[bergie]

I had the first generation MacBook Air, and if I was using it outside, it would shut down the instant sun peeked from behind the clouds.

They later solved this in a firmware update, but still, first-generation Apple products are usually best to be avoided.

There are exceptions, of course. For example, I've heard of no major defects in the 1st gen iPad.

[mikeash]

More of a deliberate cost tradeoff than a defect, but the first iPad only included 256MB of RAM, which is woefully inadequate for the number of pixels it has to drive. As a result, it will not get new OS updates starting with iOS 6, and a lot of other software is unhappy on it. It's not bad, but the second version was considerably better.

[bergie]

True, for instance Mobile Safari is very crashy on it. This is of course not unique to just iOS, at least on Transformer Prime a lot of Android applications like GMail tend to crash a lot. So I'd count it more as a defect from a still young platform.

[r00fus]

The 2010 iPad is still a great piece of gear and despite not having iOS6, will still run games and apps pretty well.

By 2013, a lot of apps will have migrated to iOS6, and the iPad1 might start to lose some of the platform benefits, but will still be a solid device.