this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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This does nothing at all for those with a slightly older "unsupported" device. They should have made Apple apply the same fixes to the last few whole number releases.
Yeah apple is just going to turn this into "lol if you want to sideload go buy a new device" and end up reaping additional billions
They really won't, and they can't.
iOS supports 7 generations back or something for their devices, which means it's all those affected by the new software.
It's alot and it's fair for everyone.
They have to allow sideloading for all devices their app store supports. So either cut off support completely and brick all old devices, or let people do whatever.
For the entire line, that way I can use my totally functional iPad from 2010 that is a brick now because it cannot connect to the App Store.
For that a more reasonable ask is that they be required to unlock the devices so alternate firmware can be used.
👍
Just curious, what do you plan to use it for? I used to use my iPad Mini2 for zoom calls until recently, as zoom now needs iOS 10 or above.
Really I just wanna put Linux on it 🙈
I've tried to look for some way to do this and found this. Not really what I'm looking for though (I have an old iPad 3 running iOS 9.3.5, and essentially useless) Does anyone have any links to help us out?
I've never gone down that route myself, but I have both an iPad 2 and iPad 3.
The iPad 2 is downgraded to iOS 6, making it significantly useful and faster, and this can be done with the Legacy iOS Kit. That being said I did this over a year ago when the App Store still worked on iOS 6, so you'd need to instead find IPAs and install them, which is definitely a more subpar process. I have a metric ton of old games on mine, as well as TwomonUSB so I can use it as a second monitor
My iPad 3 is downgraded to iOS 8, which is maybe a 15% speed improvement but it is more bearable than stock iOS 9, and the app store works as well as more apps like Spotify, Discord (with tweak), Telegram (editing Info.plist). Against the grain of what r/LegacyJailbreak would suggest, downgrading to iOS 8 is probably better than iOS 6.
This doesn't answer your Linux question, but if you wanted to get more use out of your iPad in the meantime I love having mine as a second monitor for my laptop (could also use VNC instead of TwomonUSB) and in general what I've said above makes them 100x more useful than on iOS 9.
Thank you for the links and info resources.
I can see some arguments for not updating older devices. Apple isn’t being compelled by law to do anything more than the bare minimum to support competitive markets. For example, no digging into older abandoned code basis or releasing an update that wasn’t originally planned. It only specifies what must be done going forward.
With that said, it’s a shame because I expect it would be quite easy to backport the change.
I'd like to see hardware makers of appreciable size be required to support said devices for a minimum of ten years after the date of final sale of the device. For example, Apple discontinued the iPod Touch 7th Gen on May 10th 2022, this would require them to maintain support until May 10th 2032. They'd be more inclined to support newer versions of their operating system because one codebase is just easier to manage, but at minimum it would mean security updates and updates like this one would happen. Only a corporate troll would argue against enhancing security, right? 😆
The legislation would probably be from start of sale rather than end. Otherwise it would have businesses binning old hardware that isn't selling well to avoid the increased support time.
I want to run unsigned apps on iPadOS, just like MacOS.
That said, regarding support for “slightly older” hardware. For all that Apple sucks at, they have usually been good about supporting older hardware. iPads have historically received 5 years of major releases, and then a couple years of security updates after that 5 years. The big exception being that very first iPad which was cut off after 3 years.
Moreover, software support for an old OS tends to become an issue after 2 or 3 years. Those of use who are developing iPad apps look at the traffic and start to deprecate support legacy OS versions that are in the low single digits.
Realistically, it’s about 7 to 8 years before I start to think about new hardware. That said, I still have an old ass 2013 iPad Air that I use for web browsing and messaging. Thing still works fine for that, but the third party apps are kind of stuck in 2020 / 2021 land.