Comment by wackget
8 days ago
Yeah that's great and all but my 2nd gen iPad Air from 2017 doesn't get updates past iPadOS 15 (current version: 26).
As a result most useful apps flatly refuse to run on it, and my iPad is now a paperweight which yearns for the landfill.
Meanwhile the laptop I bought in 2011 is still going strong, now on Windows 10 (or whatever Linux distro I'd care to throw on it).
Right, the key point being it is almost impossible to reuse iPhone or iPad hardware once the updates stop coming, even though the hardware is absolutely amazing. A 2017 iPad Air is still awesome hardware if you could jam an optimized version of Android/Linux onto it.
If you don't need it to be an Air, I bought an 8th gen iPad on eBay last year for about $80 and it will let you install iOS 26, although with the 32GB model you can't fit many apps on it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25172883
How is that so? The App Store has allowed you to download the last compatible version since iOS 6?
But I hate when people malos this comparison to a laptop, in the first 20 years of the personal computer you weren’t using 10 year old computers because the pace of change was so fast.
Your iPad Air has 2GB of RAM and has an A9 processor that is 7x slower in single core performance than the latest iPad Air. The latest iPad Airs come with 8GB of RAM.
My iPad Air from 2020 barely runs iOS 26 with 3GB RAM.
For comparison, I had a Dell Laptop in 2008 that had 8GB RAM and was my Plex server until 2018. Even today in 2026 low end laptops come with 8GB of RAM.
Most useful apps refuse to run? I have an iPad Pro from 2016 and it runs everything I throw at it. Perhaps the air’s weaker hardware was always destined to struggle as time moves on. That being said I also have an iPad from 2011 which I can still use as a Spotify machine.
But true, they don’t have the flexibility of a laptop. They are however the longest lasting tablets I’m aware of.
note: they jumped from 18 to 26 to align to the year.
I can't believe Apple hasn't pushed an update to their 9-year-old device in 11 years!
I'm in a similar boat and am wondering... Is there much that can be done with these iPads beside turn them into e-waste?
You can still browse the internet. Safari still works. I have ancient 1st gen iPad Air and I use it for that; you can still watch YouTube (from the web), it still works fine. Anything that has a web app mostly works.
If you manage to install decent apps in time, you can use these as e-readers or video players. But batteries will eventually fail and all what you'll have will be a fancy fragile chopping board.
I was gifted with iPad 1, Air 1 - first won't charge for 6 years now and data I didn't synchronize are gone, second one needs a serious "warm-up" before charging and while Apple released 12.5.8 in the end of January, it won't get any new apps.
I have a 3rd generation iPad from 2012 [1]. The battery is still very decent after 14 years. It has a retina display and a remarkably good speaker, so I use it for e-books / audiobooks, podcasts, music (on device) and sometimes playing around with synth apps (nano studio).
The bad stuff:
- iOS update with the parallax effect (iOS 7, I think) came soon after this iPad was released and made the device feel extremely sluggish (even with effects disabled). I was very pissed (downgrade not possible). It's on iOS 9 now, still as slow. The apps I still use work ok, but switching between them is a terrible experience.
- Can't update iOS any further. Can't install any new apps. Certificates expired, so can't use any webbrowser anymore (no https) and a few months ago even podcasts stopped downloading (books and music I upload via cable).
Notice how the good stuff is all hardware, while the bad stuff is all software.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/111992
iPad 3rd gen can be downgraded to iOS 8 (which runs slightly better than iOS 9), and dual-booting to iOS 6 is also doable (and actually can run more apps than later versions thanks to the 3rd party mods).
There's a community around /r/LegacyJailbreak dedicated to running old iOS devices.
1 reply →
You can jailbreak it and attempt to bypass app restrictions (e.g. with 3dappversionspoofer). Ymmv. https://ios.cfw.guide describes how to jailbreak.
Why can’t you still use it?
You just won’t be able to download new apps as they bump their minimum.
Wait for a trade in special and take advantage of it. Or use it for safari only.
Use it as a control center for your home automation.
maybe use as a e-reader or watch ripped media on it? if it's jailbreakable i am sure there's a lot of stuff to do too
I don't think there is? I'm holding onto them in the hope that there's a good solution in the future.