Quote:
Originally Posted by jocampo
I see nothing wrong on keep using a tablet that is three or more years old. But people should not expect to be able to download updated versions of their Os and apps or get mad because apps crash. They need to understand that the device is now too old. And if the issue is about using those devices, then they need to acknowledge that further updates are not possible without stability issues.
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Well, this was actually the very issue that soured my relationship with Apple. I was an early adopter - I bought an iPad 1. Six months later, they came out with the iPad2, and I was okay with that because I enjoyed my 1 and saw no reason to upgrade. IOS versions and updates came out, and I installed them faithfully. I mean, this is Apple. They're not going to release an update that ruins things, right?
Out came IOS 5 and the iPad was supported. It worked pretty well. Out came 5.1, and it worked well, too. Granted, there were bugs and things, but it was a pretty robust OS. Then came 5.1.1. Horrible! Crashes in apps all over the place, even Safari. A memory leak was quickly suspected and then confirmed. IOS 5.1.1 had a serious memory leak that cause applications to stop, frequently.
As you may or may not know, when you upgrade an iDevice, you get a short period to revert back to the previous OS. Like 2-3 days. It took me a week to figure out the memory leak issue, so too late to go back. But okay, Apple knows about the problem, so a patch should come out any day and my iPad can start working properly again. Weeks passed. Then months. Apple announce IOS 6 and guess what!?! iPad1 was not supported. The last IOS 5 version was 5.1.1. Forever.
So Apple effectively broke my iPad. Then dropped support for it. Yeah, I still use it, because there are things I like an iPad for, and things I need it for. There are even some very well-written apps out there that avoid the memory leak and thus don't crash. But most of them do, and some of them crash all the time. If I get 15 minutes with one of them, I'm shocked.
Now, if I had an Android device, I'd have some options. I could go to Cyanogenmod and still get updates, like my Samsung Nexus S that is running 4.2.2 in spite of the last official update being 4.1.x. Or I could load back to any older version of Android I wanted, from when the phone was supported. But Apple locks their stuff down and then breaks it and walks away from supporting it.
When the time came to buy a faster tablet, I looked at the shiny iPad3 and 4, but I looked at the price tag and said, "Can I really afford to shell out $250/year for another device they'll break in 24 months and then stop supporting?" So I spent $200 for a Nexus 7 (the first version.) And it's become my primary tablet.
I like Apple. I really do. I like their products. I think they're worth the price premium they charge (at least, some of them.) And I'm writing this now on an antique PowerBook G4 that still works great because Apple didn't break it before they stopped supporting it. But I've been burned, and telling me I should just accept that my iPad is old is not an acceptable answer. It isn't its age that is the problem. It was fine running 5.1.0 and if I could, I'd back load to that version and probably be very happy. But I can't.