by spudlyo 18 hours ago
I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced.
It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, which is fine. I can only imagine that these new generation iPads will easily go for the next 10 years.
Same! Reading through that announcement about MOAR power and AI and all I can think is, "This can't possibly play YouTube videos at me on my spin bike any better than my iPad from 8 years ago..."
I had this thought until I actually replaced my iPad with the m1 chip.
It was actually better at youtube by being more efficient, I could watch videos for a full day before needing to charge.
I’m not sure this is a good thing..
Not needing to charge as much due to much better battery capacity and/or usage efficiency is objectively a good thing, full stop.
How that additional time is actually spent is a whole separate story, but that's entirely tangential to assessing the impact of battery life improving.
In the 1990s we referred to this dilemma as needing a “killer app” to drive an upgrade. Fortunately everything needed more mips, but unless you’re a niche gamer, consumers hit the wall in maybe 2010. Which is why every oem is pushing Ai. Sell moar !! Fill the landfills !!!
I had an even older iPad I was happily using for similar use cases. Until one day a family member bricked it and I needed to factory reset. No big deal, I thought -- nothing important on it. Turns out it needed to phone home to do the factory reset, and since the server it wanted to talk to was no longer up (or perhaps the address changed?) I couldn't factory reset the iPad.
If someone has a work-around I'd love to hear it. Until then, or until Apple changes this design, I think I'm done with iPads. I don't want to pay that much to "own" something that Apple can simply make obsolete by reconfiguring or turning off a server somewhere.
Edit: fix typo
You should be able to DFU, but when it phones home it'll require a software upgrade
Apple recently had an issue with expired certs they had to remedy. That tends to be their bottleneck now.
Yeah that just tripped me up trying to recomission a 2012 Macbook Pro.
Couldn't connect to wifi except through a password-less hotspot. Then I couldnt get online because nothing with SSL was working.
I didnt have a pen drive so I had to FTP off another machine, via my phone hotspot. We got there though!
My iPad Pro must by the model ahead of yours. I just upgraded the OS to v26 and it’s awful - sluggish, jittery, inconsistent typing experience - borderline unusable for a fast work environment. With no downgrade option I’m forced to buy a new one for work and relegate the older device to entertainment or kids use only.
Being stuck on v17 is a feature for the older A-series chipset.
The newer have worse ergonomics than the old ones. I used to use my previous ipads all the time for reading, but now I find them all fairly uncomfortable for reading and end up not using them. Slightly tempted to sell them and get older models tbh
My iPad Mini from 2020 is also surprisingly good today. It's one of those devices that just quietly do their job forever. They are a dying breed.
> It's one of those devices that just quietly do their job forever.
Except for the battery, which isn’t that easy to replace on an iPad. And apps relying on anything online (including browsers) stop functioning at some point, because you can’t replace the OS or install arbitrary apps.
Is it significantly worse than an iPhone? I've opened up iPhones 4, 5s, 7, 8, and 13 to do home battery swaps, and none were particularly horrid, especially if you'd not passionate about trying to restore the factory water-seal adhesive on newer models.
It’s a shitload of glue around the screen, so yes, it’s worse.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+Air+5th+Generation+Battery...
An iPhone 13 is also a shitload of glue around the screen, though pulling apart an iPad sized device using suction cups does sound especially hair-raising.
The sleepyti.me app I've been using for years no longer works on iOS 18+ and now I keep the icon around on my homescreen as a tombstone :(
They changed to sleepopolis.com and you can just make a webapp for it.
I mean, you can take your iPad back to Apple and have them replace the battery, you know. For my current one (a "4th generation" Air) that'd be $120, which is not cheap, but it's cheaper than replacing it for $700 and a lot less stressful than trying to replace the battery myself.
(Having said that, I'm not ruling out replacing it, but I don't think I'll be inclined to do that until they stop updating its version of iPadOS.)
The “point” is very far in the past though. My 2016 ipad still working great for anything online.
Old ipads are great until apps start not working with the OS. I have a 2017 and Disney+ just dropped support for my current OS version and I can't update further.
Lifespan of Apple products continues to amaze me even if it should not.
if you can put up with each update making it worse, slower, less precise user interface. There's a reason old macs run linux rather than macos or go to landfil.
For the amount charged they should be usable for 15-20 years. Enschittification is very much an apple thing. Cue outraged apple cult memebers.
I’ve got an old iPhone 8 that runs great.
I've got an iphone 6 that doesn't, along with a couple of ipads that switch on but are useless and a couple of macs that now have to run linux to be useful in any way.
I've also got an iphone 15 pro that has started on on the enschittification update path. Pauses after presses, many more typos and it's just not slick and nice like when it was new.
But sure, in my experience, apple zelaots just won't believe it happens even while observing it.
An old iPadOS means an old safari, which means some of the websites are going to get suspicious. I remember one day not being able to open any Cloudflare website.
How old was the device? I have a Late 2018 iPad Pro and have never encountered anything like this. It still works perfectly fine, and having invested in the nice keyboard case for it, I'm hoping to not have to upgrade for a while longer. It honestly might last me 10 years without breaking a sweat.
I bought magnetic self adhesive tape and mounted in on my fridge. Now it’s the family calendar. So nice.
That seems incredibly overpowered for a calendar lol. I imagine doing this with a kindle / e-ink display might also be more energy friendly.
It might be much more energy efficient, but it doesn’t really matter when the annual energy cost is $2 for the iPad
I have the 2g iPad pro (I think I bought it in 2020 before the pandemic?). I keep looking for an excuse to replace it but it just works so well there isn't much to get from a new one.
My iPad 2011 is still going strong, except that my Airpods Pro won't talk with them anymore.
So should I buy a second pair of work-out earphones or a new tablet? A new tablet would give me back access to app store and many apps, which are no longer compatible with this old slab, but at least Amazon Prime Video and most importantly, VLC still works.
I’d buy a new (or used) tablet. An iPad 10th gen can be had lightly used or refurb for under $200. Or go with the brand new 12th gen that is supposed to be coming out tomorrow at $349 if you’re not on a super tight budget and want it to last you as long as that ancient one did.
How was the battery held up? I have the same one, but the battery lasts only 25 minutes max, pretty sure it's shot. Any tips on making sure battery lasts a while? I might even switch out the battery myself.
I also have and use this iPad. Mainly for procreate and watching things.
Even at 9 years old, I don't see myself upgrading in the foreseeable future.
Lightning cable unfortunately has a shelf life. My current SE2 barely seats the cable appropriately in the connector and if you look at it wrong it stops charging.
If you haven't already, check the port for lint. Scrape it out carefully with a wooden toothpick.
That's what I use a 2014 Sony tablet for. The battery last surprisingly long, but heavy websites are an exercise (well, the other form of exercise) in frustration
Honestly this is iPads biggest problem. My is from 2019, and there’s just no reason to upgrade, unlike a phone I don’t need it to have a better camera or be lighter or whatever. They nailed it years ago and the hardware is so good the software never really challenges it.
On the other hand, that’s also one of the best things about it. Part of what makes it worth the cost is that nothing important changes and it can last for a long time.
I bought and iPad Mini Nov 20th, 2013, and it still works. Slow, but it does. Enough for my daughter to watch YT Kids here and there.
How is the battery doing? I find sudden rechargeable battery/controller failures in the 5-10 year range to be my most common cause of upgrade or repair.
Kind of luck of the draw on that one, I think. I have a first-gen iPad Mini on its original battery around here somewhere. Doesn't run for more than a couple of hours on a charge, but it also hasn't exploded yet...
It usually lasts 3-4 sessions. I power it off between uses to preserve battery.
When cleaning out my deceased father's electronics closet, I found a 1st gen iPhone. Fortunately its charging cable was nearby. I charged it and, miraculously, it turned on, and was in fact fully usable (minus calling, due to no SIM card). Note that the device is almost 20 years old at this point.
In contrast, none of the various Android devices he collected over the years turned on. One came close, then errored out right after booting.
> (minus calling, due to no SIM card)
Could also be due to incompatible radios. 2G GSM isn’t available everywhere anymore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G#Phase-out), nor is 3G (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G#Phase-out).
Might actually be worth something, as there's not that many of them around (especially that work).
Sorry for your loss.
Have a 7th gen iPad from 2019 I use as my daily driver. Has iOS 18 and works great. Was $80 on eBay a year or so ago.
Just curious, why don't you just use your iphone? Why the ipad? Why do you prefer it over an iphone?
The big screen fits perfectly over the elliptical’s display, the readability of ebooks (my most common use) is superior.
Can’t speak for the OP but I do the same because the screen is bigger and you don’t have to look down as much and strain your neck.
Same here. Sucks that Netflix is no longer supported but YouTube works great.
I have an iPad 9th generation here, from 2021, and it appears to be at the end of its life.
I expected it to last a little longer, despite the cheap price of around $350 in 2022.
After the Liquid Glass update it became so sluggish that I had to turn off animations in the Accessibility settings. And it still is not enjoyable.
iPad Pro (4th generation) 2020 here. Life was good then updated OS with liquid glass. Big mistake.
Yeah same here, stuck on the 2018 one coz its still great.
They can only go as far if Apple doesn't deprecate them, unfortunately
I use a 2012 MacBook Air 11" for Zoom meetings. Still runs like a champ. It's stuck on Catalina, but Apple still sends out patch releases.
Depends on how you look at it. While the hardware might keep functioning and current software might keep running, some devs also deprecate their software. I have an old 6S+ that I keep software that I don't want to install on my actual device. Slack informed me that it will no longer function after a date set later this year. Other apps have already stopped working on it because the devs do not want to deal with it.
TL;DR sometimes it's not Apple, it's the app devs that deprecate them.
I have a google nexus 7 tablet from 2013. Thanks to Google unlocking all their bootloaders by default, I can install u-boot and a modern linux kernel on it (thanks PostmarketOS).
Since linux runs on it, I can run the latest versions of great pieces of software like ed, slack in a web browser, etc.
It is 100% apple's fault that they do not open up the bootloader for devices they'll no longer offer updates for and allow the community to build a custom darwin or linux fork. Even though we paid for the hardware, we are not allowed to use it any longer than apple says.
It will go as long as certificates chains are valid.
> TL;DR sometimes it's not Apple, it's the app devs that deprecate them.
Are the app devs deprecating just because their support matrix is too big, or because current SDKs will no longer build apps compatible with those devices?
I think the later case is less common on the Android side of the fence, but Apple is not great about keeping old versions of the dev tools functional, and you end up needing to keep elderly Macs around to target older versions of the OS.
The primary hard part is testing the old versions. Xcode has decent backdeploy support (Xcode 26 supports targeting iOS 15, the final version to run on the 6S), but there's no way to actually verify that it works other than on an older device that's never been upgraded. It's a pretty substantial increase in testing burden and greatly increases the size of the pile of phones that you need to janitor for your CI setup.
Submitting apps to the app store requires using the latest version of Xcode (with a ~half year lag after a new one comes out), so it's now impossible to submit an update to the app store that supports iOS <15.
It’s because every supported version multiplies support burden and sometimes can prevent use of new APIs that substantially improve quality of life unless the dev is willing to turn their code into a patchwork quilt of version checks (which brings its own problems).
On Android it’s less of an issue because the SDK ships separately from the system, but there are often still substantial behavioral differences between system versions under the same SDK that can be a real pain in the rear, especially when it comes to permissions-related issues. This why it’s common for Android apps to have odd bugs or behave strangely on ancient versions of Android — while it’s easy for the dev to produce a build technically runs on a wide range of versions, properly testing against all those permutations of versions and manufacturer skins is practically speaking impossible unless you’re a sizable company that keeps a lab full of devices with CI rigged up to test against them all.
I cannot buy a device without resorting to Ebay to test my app on iOS 17. There are still bugs that manifest themselves on real devices and not on the simulator. And some APIs are just broken on the older releases.
As ex-iOS dev, usually it's because devs want the new shinny APIs. And after some point stakeholders are OK to stop supporting a tiny percentage of users stuck on old iOS versions. In my experience it was never because of Apple.
I have an iPad 4 that is now a single purpose scorekeeper for darts
Would be good for all players to punch the score in on their own iPhone and see the score on the common iPad.
Or, to use an app on the comfy smaller pocketable hypothetical iPhone and to see on the paired iPad when wanting the luxury of a larger display
There is no greater punishment for a corporation’s shareholders and employees than making a product so good and so reliable it doesn’t need to be replaced for a very long time.
Which is why we need regulations on the subject.
Yes we should regulate that Apple fully support an iPad Air 2 with 2GB of RAM. My iPad Air 2 with 3GB of RAM barely runs iOS 26.
While we are at, the EU should also force Apple to make macOS 26 run on an old Mac LCII from 1992
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic here (the tone needed to identify it doesn't work well in the internet).
But yes. My view on the issue is: companies need to support their products with software for a predefined time and after that they should be forec to open source everything needed so people can keep the thing running themselves.
No, we really don’t. Perhaps regulations on recycling, but punishing poorer people who can’t afford an iPad isn’t the answer.
You think regulations on planned obsolescence punish poorer people? How? As someone who had a friend who would only eat white bread at the end of the month having his old laptop not work would be a freaking emergency.
Yeah, I think the number 1 use case for tablets is "portable TV" followed by "makeshift touchscreen kiosk". It really doesn't need a lot of features. I have an iPad setup as a little home dashboard and it's literally stuck on iOS 9 but it does it's job.