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Comment by Macha | Hacker News Reader

6 years is generous in the mobile hardware space, but when compared to traditional PC hardware, which the iPad is increasingly competing against, it is very disappointing for a piece of hardware to be out of luck after 6 years.

On Windows, any Windows 7/8/8.1 users got a free upgrade to Windows 10, and the minimum requirements for Windows 10 are the same as Windows 7 (other than for disk space, Windows 10 requires less). So that's any Windows PC in the last 11 years can still get an OS with security updates. And of course, you can always install Linux on a Windows PC.

The Apple side doesn't go quite as far back, but still most 2012 macs can install Catalina which will be supported until 2022. And Linux is pretty well supported on the non-T2 macs (pre-2015) as well.

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PCs didn’t have as long of life in the 90’s to the early 2000’s, either. In 2008 only 33% of PCs were over 3 years old. Today it’s over 60% (haven’t found a more exact statistic). iPads were going through a similar maturing process and rapidly iterating on performance and features. It’s why I can accept the notion of hardware being obsolete sooner when being an early adopter.

The big thing that makes really old iPads not worthwhile to reuse is the battery. It often becomes cost ineffective to replace them. I’m looking at my 9.7” Pro with a cracked corner of its screen. Replacing the battery will damage the screen more causing a replacement for that, too. PCs don’t have the same expectation of parts wearing out - many easily can run 10 years with no hardware maintenance.

That's not taking into account how older machines are typically used though. Yes, you can install the latest Windows on a 1.6GHz dual core PC from 2006, but it's not going to make a great PC. On the other hand, it makes a fine host for a NAS device or some other home server, or a router/firewall, or a media PC to hook up to the TV etc.

An iPad or iPhone would do much of the same, and in some ways better or for different uses. It uses less power. It could be used as an in-wall display. It could be a WiFi repeater, or an access point given a USB ethernet adapter. People are creative, if you give them the chance. And none of those things really care if the battery is flat.

Current Linux kernels support the 486 CPU from 1989, and I think you can reasonably run a current distribution and web browser on a PC from around year 2000, and you probably can't distinguish a 2005-2010 system from a current one using only a browser on common websites.

Tried booting an old dual Xeon (Nocona, circa 2004) with 5GB of ECC ram a few months ago with several Linux ISO's. None of the kernels would get very far into the loading process before just stopping.

Meanwhile, FreeNAS worked and booted fine on it. Even though it only had 5GB ram. ;)

> you probably can't distinguish a 2005-2010 system from a current one using only a browser on common websites

If only this were the case. Common websites have become script ridden monstrosities that aggressively consume RAM and CPU. I routinely have 50+ tabs open; even on fairly recent hardware that can easily cause problems depending on which pages they contain.

while agreeing that software got worse, especially websites.

opera did gracefully open 100+ tabs in 2005 on a dualcore with a gig of ram.

the key was and is: disable javascript

The actual minimum x86 CPU for modern Linux is a Pentium 2 (1997, source - https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.en.html).

The practical minimum for a modern distro is probably a Core 2 Duo (2006). You will likely need a lightweight DE on such a system if using it as a desktop.

Some mainstream distros (e.g. Ubuntu) set their requirements higher than that.

That's the minimum CPU for Debian.

The Linux kernel supports the 486 CPU (also used to support the 386, but it was dropped, although it's probably possible to restore it with some work - the 286 can't be easily supported because it lacks 32-bit registers).

> PCs didn’t have as long of life in the 90’s to the early 2000’s, either.

My parents used their Mac SE at least weekly from 1989 until about 2005, and it still works great today (but hasn’t been turned on in a few years).

It’s quite funny because when I was around 18 I worked with an older guy (he was around 55) repairing and restoring printers. He was complaining that when a motherboard broke we just switched it out for a new and threw the old one out. He remembered a time when he used to replace the broken component on the motherboard and had it working again instead.

Also, you can install whatever you want on a PC regardless of how old it is. But on iOS you can't download an older version of the app unless you've owned it previously. I do have an iPhone 4 and it's useless because I can't get any apps for it.

While I understand your frustration, I would quarrel a bit with you calling that iPhone 4 "useless".

Even with the base OS software, you've still got a great music player, a great video player, a multi-function timer/stopwatch/alarm clock, a web browser, a camera, digital maps, a calendar, email, etc.

Main issue is it’s painfully slow if you kept it up to date. I have iPhone 4S running iOS 9. It’s unusable by my standards. It is blazing fast with iOS 6 though. AFAIK it’s possible to break Apple defences and install older OS for this device, but that’s only because of some vulnerabilities and not Apple generosity.

While windows 10 nominally has the same requirements as win 7, it is in my experience unusable without an SSD, whereas win 7 was very usable. YMMV

But then you have the other thing. An SSD can be installed in nearly any PC made in the last fifteen years. How do you upgrade the storage in an iPad? Or the memory for that matter?

> The Apple side doesn't go quite as far back

Oh they do, people have managed to get Big Sur running on Mac Pro 4.1 machines from 2009.

The problem with keeping Mac Pros usable is the GPU side since one is forced to use AMD, but the new drivers for new cards IIRC require AVX support on the CPU.

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