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is not "bricked" - which is an absurd and totally misleading description of a piece of technology that is slightly outdated, but works fine with most 'essential' apps.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thankfully with iOS 17 it looks like this will no longer be the case!
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.
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.
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.