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Comment by jtreminio | Hacker News Reader

I've got an original iPad and an iPad Air (I think 2nd gen).

Both still have great battery life and screens are still responsive ... but I made the mistake of wiping both to give as gifts for some nieces in El Salvador, and you can't actually install anything on them anymore.

They come with Safari and the other baked-in Apple apps, but that's it. None of the most common apps in their store have versions available for the iOS version the devices are limited to.

What the hell am I supposed to do with two fully functional (hardware-wise) devices?

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if you have an existing account that downloaded a particular app already, you can download the old version of an app. https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201377

or you jailbreak...

Another tip:

If the same app is still available on the store, but the newest version isn't compatible with your old OS, you won't be able to buy the that app on your old OS.

However, if you can log into the same Apple account on a new OS, you can buy the app there (pressing "get" on a free app counts as buying for our purposes). Once purchased, you'll be able to install the last compatible version on your old device.

This also works on the Mac App Store.

Beware of situations where what's currently available on the store isn't actually the same app. If the developer released a new version as a separate app at one point, this process won't work.

Mount them as interactive views for a calendar page or something? I'm not sure how far behind their web browser is but that's the last real use for them I know of.

This was the solution on Macs at least. I know someone that still uses a Mac mini G4 as their daily runner but running the latest Debian. Only way they can get any decent software support.

Well, no.

Or at least no in the near futur.

Debian dropped support of ppc32 with stretch.

I'm not sure of the state of Linux on Mac but my first guess would be install Linux and use them as normal.

These are iPads, though.

iPad Air 2nd still gets updates. It's probably a iPad Air 1st gen

Are you sure? I have a 4th gen iPad (A1460) and it's stuck forever at iOS 10.3.4, so I imagine an older one would also be end-of-lifed.

I am typing this from an iPad Air 2 (A1567) running iOS 13

I think there's some confusion here, iPad Air 2 ≠ 2nd gen iPad.

This is made more confusing by the fact that GP mentioned the original iPad and the iPad Air in the same sentence.

You're correct; I misread the comment.

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