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Comment by elcomet | Hacker News Reader

> so it has to go in the dumpster with a great battery, a fine screen and a processor that could easily be used as a server, video player, browser etc.

Why would it have to go in the dumpster if it still works well? This reasoning is why we have exessive e-waste, not the lack of upgrades...

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It works well only in theory. Almost no apps works on ios9 anymore, so you can't run netflix, hbo, even browsers are useless because certificates aren't updated - that's why i wanted to just use it as a homekit server, but you can't do this either.

ie, the processor is just fine for doing all of the above, but slowly all functionality has been lost.

Right, the argument is that the hardware is still functional, but due to the walled garden nature of the ecosystem, it can no longer be used. They are more like appliances and less like general purpose computing devices.

This has been Apple's vision for quite sometime. They want to control the full lifecycle of their devices. Yes they are exactly more like "consoles" or "appliances" and less like full personal computers.

I have a pretty old iPad as well and it simply can't do anything I need anymore. Tons of apps won't install by now, it's insecure since it hasn't received any patches in quite a few years, what would I use it for? I'd like to use it as a Spotify Connect target, but no recent Spotify will install on it. Can't use it as a server for obvious reasons. Can't use it as a Home hub. Can't use it for web browsing, or as a smart home control panel... and I don't know anyone who would have a use for it. It's essentially a very smart paperweight.

Because you won't get security updates after 2 years or so.

Apple released a security update for iOS 12 a couple of months ago for devices going back to 2013’s iPhone 5s [1].

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213428

Great. What portion of apps would you say still run on iOS 12? Because most of the top 10... don't.

Sure they do; just not the most current versions.

The App Store only sends versions you can actually run.

Sure. And "Please upgrade your version of Netflix|Hulu|Spotify|YouTube in order to connect."?

I'm sure that will be considered the app developer's fault, because -they- are expected to handle backwards compatibility, since Apple won't.

If apple is sending out security updates for iOS 12 then they haven't abandoned it yet. If the developers chose to abandon it before apple did then it's on the developers.

This isn't completely true. The App Store will only let you download previous versions of software you have already installed. If you try to download a new App and the latest version does not support your version of iOS, the App Store will NOT download the latest compatible version, it will just fail!

I have a side business, and a few weeks ago I decided to do a pop-up and needed a device to take payments on. I pulled out my older ipad, reset it, and decided to create a new apple account for my business. But, because this was a new apple account and the ipad was still running iOS 12, I was unable to download anything useful from the App Store. I had to find a new device, reset it, log in with my new account, download the latest version of the Apps I needed, reset it again, and relog in with my personal account. THEN, on my ipad, I was able to download the latest compatible versions of those apps.

I went through all that, only to open the Shopify App and immediately be told I had to update to the latest version, which of course, my ipad didn't support. So, yeah, I have this hardware that still works great, but for all practical purposes is e-waste.

I would love to be able to put Linux on this and use it for some hobby projects.

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