It really seems like Apple left early iPad adopters out in the cold. Last major OS update wouldn't work on iPad 1, nor does it count for any trade-in ANYWHERE it seems like.
I beg to differ. I assumed that I would get 3 years out of my iPad 1 but barely got two.
I made the wrong bet by placing blind trust into Apple when I paid extra for the 64GB version to ensure that it was 'future proof'. Sadly, by the time I upgraded to iOS 5.x, the iPad became slow as molasses and the browser would crash every 5-10 minutes.
Don't even get me started on how iOS 6.x has turned my iPhone 4 into a pig.
I'd be a hell of a lot happier if Apple would let you easily downgrade the OS'es of their mobile devices.
Really? I still have my iPad 1. Browsing HN on it as we speak. It's running iOS 5. The only downside is that the percentage of apps I can install is diminishing rapidly. Still, I bought it primarily to consume media: audio, video and books. And I reckon I have at least one more year before I would feel compelled to upgrade.
If yours doesn't crash all the time because WebKit runs out of memory, then you're luckier than me (and a few people on the Apple forums). For me, the usable lifespan ended with the introduction of iOS 5 (my friend's iPad on 4.3 is much more stable).
"iPad 1 had a very decent lifespan compared to the tablets released by competing manufacturers shortly afterwards"
And it is completely true. Look at the first Android tablets released after the iPad 1 came out (Motorola Xoom and friends). Did anyone use these for more than a few months?
Yet I know five or six people who still regularly use their iPad 1.
If you had instead placed your "blind trust" in an Android tablet at the time, you would have been treated far worse.
It doesn't, although storage needs for me tend to grow over time. The problem for me was that paying the premium for the storage was mooted by the iPad becoming essentially a useless brick because of the OS upgrades.
I use iPhone 4 with iOS 6 and apart from the app store (which I guess is slow everywhere, looking like being implemented in HTML 5 and stressing servers) nothing is slower than before iOS 6.
When the iPad 1 was brand new, there were no other tablets so I didn't choose an iPad over an Android tablet, but over a light laptop or other gadgets. And in retrospect, I should definitely have waited for the iPad 2 which seems to rival the iPhone 3GS in terms of longevity.
The iPad 2/mini is better than the iPad 3 in performance due to the excellent GPU for the comparatively low resolution. The iPad 4 is similar in its GPU power / screen resolution ratio.