If you bought an iPad in 2012, it should have received software updates until 2019, and all iPads since 2015 are still supported. In general I expect the first 2-3 generations of a new product line to have shorter support cycle before they have matured a bit, so it doesn't surprise me that your particular iPad model only got 7 years, but if you buy an iPad today I would be surprised if it got less than 10+ years of support.
All that said, I think hardware companies should be forced to open up their hardware for booting alternative OSes once they are classified as EOL.
No netflix, hulu, or HBO. I can't use it as a shopify terminal. Even if you are fine with an older version of these apps, these companies specifically disable their old apps, and make them stop working.
So...my ipad, which still has great battery life, sits in a drawer, because no apps work on it anymore. And I get it, that isn't 100% apples fault, these companies and their developers are to blame too, but apple certainly encourages targeting the latest versions os iOS.
I’m mostly ok on a couple Macs because I really only use them as browsers anyway. But with iPads and iPhones they really become useless without updates after a while.
I’ve been using an iPhone X as a spare phone for travel but it finally stopped charging and I see it’s out of support so not worth fixing.
I's partly a consequence of forcing people to install so much software on these devices in the first place. Netflix is absolutely fine in the browser, as are 90% of all other apps. No need to create dependencies on a local OS, its oppressive rules and update cycles.
I get the advantages of native apps on PC and Mac, especially open source apps, because it really gives you more control over the software you run. But on mobile, especially on iOS, you have no control anyway.
Edit:
And it's not just that these apps are useless. In some cases they are inferior to the web app.
E.g., the Netflix iPad app can't seem to remember where I left off. It misses entire episodes. And every evening when I try to resume watching, I'm getting an error message because the old network connection is broken. Everything that's good about Netflix happens on the server. The app is just a dumb terminal and it can't even serve that purpose properly.
I had an old iPod Touch that had stopped receiving updates years ago. Old third-party apps were a problem. But all the Apple-shipped stuff still worked - even stuff like Music and Maps, which required server-side support.
Yes, excellent in comparison to the other "black rectangle" devices, phones, tablets, etc but compared to a regular PC still awful. My core 2 duo PC from ~16 years ago is still going strong.
I think the difference is, with an "open" platform like the PC it's up to the user when they want to replace the hardware, usually when it's too slow to keep up with the things you want to do. But with these newer devices you're completely at the mercy of the manufacturer - at some point the power flipped and that's a shame.
But I’ve bought new Galaxies that don’t get updates within 2 years.
But I also have a Surface laptop bought in 2019 that won’t get updated after 2025. Sure I can run Linux but it was my wife’s machine, so that will go over like a ton of bricks.
I’ve had 3 iPads (2009-2015, 2015-2020, and now 2020-present) and upgraded the first two before they stopped getting software updates.