9 was already too slow.

From this perspective, the biggest problem are the companies which decide not to test on the older hardware and which don't want to support older iOS versions.

Consider that the original iPad only had 256 megabytes of RAM and a single core ARM Cortex A8 CPU while the current entry level iPad has 2 Gigabytes of RAM and a dual core Apple Twister CPU.

If you go back to the days when PCs still saw that sort of repeated yearly performance advances and try to run Windows Vista on a machine built to run Windows 95, you're going to run into the exact same sorts of problems.

But then, the inevitable happened, the keyboard synth algorithms, multi track recorders, convolution reverbs etc., all improved and became more complicated, to the extent that the processor on the old iPad simply couldn't keep up any more. So I pretty much HAD to upgrade.

The old iPad is still in service though - my wife is a portrait artist and uses it to display reference pics next to her easel that she can zoom in and scroll around in. As the author of the OP has said - no problem with its aesthetics or reliability, we just reverted to using the apps that still work within the confines of its processor and memory limits.

[0] - https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret/in-a-bad-moog

[1] = https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret/industrial-ants-wav

Originally I used to charge it every 10-14 days. Now I must charge it every 3-4 days.

As a video watching device it is still fine. I would be happier if the utility degraded a little more gracefully. I can't think of a good reason why AdultSwim or CartoonNetwork shouldn't be supporting legacy iOS versions for their video players. Their target audiences are more likely to be using older hand-me-down devices. On the other hand, this device is also now the only device I can use to still play older 32-bit AdultSwim games like "Monsters Ate My Condo" and "Mole Attack" that no longer run in iOS 11.

Inside was a Macbook Air, a 2012 iPad, an iPod Touch, two 8GB iPods and an iPod Shuffle.

All except the Macbook are in full working order, but the iPad and iPod Touch were frustratingly slow to use.

--

Sent from a 1st gen iPad.

Yes, I can't download most new apps, but last year, I released an update for 'Economy for iPad' (#1 Finance app for several weeks in 2010) and that app continues to support the original iPad and iOS 5.1

Generally, the best way to keep old devices running well is to keep the old OS. (Old major version at its latest minor version e.g. 10.3). There is a slight risk of not being able to pick up security fixes that didn't make it into 10.3, but made it to 11.0. However, as a developer, who tests apps on older OS versions, I keep old test devices with old OS versions on them.

Btw I should also add that Netflix runs perfectly on my old iPad with iOS 5.1 :)

Edit:

Has there been a change in how older devices are impacted? For example, iPads before iPad Air are more likely to be impacted by updates. Any iOS device after the A7 chip is now less likely to be impacted.

It definitely isn't as snappy as it used to be, and the battery reports that it has lost 20% of its original capacity, but I use it all the time.

I primarily use it in meetings to take notes with OneNote, I also use it to SSH/RDP/VNC into other computers to write some code and such. I also have some means to work on code using a git app and Textastic. Yes, there are such apps available for iOS.

GarageBand and iMovie get some usage when I'm feeling "artistic" though I will admit they are starting to get too sluggish (GarageBand especially).

As far as games go, I mostly stick to the knockoff bargain-brand versions of big-budget games by Gameloft; Order and Chaos 2 (Guild Wars 2), Modern Combat (Call of Duty), Gangstar (GTA), Minecraft Pocket Edition, and retro game collections (Atari, Activision, Vectrex). I have a number of Bluetooth controllers that are compatible with those retro game collections that helps. I used to have my iPad jail broken and would play tons of emulators on it as well.

The main thing that's nice about something like an iPad with a keyboard is that with a bit of work it can completely take the place of your laptop and do it better. When I go away for a long weekend, I inevitably have to ask myself if I want to take my laptop or my iPad. It always boils down to how much I think I'm going to have to work, and usually it's the iPad I take. It does 90% of the day-to-day things I need to do, still has a relatively great battery life, and it's the size of a notebook even with the keyboard-case. And if things come down to it, I can still access my work computer or my webserver at home and do the whatever else I need to do (albeit in a less than ideal manner, but I've never had to say "sorry, I can't look into this right now cause I only have my iPad").

I will admit, it's the addition of a physical keyboard that really does it for me on the iPad. But keyboard or not, even within the Orwellian App Store I can be extremely productive with my 5 year old iPad.

And yes, I wrote all this on my iPad.

So I hit xda, grabbed slim OS 4.4.4 and lineage 7.1, both run fine. Gave my extras to my kids, runs youtube at 720 fine, browse fine. Only had to buy 2 batteries for 12 bux each.

We had an old Ipad gen 1 that because totally useless with apples market. Doesn't appear Apple handles older versions like the Google market, showing files that are supported by your version. Kinda sad.

Retargeting? I did sell them an iPad mini a few months ago.

YMMV

In much the same way you wouldn't try to play 4k video on a computer made in 1995, at some point the device's processing power maxes out. It's difficult to strike the balance between power, battery life and cost; Apple like to play the Rolls-Royce card of 'it's enough for you' in this regard, giving you a bit of room to expand in the future, but it's in no company's benefit to make your device last forever. With a device that cannot be upgraded, the best approach for them is to sell you another one.

I think the field of computing is particularly skewed by Linux, how most hacker-types will dig through their box of parts every so often, slap together enough components to build an old-generation system and install Ubuntu on it and voila, a second (third, fourth, tenth) lease on life for an old machine. And that's mostly true; Linux doesn't much care what it's running on, the OS can be adapted to run on anything. But at the same time, the applications running thereon will quickly prove why the hardware is previous-generation; sure, you might get the latest Ubuntu running, but what then? Add Chrome and a few tabs and it's going to start to creak; a few things running in the background and eventually you'll give up. Embedded devices are much the same; at some point, you will reach the limits of the hardware through no fault of your own. It's questionable how much by-design this is, with Apple admitting they silently force the CPU clock down as the battery ages, but even with fresh batteries, application developers will be taking advantage of newer hardware features that don't work efficiently or at all in previous models. Some of it may be progress for progress' sake, but try running a machine with full-disk encryption on a Core 2 Duo, without the AES engine - the new hardware makes a lot of difference.

It is a shame that the device doesn't visually age and when powered off has no indication of its age, but such is the way of the industry; it isn't Apple's way to make devices that last longer than their release cycle, and few companies have ever made much profit that way.

How long should apple support these devices? 5 years seems reasonable, and very few vendors of hardware offer anything like this.

I agree it sucks, and there is no reason a 5 year old ipad needs to be dead -- but in context this is fine. If you had a 5 year old car that allowed random drivers to stab you in the face remotely, people would replace their cars and not complain that this was a problem.