Ipad 1 slows down after installing IOS 5

The Ford analogy is flawed. In the interest of accuracy, let's liken it more to Apple. Assume what you're saying is true; but on top of that Ford makes a sound system that only works with expensive CDs, that you buy and invest in. Then your tires need to be changed, and Ford is only selling newer tires that happen to make your particular car slower. You just bought these tires but didn't realize that your car would be slower.

You have invested in this huge music collection, and just upgraded your tires that somehow make your car really slow.

You can't get the old tires anywhere.

What do you do? Buy a new Ford so your car is fast again and you can still use your music collection, or buy another brand and get off the hamster wheel?

In all fairness, we can't say with any certainty that Apple is doing this purposely, it's more likely a side effect. I simply doubt they have much incentive to focus any effort at all on hardware that isn't adding to their revenue. It's more likely that they just took out some key useful features arbitrarily, cite performance as the reason, and hoe that's incentive enough for you to want to upgrade.

Do you really think Siri won't run on an iPhone 4?

The iPad 1 slowdown has frustrated me too. I first blamed it on the hundreds of apps I've installed, but starting over with a clean (= lose everything) installation didn't help much either. Now I tend to believe that it's due to the iOS upgrades.

The fun and snappy response I had with the iPad in the first place is all gone. Especially when the keyboard lags for several seconds, things get close to being unusable.

Meanwhile, I rather use my MacBook Air 2011 for almost everything, letting the iPad catch dust.

The MacBook Air is so much more of a pleasure to use. Exceptionally fast, can play Flash (if I want it to), the Trackpad feels as responsive to gestures as on iOS, I have all permissions without jailbreaking, I have a real operating system with 1st class productive applications (Office, Eclipse, Ableton Live, XCode, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Nikon Capture, ...) just to name a few.

With such a brilliant alternative and the feeling of having been let down by Apple with the iPad 1 performance, plus the fact that the iPad 3's LTE doesn't work over here, I currently don't feel like upgrading to an iPad 3.

Too bad for the several hundred bucks I've spend for iPad Apps.

The same goes to ipt4, the hardware is practically the same. While tiping it, i was kicked out of Safari twice, amazing.

You know guys, i got my iconia w500 as tab, and its really smooth and comfy, i dont wanna use apple anymore, for sure. Better use my x86 than ARM.

Hmm..., I must say that iOS 5, for whatever reason it may be, sped up my 3rd Generation iPod Touch considerably. The iPad on the other hand is useless with iOS 5 and I have absolutely no idea how it could be so much inferior to the 3rd Gen iPod Touch when both of them have the same amount of RAM and the iPad has a superior (400 Mhz better in fact) processor. I didn't even bother tweaking the settings on my 3rd gen ipt (iCloud, Photostream, push notifications, everythings there), no resets done, and yet it never let me down. I've restored my iPad, ticked off ALL push notifications, disabled iCloud, and there is still lag from time to time. Recently I sold my ipt 3 when my mom gave me her iPhone 4, the experience was exactly the same. The ipt 3 was just as fast and silk smooth like the iPhone 4 running iOS5, and far superior to the iPad.

Didn't see this thread until today but I have to whole heartly agree with each up date my iPad Gen1 has gotten slower and slower... I am very disappointed with this but seeing they design each new iOS for the newest more powerful devices its no wonder our 1st Gen iPads are struggling to run the new iOSs... Just another reason I won't be buying a 3rd, 4th or 5th Gen iPad.. Just assume go with a Android tablet and root it for my next purchase.. Their new ICS OS for phones has actually made my Galaxy S2 faster then its orginal GB OS not to mention the rooted ROMS made ICS even faster and more efficient..

Point being, this is just the way it is done at Apple and honestly they are doing just fine with it even if we don't all agree with it.. Hence the reason we have choices right?? 🙂

Sorry, maybe you have a lot of time to waste. I had the same problem and just download the free OPERA mini. Seems working fine. That´s all. Apple just taking time diving on the money pool we built for them. So, let´s the market solve the problem.

Regards, a Brazilian friend.

I have posted before and said I would update you on my dealings with apple support. Here is where I stand today. I have sent over 60 crash reports to there so called engineers and spoken with several support and customer service people and this is what i am told. We are working towards a software update that will help with your issue. With your warranty we will give you some iTunes bucks for your troubles. But here I sit with a useless iPad that any even surf the net without a force close in the first five minutes. I guess I get to wait and see.

Hi all,

Just my 2 cents worth...

I've got the iPad1 (built July 2010) and have avoided doing any upgrades to iOS5. I'm still on 4.3.2 and going strong....🙂

I got burnt by upgrading my iOS on my iPhone 3G (a while ago now) to the point of it being so unresponsive and having to go and buy an iPhone 4. Was not impressed that Apple upgrades were forcing me as a consumer to do this as I was perfectly happy with the phone.😠

I will be keeping my iPad 1 on 4.3.2 until it fails or the downloads stop working. It does what I need it to do quite happy with it.🙂

My thought is that with 153914 Views an 352 Replies to just this discussion,

that apple need to be careful with this continuing disregard to software/hardware compatibility of their devices.

I left Microsoft products due to the release of Vista and its problems and went to Apple, however if Windows 8 in all its forms turns out to be as good as first indications, I'm quite happy to move back again if apple doesn't start loooking after its backwards compatibility.

The consumer is the final arbiter on how these companies perform and if you feel that there is wrong-doing, your act (and money) does make a difference. 😎

"When is everybody going to notice the pattern that occurs with every single line of apple product?

The company is successful because of their talent in forcing users to update their products, often quite prematurely. I am writing this on a macbook pro from 2009 - still brand new to me, but without the newest operating system, I cannot use many of the new features and am slowely becoming outdated to the point where nessasary software and utilites cannot run on my "outof date system".

Can i upgrade? YES. Am i encouraged to update? Indirectly, YES.

Will the new update slow down my machine and make it seem as though my hardware is out of date, thereby forcing me to buy another one? Absolutly.

I have two identical iphone 3g devices infront of me, one of them is running ios3.1.3 and the other is running the latest-supported 4.2.1 NEITHER ARE JAILBROKEN. The "updated" one is SO MUCH SLOWER it is almost unreal, its a real eye opener.

It's not wrong because of the addiction that apple has created for its products, its wrong that some of the cost that we pay for these overpriced items go to the R&D of "planned obsolescence" (how to make the product lifespans shorter)."

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In replying to the original post above, i do not think this is a comspiracy of any sort, and like i said previously, i also do not think this is socially wrong in our capitalistic society - where the goal is to make serious profit, however, it should be morally wrong, since the products are expensive, and the last thing in a consumer's head about Apple products is that their device updates are going to be "forced", with no easy way to bring back the original firmware, and that the original firmware becomes out of date quite fast. Might it be true that Apple is always looking for improvements in their software and then releasing them quickly? Absolutly, but the earlier issue of having people update in order to stay current and subsequently impacting their device's performance negatively is still very much relevant.

Explain why my Dad's Wndows XP computer from 2001 is still running and regulary getting updates to the various software and browsers, thereby indirectly keeping it up-to-date and useable? This example is in perfect contrast with the time I tried to sync a new ipod to my old imac, I got a message saying that I need the newest version of iTunes installed. When I tried to install the newest version of iTunes, it told me that I need a newer version of the operating system! What was I to do? I installed Snow Leopard on my previously Tiger machine. If I had a PC, iTunes would not have forced me into that corner, right?

Nothing lasts forever, and you cannot compete with technology. But an argument can be made about being able to enjoy (such expensive) products for a longer period of time than this pattern goes to show, especially when most Apple lovers seem to take such great care of their products, that most have worked very hard for.

I am currently debating whether to update my mid-2009 Leopard Macbook Pro to Snow Leopard or Lion. Obviously Leopard runs great, but the apple store employee that was quick to tell me I wont be able to access all websites very soon has made me take into careful consideration which operating system will perform best on my machine, and which one will keep me up to date, for another several months, at most.

I have 5.0.1 and most of the time everything moves slowly. Luckily, apps and safari dont crash much. I have to religiously keep apps closed and not running in the background. Clearing cashe has helped too. I will try the reset settings idea.

I love my iPad and I was considering getting the 3 but decided to wait a little longer. I hope Apple will not forget about all of the 1s...and then the 2s. Please get it right and don't forget those that helped you get where you are. I don't believe I am saying this but at least Microsoft OS changes updates older versions without causing a problem.

After looking at all the disgruntled ipad 1 users and how they think Apple seems to just be about $$$$. I will agree that it seems suspicious, I mean putting out a product wo a camera, cant see flash and not be able to print the then after millions have spent money they put out one that does soon after, really? Now they have number 3 with a lot of updates that cause the first to slow down. I don't mean to sound like a conspiratist, but it has been said that phone companies do the same thing, slow ur phone down so will want to get another. It seems too easy to think they are all in the same boat.

Just wondering but when will Apple be mentioned in the same sentence as Microsoft because they are just too big and then all the hackers start on our OS?

In my iPad1 expereince, iBooks always opened slowly and it got worse as the updates came along. The keyboard delay in typing or entering the apple id password has me frustrated daily. I kept hoping the next update would clear things up for me. Mail app crashes a couple of time per week as does safari and a few games. I keep the back ground free of apps when they aren't in use. It is frustrating to have some basic functionality effected by these updates.

Summarizing the experiences of many frustrated users, its more than obvious that iPad one's performance downgrade following updating is not an independent case and it is time for apple's CS to take care the needs and feeling from the existing but not owners of the latest devices.

I did a factory reset and reinstalled only those apps I'd really use.

However, this did not help. The iPad 1 still feels underpowered with iOS 5.1. No fun.

I'm afraid that the only way out is to sell my iPad 1 on eBay where I'll still get approx. 50% of the price I paid for the new device.

It would probably not be fair to blame the whole problem on Apple. For example, GoodReader slowed down too with rendering PDFs.

Remember the first IBM PCs? A spreadsheed or word processor took about the same time to open as they do today, even though the CPUs were approx. 1000 times slower.

I assume this is how things go, albeit on an accelerated pace when it comes to tablets/iPads.

Has anyone updated to 5.1.1 yet? Does it help? I am reluctant, as I really don't have the time to do a full restore again if it is worse.

I'd love to hear other's experiences if you have taken the plunge into 5.1.1.

I upgraded to 5.1.1 today. IMHO it makes the performance worse. I'd recently started to use the Track8 music app under 5.1, but it crashes as soon as you click on an album since the 5.1.1 upgrade. Typing lag is still there, and any graphics intensive web page will crash Safari