Does Apple stop supporting old iPads?
Does Apple stop supporting old iPads?
iPad Air, iOS 12
Question marked as
Top-ranking reply
Eventually, yes, all devices become too old to receive support.
The tags appended to your post suggest that you have a first generation iPad Air - with iOS12 installed.
The first generation iPad Air, iPad mini2 and mini3 can only be updated to iOS 12.5.5.
Apple ended major update support for these models of iPad in September 2019 - although they since continue to receive “point” security updates - the most recent being released just recently. These devices cannot be updated to iPadOS 13 (or any later major versions of iPadOS) as the internal hardware does not meet the minimum technical requirements (CPU and RAM) for newer versions of iOS/iPadOS.
Some App developers have dropped support for iOS versions preceding iOS 13.x for technical reasons (often because APIs or software libraries upon which they rely have been updated in the new version of iPadOS, making their App incompatible with earlier versions).
Whilst many App titles remain compatible with your iPad, if you want or need to access to Apps requiring the most recent versions of iOS, you’ll need to consider replacement of your iPad with a newer or current model that supports iPadOS15. Given that your device is within its twilight period of update support, if used with financial and e-commerce Apps, you might be well advised to soon consider replacement with a more recent device - in so doing benefiting from both enhanced functionality and full update support.
As for when the last vestige of update support for iOS12 will be dropped, we cannot predict. That said, now is perhaps the time to start planning for this eventuality.
