1st gen iPad and iOS 6

I don't carry my Garmin. It's mounted on the dash! 😁

That's my problem! I keep trying to strap them to my wrists!

Alexxx9999 wrote:

In the United Kingdom, planned obsolescence engineered into products is considered a breach of customer rights.

Then why do you still have royalty?

I don't think that was planned obsolescence.

Good point.

If the iPad is to be a post-PC device, then it should have a support-life that is at least comparable to a notebook computer. It shouldn't have the short two-year support-life of cheap mobile phones.

I expect my iMac to be able to run the most up-to-date version of OS X for at least five years. I've upgraded (high-end) Windows XP machines to Windows 7 without any problems, giving them a shelf-life well over five years. And the iPhones have enjoyed 3 years of OS updates.

Owners get more attached to their PCs than they do to their cell phones, and keep them around for much longer. Taking the iPad 1 off of the upgrade list makes the device feel more like a disposable mobile device than a post-PC device.

I realize that Apple wants to turn over their hardware faster in order to make more money, that the iPad is underpowered, that iCloud backups make hardware transitions a whole lot less painful than they were in the past, and that early adopters of 1st-generation apple productions have historically been screwed (see the original iPhone).

But the iPad is special: it had an unprecedented sales run for a 1st generation device, it has a huge user base, and users have gotten a lot more attached to their iPads than they get to most tech devices.

Rather than worrying about increasing the hardware turnover rate for the next year, Apple should be looking ten years out and doing what they can to not harm the attachment that users have to the iPad brand.

So give us a version of iOS 6. Even a really stripped-down version that wets our appetite for iPad 3s. Make iPads at least as technologically durable as iPhones (2 years of support, 3 years of updates). Give the iPad the added value of longevity.

As Apple has proven to the PC industry time and time again, customer loyalty trumps short-term increases in sales quotas every time. Hopefully they'll remember that lesson in the post-Steve apple.

One can only hope that Apple has access to your advice, that they might recsue themselves from the market position they currently occupy. I doubt they are "worrying about increasing the hardware turnover".

By the way, they will happily give you iOS6 sometime later this year. Not a stripped down. The whole thing. Hopefully it wil,l as you say, whet the appetite for the iPad 3S. Entirely in your imagination though the device might be.

jonathan1412 wrote:

If the iPad is to be a post-PC device...

It's not.

jonathan1412 wrote:

It shouldn't have the short two-year support-life of cheap mobile phones.

It doesn't. I expect that mine will continue to function and function well for many years to come.

jonathan1412 wrote:

I expect my iMac to be able to run the most up-to-date version of OS X for at least five years.

OK. So what?

jonathan1412 wrote:

I've upgraded (high-end) Windows XP machines to Windows 7 without any problems, giving them a shelf-life well over five years.

What's your point? The iPad is not a computer.

jonathan1412 wrote:

But the iPad is special: it had an unprecedented sales run for a 1st generation device, it has a huge user base, and users have gotten a lot more attached to their iPads than they get to most tech devices.

Does being "special" make it less underpowered?

jonathan1412 wrote:

Rather than worrying about increasing the hardware turnover rate for the next year, Apple should be looking ten years out and doing what they can to not harm the attachment that users have to the iPad brand.

They're doing exactly what you say that they should do.

jonathan1412 wrote:

So give us a version of iOS 6. Even a really stripped-down version that wets our appetite for iPad 3s. Make iPads at least as technologically durable as iPhones (2 years of support, 3 years of updates). Give the iPad the added value of longevity.

You have a stripped down version of IOS-6. It's called IOS-5.

jonathan1412 wrote:

As Apple has proven to the PC industry time and time again, customer loyalty trumps short-term increases in sales quotas every time. Hopefully they'll remember that lesson in the post-Steve apple.

Sales are going through the roof. Obviously, their customers are loyal.

Actually, Tim Cook describes the iiPad as just exactly that, a post PC device.

Philly_Phan wrote:

jonathan1412 wrote:

If the iPad is to be a post-PC device...

It's not.

Tell Steve Jobs that:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/steve-jobs-proclaims-the-post-pc-era-has- arrived/4701

jonathan1412 wrote:

It shouldn't have the short two-year support-life of cheap mobile phones.

It doesn't. I expect that mine will continue to function and function well for many years to come.

Of course it will. It is well made. I expect mine to last for awhile longer too.

But will an iPad 1 running iOS 5 continue to get security updates? They left the iPhone 3G with unpatchedsecurity holes once it wasn't able to upgrade to the latest version of iOS. The iPad user base is bigger, so that would be bad to do for PR.

The rest of your comments were not as relevant to the ongoing conversation, so I skipped them.

tonefox wrote:

One can only hope that Apple has access to your advice, that they might recsue themselves from the market position they currently occupy. I doubt they are "worrying about increasing the hardware turnover".

By the way, they will happily give you iOS6 sometime later this year. Not a stripped down. The whole thing. Hopefully it wil,l as you say, whet the appetite for the iPad 3S. Entirely in your imagination though the device might be.

1. Of course I know that iOS 6 is coming out later this year. What does that have to do with anything? iOS 6 won't run on the iPad 1. I would rather they made a stripped-down version of iOS 6 for the iPad 1 (like they did for the iPhone 3GS) than abandon OS support of the iPad 1 altogether.
2. I was writing for the community boards, not the Apple feedback boards. I know the difference. Nor am I deluded enough to think that my personal opinion is somehow sage advice for the Apple board of directors.
3. I meant "iPad 3s" as in the plural of "iPad 3" aka the new iPad, not "iPad 3S" as in a product designation.

Quit trolling, tonefox.

There are other alternatives to "lite" versions of the new OS, you know. Tiger ceased to be relevant long ago but continued to receive security updates into 2009! There's no real reason why the iPad 2 and new iPad get iOS 6 while the original iPad gets iOS 5.1.2, 5.1.3 etc. It does have limitations such as 256MB of RAM (same as PlayStation 3, btw) which would legitimately prevent it from running 6.0 well. They made this mistake with the iPhone 3G, and way more people were upset with how iOS 4 RUINED the iPhone 3G than they were that the original iPhone didn't get iOS 4 at all (thinking back, I'm not sure it got iOS 3).

Apps that come out, and existing apps that get updated, will only cease to work on the original iPad if it lacks a feature (camera) or if it requires a framework introduced or fundamentally changed in iOS 6, and these apps will say "Requires iOS 6" right on the App Store page.

My point is the original iPad is an amazing device, and a crucial part of Apple's history, but it can't be supported forever. There is no planned obsolescence; technology is advancing 10x faster than it did ten years ago because now the computers used in researching new technology are so impossibly fast computer to computers ten years ago.

And with regards to the 3GS, that phone came out in 2009. It's been a "free phone" since September. I am curious to see how it performs with iOS 6, but Apple will never make the iPhone 3G-iOS 4 mistake again, so it will at least be usable.

Final note to people who bought the original iPad in February 2011: pay more attention to product release cycles; it wasn't too hard to figure out the iPad 2 was going to come out the next month. You bought an amazing device and have loved it ever since, and the fact that it's not getting an OS update that it's not powerful enough to run and still provide the user experience that Apple demands from their products doesn't mean that you're getting ripped off, or that your device is obsolete. The iOS 5 iPad will be obsolete when email services no longer support IMAP access, and webpages require HTML 6.

jonathan1412 wrote:

Quit trolling, tonefox.

Don't take this personal but, if anyone is trolling, you are.

shdwghst457 wrote:

There's no real reason why the iPad 2 and new iPad get iOS 6 while the original iPad gets iOS 5.1.2, 5.1.3 etc.

You just don't understand. There are many individuals that enjoy worrying about something that they believe maybe might happen some time in the vague and undefined future. Practical comments such as what you posted only ruin their fun!

True. I'll be plenty happy if they just keep security updates and iCloud compatibility going for iOS 5 on the iPad.

Does anyone know what happened after the iPhone 3G was capped at iOS 4.2.1? Did security updates continue for that phone? Or has it been left unpatched? If left unpatched, are there security holes that have been exploited?