Besides the obvious security issues, it means a long(er) delay between a feature being available and supported by most users.
Even with iOS’s good update adoption it still needlessly handicaps developers.
The device itself is snappy enough and I'm well aware of the RAM limitations Apple puts in their mobile devices. However, the entire thing is now useless.
And old Android tab from the same year is slow as molasses (always has been) but runs Android 7 through custom ROMs which lets it use a modern version of Bromite. When it finally boots, it works well enough for casual browsing, especially on lighter web pages.
The old iPad has no such luck. There are no newer browsers available for it, not even after jailbreaking the thing. It's a waste of electronics, really. I accept that Apple won't make a newer version of iOS for such a device, it's received support for much longer than its Android counterpart, but if you're going to abandon a device, at least free it! Open up the sources so people can develop new things for devices you no longer care about!
But then, Apple also wants to keep keynote events filled with enticing news and updates. So while it may never decouple Messages or Mail or Maps from the OS releases (for different reasons), Safari shouldn’t be that big a deal to separate out if the OS is redesigned.
Y'all know that releasing one change at a time is going to be way easier to debug/fix than 100 at a time yeah?
I get that this is their "thing", but as a person who was buying Apple devices on account of them working, I would greatly appreciate them actually doing things that improve how well things work, instead of prioritizing marketing.