I had an iPad 1 a long time ago. After just a few years, it stopped receiving updates. This meant that I could no longer install or update most apps. And then the apps broke as well because they needed updates to continue to function. The hardware was still perfectly fine. But the device became essentially bricked after a few years. Terrible experience.
The ephemerality of iOS applications is the biggest tragedy in software preservation history. So many memories, so much software history, locked away forever on some Apple internal archive server.
I think world might have transitioned past that. Snapchat, Instagram stories all hinge on fact shit moves on. I'd say Slack's best feature on free plan is the fact there isn't way to search all history (potentially wasting you time and giving incorrect outdated information).
> I had an iPad 1 a long time ago. After just a few years, it stopped receiving updates... the device became essentially bricked after a few years.
Last month I bought a new iPad to replace my TEN YEAR old iPad, which was working fine, but couldn't be updated to the latest iOS versions, and which was therefore missing some applications (like Netflix).
Plenty of apps still worked fine - including Safari, Mail, and most other applications.
The device is not "bricked" - which is an absurd and totally misleading description of a piece of technology that is slightly outdated, but works fine with most 'essential' apps.
Saying something is "bricked' means it cannot be used, at all. Which is totally not the case.
It could not be used for my (really pretty standard) purposes. So I stand by "bricked". Unless you consider it a light source. In which case I'd say ok yeah it could still have had some uses as a (not very bright) lamp.
“Bricked” has a pretty generally accepted meaning as non-responsive/completely non operational — it does not mean reduced functionality or incompatible with modern operating systems. By abusing the term, you’re being disingenuous rather than having an honest discussion about how to deal with the aging of technology and how to balance security and forward progress with efforts required for backward compatibility.
Where’s the moral outrage about my Macintosh SE not being able to run any version of OS X? Yes, that would be absurd. So where do we draw the line? It must be drawn somewhere - but Apple didn’t brick your device and claiming that gets in the way of reasonable discussion.
Obviously if you're claiming that the only application that was still working on your iPad was the lamp, then there's really nothing left for me to discuss, as I don't think that's factually the case for even the oldest existing iPads.
This is not true. You could download “the last compatible version” on an older iPad. If there wasn’t a compatible version, what do you expect?
I was able to do just that as late as 2018. Netflix, Crackle, Hulu, Spotify and a few other apps that I tried ran on a reset iPad 1.
But let’s be honest, the iPad was obsolete the day it was introduced. It came with only 256MB of RAM when the iPhone 4 that came out 3 months later came out with 512MB of RAM. It couldn’t run Safari without crashing with iOS 5.
Forgot to add that I also made the mistake of uninstalling Vlc at some point. It was still working. But then I couldn't get it back because the app store didn't let me install it any more.
Don’t try to install it from its store page, but from your “Purchased” list on your account. That should get the latest version you had access to. I haven’t tried that in years, so something may have changed.
I've received an old iPad to play around with running iOS 9. Safari is essentially crippled by a lack of software updates but old versions of the apps can still be installed.
Because of Apple's great software design, you need an old version of iTunes. From there, you can add apps to your account. Then, on the iPad, you can install "purchased" apps. The store itself is completely useless as nothing will install, but the "purchased" page will let you download the last version that works on the device.
Developers can decide to allow the download of the latest compatible version for old devices, but it seems a lot decides to against it.
So unless you manually backup the apps, it's really a pain to restore things on old devices.
I made this same mistake with an old iPod. It would have been nice if Apple had at least warned me on uninstall before slapping me in the face. That was the last day I used that device.
If you don't update your iPad, if apps stop working it's because the app developer has declared your iPad obsolete probably because older APIs are not supported. It's not something about the iPad or Apple per se.
It's hard to understand because software does not degrade with use so everything else being equal it should last an eternity. But in this particular case, everything is not equal because the 3rd party app has moved on.
The worst is that you can't update the browser, so you can't even use the modern web on devices that are left behind, and nobody besides Apple can help you, even if they wanted to.
Thankfully with iOS 17 it looks like this will no longer be the case!
Fair enough, the iPad 1 is ancient, but my comment applies to any iOS device stuck in iOS 12 or older.
I'm thinking particularly of the lack of support for popular ES2020 features like nullish coalescing, which is simple to implement (but Apple prohibits developers from shipping browsers), and can technically be transpiled away, but is indeed more commonly seen in production code every day.
There are a lot of 2014 iOS devices in this category, all with dual-core CPUs and 1GB RAM, which should be totally fine for simple web browsing in theory. E.g. iPads Air 1st gen and mini 3rd gen, as well as the hugely popular iPhone 6/6 Plus.
Yes, these are old devices, and I don't suggest they continue to be used, but there is no performance-based reason they should be incapable of rendering a simple web site in 2022, provided someone were allowed to build a new browser for them.
I still have one just used as a picture frame and at-hand web browser. compared to modern devices it's very slow, but that's OK.
To me it's like keeping around a very old car because it has a little functionality you'd occasionally find handy to have (large cargo capacity, or 4WD).
I'm pretty happy that apple devices work as long as they do.
Try buying an iPad 2 that had a weird 9 month life.
I’ve been looking for a lightweight JS library I can build a home dashboard with. Then I’d like to mount the iPad 2 in a wall to control my smart home. It can barely open a modern webpage.
