[dallen33]

The list of supported devices is impressive. The iPad Air 2 came out in 2014.

  12.9-inch iPad Pro
  11-inch iPad Pro
  10.5-inch iPad Pro
  9.7-inch iPad Pro
  iPad (7th generation)
  iPad (6th generation)
  iPad (5th generation)
  iPad mini (5th generation)
  iPad mini 4
  iPad Air (3rd generation)
  iPad Air 2

[dhritzkiv]

I'm still impressed by my iPad Air 2. I originally bought it for product demos/ as a presentation tool for work, but now use it regularly for personal use. My only regret is getting the 16GB version.

[jacurtis]

I too still use an iPad Air 2 (with Lightning/3rd Gen) every single day. It is starting to slow down but is still perfectly usable. Only recently have I even considered upgrading as they now offer the 9.8" iPad Pros. Until recently, I haven't even felt like there was any point in upgrading. Only minor features have been released (most of which affect things like cameras that I don't care about). The body style has barely changed and most people can't tell that I have a 5-year-old iPad. I've been very happy with it.

To this point, I wonder how much Apple is struggling with this "problem". There is very little value in upgrading to newer iPads. Even for those of us that have the disposable income to spend on them, we can use a 5 year old iPad which acts almost identically to the newer ones. Yes, Apple has pushed some of the power features that the newer ones can do, but for those of us that just use it for notetaking, internet browsing, social media consumption, etc there has been virtually no need to upgrade. The second hand market is saturated with perfectly good devices for $100-$150 that perform in ways that are nearly indistinguishable from brand new iPads for the 95% of the population that are using these devices for media consumption.

Sure if you use the iPad for media creation then you can benefit from a newer one. But for media consumption, the older iPads perform nearly indistinguishably from the new ones.

[chaboud]

I noticed that my iPad mini 2 finally falls off the list, but that thing is somewhat ancient.

However, my Thinkpad X220 (maybe circa 2011?) still runs Windows 10 and Ubuntu, allowing it to stay up to date on security patches. In a way, Apple's support levels are only impressive because we're inured to quick device expiration in other contexts (e.g. phones).

[Infernal]

To be fair, mobile development is a few years behind laptop development, and it makes sense that it would plateau later (thought with the current generation of smartphones we may be reaching that plateau).

A 2011 MacBook Pro 13" is comparable to your X220 (dual core i7 available, 8GB supported RAM, Intel HD 3000 graphics) and while it does fall off the supported list for macOS Catalina (mid-2012 MBP is the earliest supported) there's no reason to expect it wouldn't run Windows or Ubuntu comparably to the X220.

When comparing (tablet) apples to (tablet) apples, I wonder if any of the tablets mentioned here are still supported in 2019 like your iPad mini 2 was? https://www.zdnet.com/pictures/best-android-tablets-septembe... It's a genuine question as I'm not that familiar with the Android ecosystem.

[luismedel]

I think it's only a matter of sales strategy instead of a technical one.

They (be Google, Apple or whoever makes OS and/or phones) have the know-how and the tech to support older devices for a longer time. Even if they limit that support to only publish security updates for older systems (which, IMHO, I think it's the correct thing to do). Come on, see the Windows XP latest updates.

A phone it's not different. In it's core, It's a f computer running software. The main difference is that the average Joe is accustomed to replace them even quicker than desktop/laptops.

Apple et al are fixing the "errors" they made with the personal computer market: support them for a long period of time, or giving the devices a longer (and secure) life via security updates, so your sales plummet.

[chaboud]

I think it's very unlikely that older Android tablets are supported by their manufacturers.

Of the 9 tablets and 8 phones in my sock drawer purchased since 2012, only the iPad Pro 10.5", Kindle Fire HDs, and Galaxy S8 are subject to continued upgrades. The rest are likely vulnerability Petri dishes that should never be allowed on the internet unless unlocked and moved to community builds (for the Android devices).

[pjmlp]

Most likely none of them.

On Android if you are lucky, you would get one OS update and around one or two security updates. This on flagship devices.

Even Google's, are only guaranteed to get updates for three years, starting from the year the model was initially put on sale.

In any case, at least in most European consumer shops, you will see that the large majority of OEMs are migrating to hybrid laptops, convertibles with Windows 10 on them. The Android tablet section keeps getting smaller.

[savoytruffle]

It supports iPads with an A8 series chip, while iOS 13 does not support such iPhones (which would be a 5S). It's presumably because the iPads of the same CPU generation usually have more RAM, more CPU cores, more GPU cores.

[simonh]

It’s almost certainly memory. All the supported devices have at least 2GB RAM.

The iPhone 6 had the A8 with 1GB RAM and is not supported by iOS 13. The iPad Air 2 has the A8X with 2GB RAM and is supported by iPadOS 13.

In the past the break on unsupported older devices has been down to hardware. Usually memory, but also on the 64bit transition. I’m not aware of a single break in support that wasn’t determined by hardware requirements.

[close04]

The A8X also has a substantially faster CPU than the A8 (3 vs. 2 cores and 1.5GHz vs. 1.1GHz) and a much faster GPU (2-3 times faster). This would make a visible difference in day to day usage even without the RAM limitation. This is probably also what made the difference when implementing the multitasking features.

[saagarjha]

iPad Air 2 has an A8X, and iPhone 5s has an A7.

[dep_b]

It looks like the cutoff was 2GB of RAM.

[Miraste]

Those decisions are pretty arbitrary. Way back on iOS 5, the iPod Touch 4 got the update and the original iPad missed it, despite using the exact same processor and RAM.

[unicornfinder]

Keep in mind though that in the iPad it's having to push a lot more pixels.

[Miraste]

Not back then. This was before "Retina" iPads, but the iPod Touch was Retina. You had a 960x640 screen vs a 1024x768 one. More pixels, but not so many more that it should block an OS update.

[mcintyre1994]

iPad Air 2 is still really really good, I bought mine refurbished but it must still be 3-4 years since then and it's never felt slow at all.

[knolan]

The iPad Air 2 was notable for being a powerhouse. The successor was actually slower. I guess iPadOS was in the oven for a long time.

[gowld]

Age doesn't make hardware incompatible with an OS. Architecture changes do.

[penagwin]

Ehh I sorta disagree. Many older windows machines "could" run windows 10 today, but your experience would be miserable for casual desktop use unless you have at least 2GB, etc.

So a windows xp machine "could" run windows 10 but you don't really want to. In apple's case you can't downgrade your OS version, and I've seen an iPad 2 go from "smooth and fluent" to "crashes before I can even unlock it" from OS updates.

[Crosseye_Jack]

> In apple's case you can't downgrade your OS version

You can if the old version is still being signed by Apple.

For example with the iPad Air 2 both iOS 12.4.1 and iPadOS 13.1 are currently being signed by Apple so you can downgrade for the time being. When will stop signing 12.4.1? Who knows.

[penagwin]

They usually stop within a few weeks if I'm not mistaken. Also AFAIK you can only rollback if you're pretty technical too.

[Crosseye_Jack]

> you can only rollback if you're pretty technical.

I wouldn’t say that you need to be too technical. I’ve helped elderly people do a restore of their iPhone over the phone. The process is basically this.

Step 1) download the software package from Apples servers. Places like https://ipsw.me/ make it easy to see what is currently signed for your device and get the download link.

2) Install iTunes if you don’t have it already on your Computer, Open iTunes and connect the device to the computer.

3) In the device options in iTunes, hold shift/option and click update, point the file dialog to the software package downloaded from Apple and confirm.

4) Watch bars progress across the screen of the device.

[captn3m0]

I rolled back my really old iPad 2 to iOS 6 recently. Was fairly easy. As long as Apple is signing it, it just takes 3 clicks on iTunes.

I wrote about my experience at https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/08/11/ipad-downgrade-ios-6-8/

[paggle]

That's why Apple devices are much cheaper than Android devices. They're secure and usable for far longer, as long as you don't break them, so the amortized monthly cost is far less.

[username3]

iPad Air 2 users beware. An iPadOS update made my iPad 1 useless and crash all the time.

[mistersquid]

> An iPadOS update made my iPad 1 useless and crash all the time.

Do you mean mean an iOS update? iPadOS was not released until today, 24 Sep 2019.

[diffeomorphism]

That is a distinction without a difference.

"iPadOS (then still called iOS) update".

[mistersquid]

Differences among operating systems as identified by name and version are very important.

My original specification was a small, but my response to you makes a larger point.

iPadOS did not (publicly) exist prior to yesterday. Before its release, iPadOS was definitively not “then still called iOS”. Up until its release, iPadOS did not exist (publicly).

EDIT: add preposition to first sentence.

[diffeomorphism]

> Differences among operating systems as identified by name and version are very important.

Version sometimes, names no. iPadOS=iOS 13 for iPad.

Or are you going to tell me that Windows 10 is much better than windows 8 because it is called windows 10 and not windows 9?

[mistersquid]

Your last comment is confusing given we're discussing, specifically, iOS and iPadOS, not Windows. Further, I have no idea what any of this has to do with "better". I was very specifically focused on OS differences as identified by names and version numbers.

To be clear, iPadOS is not the same as "iOS 13 for iPad", whatever that might mean. iPadOS comes chronologically after iOS 12 but that's about it.

iPadOS has distinct code, features, and APIs not available on iOS. Period.

Saying iPadOS is "iOS 13 for iPad" makes no sense except in the most superficial sense that it comes chronologically after iOS 12.

EDIT: scare quote iOS 13 for iPad.

[jonny_eh]

I've been using the 13.1 beta on my iPad Air 2 for a couple days and it has been fine.