I'm pretty offended that my 2 year-old IPad Air is gradually being effectively bricked by Apple. I'm staying with IOS 7.0.3 on the thing because first I heard

I'm pretty offended that my 2 year-old IPad Air is gradually being effectively bricked by Apple. I'm staying with IOS 7.0.3 on the thing because first I heard that IOS 8.x.x more or less bricked performance, and now one can't even install 8.x.x. As a result, no more app updates, and both Safari and Chrome crash left and right when confronted with the latest script kiddy HTML because no more app updates without an OS update. In contrast, one of my PCs from 2011 still runs Windows 7 just fine modulo the occasional kvetching to embrace the wonders of Windows 10. By all means be like Microsoft here. Ditto for my other PCs running Ubuntu 12.x And I'd be less risk averse if I could go back to 7.0.3 if indeed the thing got bricked, much like installing a late build of Android 4.x cyanogenmod rescued my Nexus 5 phone from bricking, but there's no way back if I go forward so the real answer for me is to extract all the data and switch to a Cyanogenmod friendly tablet minus the mostly useless Google services (increasingly by design i.e. since when did Google Maps need social push notifications? Yesterday, apparently when I got one). Apple? Never again. The IPad Air is the first and last IOS device I ever own.