[smoyer]

"Sent from my iPhone" - nice!

I bought my last ever Apple product, an IPad v1 and was dismayed when less than 2.5 years later it stopped receiving OS updates. Its battery still lasts 20 hours and yet bugs in the browser makes it crash on so many modern web pages. I can get an Android tablet every year for $70 if I just want something I'm going to throw away.

[wvenable]

That's the problem with early versions of products though, from any manufacturer. My wife has an original iPad Air, released in 2013, and it just got iOS 12. But it has a 64bit CPU.

[tonyedgecombe]

The iPad 1 was pretty much the worst case, if you bought just before it was discontinued then you would have got 14 months of updates.

We had one and upgraded for the reasons you mentioned, it couldn't cope with JavaScript heavy web sites. However even without the bugs I don't think it had the horsepower to handle the modern web, no amount of updates would have fixed that.

iOS 12 supports devices back to the iPhone 5s, so more than 5 years.

[toasterlovin]

EDIT: I misread the comment I'm replying to. Parent makes a valid point. Ignore the following.

You're actually complaining that a consumer computing appliance you bought received OS updates for 6 years? And your proposed better alternative is buying a device that will probably never receive an OS update?

[JonathonW]

The last OS update the first-generation iPad received was iOS 5.1.1, released just over two years after the first-generation iPad was released.

The first-generation iPad was a bit of an odd case for software updates, though (due to insufficient RAM); every other iPad has gotten at least four or five major updates before losing support. And Apple has yet to drop support for any iPads from the iPad Air on (October 2013).

[toasterlovin]

I totally misread the person I responded to. Thanks for setting me straight.