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It's freaking Star Trek, but since it's 2 years old and it won't get some OS updates we think it's garbage now? It's the technology we had all been dreaming about for decades, since we were kids, made real. And now it's junk?
What a spoiled bunch we are.
I think the way forward for old devices like the iPad 1 is through a stable OS, jailbreaks and web apps.
I agree with you that things don't need to be constantly updated and upgraded to be awesome, but there are certainly different ways to age.
Parts for cars is a better analogy:
My last car had a U-joint on the driveshaft start to go. The entire driveshaft had to be replaced, but I could not find a OEM replacement for my specific model of car anywhere in the country. They were all on back order and had been for months. I could get a custom, carbon fiber driveshaft made for $2000, for a car with a KBB value of $3500... I don't think so.
That was a 2002 model year car, not 7 years old but close enough. I said screw it and leased a new car and put the old one on craigslist (where it sold for 2x the KBB value, but that's neither here nor there).
My wife's car is even worse, one of the wipers is "special" and can only be changed by the dealer. Same thing with the driver's side headlight. 1/5 of the moveable parts of the engine needs to be removed to change the bulb.
Apps will slowly stop working, and updates will be restricted to newer firmware only, meaning my only option is to delete the apps that I had been using and paid for... or heaven forbid I need to do a restore and get all of my apps back. Then it's just a lottery of luck on how many I'll be allowed to download, and that number will decrease with time.
I can understand dropping support for legacy products, but I've only had the thing a year and a half or something.
I'm used to this as a geek, new hardware once blazing fast quickly becomes slow with no apparent smoking gun. Do I blame Apple or the app makers? Not really, but I do wish Apple (like Microsoft) would consider 'legacy' devices more when rolling our new products.
After this and other weirdness with my Macs, my next purchases will most likely have names on them like "Roku", "Kindle", "Samsung", and "Lenovo". I'm in Linux or a command line most of the day anyway. The Apple premium isn't worth it anymore.
I've started moving my iTunes library to Amazon. Any thoughts?
I don't think it's going to solve the problem you think you have.
On the Mac side of things, all those I've owned have kept up with OS upgrades surprisingly well, so I don't know that they should be bundled in with this. I'd sooner lose a hand that go back to a Windows laptop and I've had enough horror Linux upgrades to not want to go that way either (fine for my home server, but that doesn't get major updates, just security ones). Personal preference, anyway I guess. Good luck!
I've also noticed battery life in the iPad has degenerated, and it takes a looong time to recharge. That's another new trick.
The lifecycle for Apple devices are far shorter than their PC and Android counterparts. When I abandoned my PPC Mac in 2009 and suffered through iTunes withdrawal (read: wrote off the ~$500 in music and movies I had bought), I switched to Amazon for media where, funnily enough, everything worked fine right in the browser on that same Mac. Still does to this day. I'm typing this on a Dell Laptop I got a year after that Mac, running Ubuntu, and the media I bought on Amazon works fine on this too.
It makes a ton of sense for Apple as a business to sell their products at a premium and more sense still to release premium products for people to buy every year. But it makes no sense as a consumer to keep buying them cycle after cycle. I may get another two years out of this laptop, but my Mac has long since become useless to me.
I'll probably trade up my iPhone 4 to a 5 purely for the better camera to save lugging a DSLR as well, but then it'll go to my girlfriend and it'll get used for another year or two.
This is compared to having to constantly try and sort my girlfriends Android phone (she gave in just within a year of ownership and sold it), and the question I get every 14-18 months of "What laptop should I get? This one is so slow now".
Lifecycles are determined by the user, not by a company really, people who buy on cycles aren't being forced to buy it, they want to buy it.
My 1st-generation iPhone couldn't be updated past iOS 3, and it didn't get bumped out of its hallowed place in my pocket until the iPhone 4S came out.
Sure, I couldn't have the latest version of all the apps. Was I suffering for it? Hardly.
•Use it as a digital photo frame.
•Use it as an eBook reader. The Kindle app works just fine.
•Use it as a media player, stream music to your stereo.
•Use it as a remote control for your Apple TV, etc.
The amazing thing about the iPad is that unlike a computer it doesn't take up a huge amount of space. You can have an old one lying around and still use it for years. I would never use an obsolete laptop due to the clunky size but an iPad as a portable screen can be useful for years.
It's still Star Trek technology on your coffee table.
No.
Stop being so damn dramatic.
But that something like that could happen still doesn't make the iPad a paperweight. People will happily use their first generation iPads long into the future, despite what the FUD.
The backwards compatibility forever mindset may still be necessary in business but I see no reason it should continue to stand in consumer. It can be corrupted though - as long as the reasons are actual and not artificial in order to drum up profits I don't see a reasonable amount of deprecation to be harmful.
As an iPad 1 owner, I do feel a little disappointed, although I don't really feel I miss anything. Most apps is still working like before, it's not that the device is suddenly turned into paperweight overnight. 2 years 8 months is already a long time in technology field.
At some point we have to consider, whether we are willing to waste that many resources and money on smartphones and tablets, where we previously used computers and dumbphones that lasted for years and years.
As a European citizen, I hope that the EU will at some point start requiring vendors to provide (at least) security updates for some fixed period after purchase.
Edit: seeing that the downvotes are coming in, doesn't make it less true. Care a little more about your children, and less about your gadget ;).
Hell, just go to China, or any of the many mining towns that still exist in the US - it's like a small oil spill, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, lasting decades at a time.
And what do we use it for? To produce some 15+ million million devices that are deprecated after two years.
Yes, that is tragic and a disaster for those countries. It's just that more attention is paid to events that unfold within days rather than years.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/carbon-footpr... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan
It's an expensive toy, and it is a lot of money, but no one made anyone buy one.
Those are some seriously rose-colored glasses you're wearing. Computers have always been replaced rapidly. For tax purposes, they depreciate to zero in 3 years, reflecting their short lifespan. From what I've seen, most people have replaced their PCs every 3 or so years and phones (including dumb phones) every 2-3 years. It's only the last few years that this cycle has slowed for PCs, as speeds have begun stagnating.
With that said, I do think it's crappy that Apple is abandoning the 1st gen iPad so rapidly, especially since they apparently don't have a meaningful story for out-of-date devices with respect to apps. There seems to be no way to provide a separate version of an app for an older OS. Instead, the user is prompted to update the app, at which point they are told that the app needs the new OS, and then it's removed. (I had this happen to my phone when iOS 5 arrived and I delayed upgrading.)
The vast majority of apps will still run on iOS5, and likely will for at least a few more updates (based on the developer's decision).
Running the latest and greatest software usually means running the latest and greatest hardware. That's what the Apple platform is geared towards. Software developers are incentivized to keep their apps running on the latest OS, and customers are incentivized to run the latest hardware. For people who care about that, this is a good platform choice.
If you want to use the same phone for 5 years, pick a different platform. Granted, you probably won't have the latest and greatest of anything. Not the latest and greatest hardware (your choice) and likely not the latest and greatest software (because what developer thinks they'll make money off of you?). Perhaps you are okay with that. It's probably a cheaper route.
The cheapest option doesn't always provide the most value. The most expensive option doesn't always either. The question is, for the price you are going to pay, are you going to get the best value. That equation is different for everyone and no platform can possibly make it work for everyone either.
I own a SPARCstation 5. It's got a whopping 95MB of RAM in it and a cool 25MHz processor (I think). It runs lots of software just fine, but I don't expect it to run the latest FPS.
Maybe you own an iPad1. It's got a whopping 256MB of RAM. That's not even 3x the amount of RAM my SS5 had. You should be amazed it did all the stuff it did, and continues to do.
You shouldn't expect it to run the latest and greatest OS, though.
"...your 1G iPad will become little more than an expensive paperweight as new apps and updates to your existing apps start to require iOS 6"
Not updating aiPad 1 will not amend this problem... Sorry.
Having an unpatched tablet connecting to all kinds of... "wild" and untrusted networks (as tablets are wont to be) seems a bit risky.
A likely solution would be to stick with old versions of your apps running on an old iOS version, but:
* you don't get the feature updates
* you don't get the bugfixes
* some old version of apps just won't work anymore (especially the news apps that connect to a server)
* if you've got an app that constantly crashes (I've had it with one game in particular), you're stuck with it
Right now, my iPad 1 is running the latest iOS 5. It's obviously slower than iOS 4 but I could update all of my apps. For now...
He goes on to say that as apps are updated to require version >= 6, your iPad 1 stuck at 5.x will become useless. I think his conclusion is bullshit (e.g. I can still word process on a 286 just as well as I could the day I got it - brick it is not).
Did you even read TFA?
Yes. Did you miss this?
>"If you update an app to an iOS 6 version in iTunes on your computer and then try to sync your iPad 1, the old version of the app will just get removed from your iPad 1. The home screen on my iPod Touch 1G is pretty barren."
1982 — 80286 introduced;
1985 — obsoleted with introduction of 386;
1991 — Linux created without 286 support;
1992 — last 286 clone by AMD produced;
1992 — introduction of OS/2 2.0 without 286 support;
1995 — introduction of Windows 95 without 286 support;
2002 — official support of Windows 3.x dropped.
The simplest solution is to restore an iPad backup from when it worked well (using time machine) and just be happy with it and not update. Sure new apps won't necessarily work, but you have what you were happy with.
I'm not bummed at all it can't handle the latest OS; in no way is it a paperweight. But, when version 4 comes out, I'll upgrade for sure.
When tablets boast computing capabilities similar to today's PCs, they'll last far longer.
this is the problem with a closed eco-system like Apple's iOS - there's no community to support the devices past their manufacturers support expiration date.