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This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kit

This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kitchen TV, it shows either some content from VLC (works perfectly fine, kudos to the devs) or some YouTube from Safari (the AppStore’s app support is long gone, web app still works quite well, even considering it was updated recently). Today I spent my morning trying to login our kitchen account. Didn’t work. The account is perfectly fine, but Google refuses to login, as — I’m pretty sure — we use our obsolete software. Well, we do, we do. But even YouTube itself works relatively fine, and as many of you may understand, the iPad is great and much beyond what we need for kitchen, it has a loud speaker and great display, we don’t need anything else for that use-case. On top of that that’s separate device is nothing to worry about, as you may imagine controlling the iPad with dirty fingers, all the oils of the kitchen, etc. Not a place for a modern iPad that we also have, imo. For me that’s a great example. I personally know many old (even obsolete iPads) lying here and there collecting dust, as their software (and hardware) vendor decided they are all in for nature and ecology (sarcasm), so let millions of perfectly capable devices would be thrown away as a trash. Eyeing some Android tablet for that, the one I can flash with Lineage OS and be happy with. Maybe Google’s Pixel C or even Nexus 7. Meanwhile we continue using the iPad unlogginned till it stop working.

aegis4244 3y ago
Have you thought about the pinetab ? https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/
- andrewshadura 3y ago
  I own one. It's extremely slow, and the screen is easily scratched by the keyboard when folded.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Have never seen it, looks promising. Even if it’s not well supported yet, it might be in the future. I’ll keep my eyes on them.
dheera 3y ago
I have a couple Samsung Galaxy A8 (2022) tablets set up as control panels around my apartment for Home Assistant. They cost a little more than $100 on eBay in very good condition. I don't think LineageOS supports this particular model, though, but I didn't bother since all it does is display a webpage. One of the things I like about Samsung tablets is that they have a "Battery saver" feature where you can restrict it from charging the battery past 85%, which is a generally good move if your tablet is going to be permanently plugged into power and used as some sort of fixed display. I've had MANY brand name devices with lithium batteries bulge when left constantly plugged in at 100% battery for months and don't want to risk an explosion.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  I do this with an old samsung phone I have, but I can't do updates on it, because on that model samsung included an overlay with ads along with the updates. So I see ads (even videos!) instead of my simple html page, or on top of it. It's terrible!
  - MaKey 3y ago
    Are you sure this came from a Samsung update? I've been a Samsung phone user for over a decade and never saw such behavior.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      Yeah. Samsung update. I just factory reset, then if I do the system updates from the control panel they come back. It's reproducible. I don't install any app since I really only need the browser to display an html page from a server on my LAN.
  - jve 3y ago
    Which Samsung model is it? S models never did that. Can't be too old as you are still getting updates.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
benterix 3y ago
> For me that’s a great example. I personally know many old (even obsolete iPads) lying here and there collecting dust, as their software (and hardware) vendor decided they are all in for nature and ecology (sarcasm), so let millions of perfectly capable devices would be thrown away as a trash. This really infuriates me because we (iOS developers) were all forced to see how it was happening. If you want to stay in the game, you have to develop for the newest devices, In order to do so, you need to upgrade your Xcode. In order to do so, you have to periodically upgrade your mac. And this is more or less fine. But at the same time newer xcode drops support for older yet perfectly functioning devices. What can you do? Keep older macs with older xcode versions and at least be able to develop solutions for your own devices. But this is not a solution, it doesn't solve anything really, and it wouldn't help much in your kitchen example.
- miramba 3y ago
  > If you want to stay in the game, you have to develop for the newest devices Even if you don't care, you have to upgrade to the latest Xcode to build against the latest iOS version with the cascade of consequences you described so well.
watersb 3y ago
I still use my iPad 4 every day. The YouTube iOS app stopped working a while ago, I suppose the backend API changed. But YouTube still works via Safari on the iPad 4. I generally keep JavaScript turned off in Safari on that old tablet; I think it's a RAM limitation but it could simply be that the JavaScript version is too old. Many sites just don't work. But with JavaScript enabled, YouTube still does fine.
cookiengineer 3y ago
I refuse to buy hardware when it comes out, and I only buy used hardware from private sellers on ebay. And only hardware that I know there's a possibility of me (read as: my clumsy hands) repairing it without having equipment worth 10k$. The reason I am doing this is because I had several Macbooks and Ultrabooks when they were cool and shiny, and all of them died within less than 2 years. So I kinda learned my lesson. This sadly limits the options to less than let's say 10 devices. For now I am still using my 10 years old T440p because it's the last generation laptop that can both run coreboot and is still repairable (and it survived all the Ultrabooks I mentioned before. WTF?). But it's too old for Vulkan because there is no Haswell support. It was the perfect laptop until around 2020 when Vulkan was rolled out. Can forget games that ran before that now, because of mesa dropping support for it. The framework will very likely be my next laptop if the current one dies, but only time will tell if the promise is worth the price. Fairphone 2/3 are kinda useless as an ideology if there are no replacement parts available 12 months after the phone came out...so yeah, I got also two broken Fairphones I cannot repair for the moment because the bottom module isn't available anywhere. I kinda refuse to buy a full phone just for spare parts because I can do that with literally every other cheap Chinese Android phone. With the T440p there's no working new mint condition batteries available and only used ones that have less than 60% capacity when you buy them, so I am currently trying to design a battery case that can use 18650 cells directly without soldering. Takes a lot of time to iterate, and very hard to print with a cheap 3d printer. I think I am way too stubborn for this world, given the amount of time I spend on fixing my old hardware.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
See, even when people get rid of their old tech because they get a newer replacement or whatever, the old stuff is often not broken; with repairs like a replacement battery, or the option to use it without one, it can easily last over a decade. This is why right to repair laws and standardization are so important, to reduce the amount of discarded electronics, and to allow a "trickle down" kind of economics, to the point where people can get access to technology for free.
miramba 3y ago
Same here - my iPad 3 was used by me and then 2 children growing up. It's still working perfectly fine and has even decent battery life. But the app store shows a blank page, and even if it wasn't, all recent apps have a higher minimum iOS version (edit: because recent versions of Xcode will only build against recent iOS versions). And Apple is actively removing apps from the app store that haven't been updated in a while. So the hardware is still fine, but there is no software available anymore and no way to sideload.
sspiff 3y ago
I recommend against the Nexus 7. We used it for some 10 years, mostly with Lineage OS, as a video player for our kids. We had two, and both batteries are dead. No longer charging at all. Additionally, even before the batteries went, video playback was far from great at the end. I used NewPipe for youtube videos and VLC for downloads. And while once playing, it worked fine enough, the UI interactions were frustrating because of lacking responsiveness, and the 7 inch thick bezelled form factor made it hard to watch anything without holding the device in front of you. We've since switched to a couple of cheap 10" tablets and they provide a much nicer experience.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Oh, thanks for your feedback! I was worried about the N7, as the iPad is very snappy in that regard (playing video). I see almost no difference with any newer models, with the exception of super new HDR/Spatial Audio ones. (Not needed for YouTube anyways, as even if there’s content, we don’t truly watch the iPad, but listen to it.) And it plays local H264 720p very well, usually. However, for us 480p is plenty most of the time.
rplnt 3y ago
Don't buy Nexus 7. Or if you do, find a new one and don't update. Google virtually bricked them with an update to a newer android version. Maybe you can still find posts of people complaining and trying to fix it. I know I won't ever buy hardware from Google after that.
jraph 3y ago
I wish I could install an up to date version of (real) Firefox on the iPad 2 I inherited and for which updates stopped in 2016. This alone would make it massively more useful. Today it mostly serves displaying music sheets, it's fine as a PDF viewer (although there's nothing to prevent the screen from going off too soon, which is incredibly dumb and annoying). Even better, I would very much like installing some Linux mobile distro on it. It's limited but perfectly fine hardware with a good screen and impressive battery time. If only the software were any good. Also: - Yes, I know there's no sim card in it. - no, I won't log in to iBooks, this is a freaking PDF viewer for me. Every restart. Linux mobile software is flawed by accident. iOS is flawed by decision and I can't rebuild and fix it.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Yes, yes, yes! A million times yes! Our iPad 3 may have a bit of ‘kids device’ time, but after that it’s useless. Its battery life is over any laptop I have in my household (except just one with M2, obviously). My wife is Ukrainian and we do live in Ukraine. And hadn’t left, as our city is relatively safe from missile and drones attacks. But the winter was harsh and we had extreme blackouts last winter. We could have from days (at worst) to hours (at best) without any electricity and internet connection. I bought top of the line MacBook Pro 16 with M2, just to do my work, which involves heavy renders quite often. Also we have a generator and a huge battery pack that can power some critical devices up to a day. Still, given all that, the iPad saved our winter, as we could download offline most of the various content and almost never its battery was depleted during those blackouts. This tablet ($30 on a used market) and a $4K laptop were two devices that held its battery basically without need to be recharged either from generator or the battery pack. Now Apple and Google tell me I have to retire the tablet just because. Also, I have an obsolete 10” Intel Atom netbook somewhat 5 years older than this iPad (ca. 2007–2008), and it runs fresh Arch Linux with the latest Firefox. Its battery is dead, but I know I can replace the cells, when needed. It can run many of my tasks, has an HDMI port and 4 GB of RAM. And is perfectly usable in many cases. But the iPad that could run rounds across the netbook, if allowed to remove all the bloat and update what’s needed— well, you know. You better buy a new one to watch YouTube and your precious local content.
bigpeopleareold 3y ago
This doesn't happen much to me and my wife since we don't buy much electronics without discretion. However, my wife has a specific Fossil/Kate Spade hybrid watch (analog but can be controlled remotely) that had an app with it. One day, she was cleaning out her phone and accidentally deleted the app to control it. She tries to go back and the app is gone from the store. The watch can probably controlled with the generic software they have, but that's not the purpose (despite the fact that watch/app has/had novelty features.) It's really annoying though. The watch ticks, but it was built with features that the developer decides it can't support anymore after a few years. I found the Android version outside the google play store and I decompiled it to find the problem she described, which is a seemingly frivolous login feature (to WeChat login service! why?!? I think all Fossil watches in the past few years do this) to control the watch. I might make it a project to fix it one day. I almost went down the path of buying a panel heater with an app - but, as a rule, no source (free to view, free to modify), no buy. Talking about iPads, we have one, an iPad mini, that is just an alarm clock now. It's useless otherwise.

aegis4244 3y ago

Have you thought about the pinetab ? https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/

andrewshadura 3y ago
I own one. It's extremely slow, and the screen is easily scratched by the keyboard when folded.
walteweiss 3y ago
Have never seen it, looks promising. Even if it’s not well supported yet, it might be in the future. I’ll keep my eyes on them.

dheera 3y ago

I have a couple Samsung Galaxy A8 (2022) tablets set up as control panels around my apartment for Home Assistant. They cost a little more than $100 on eBay in very good condition. I don't think LineageOS supports this particular model, though, but I didn't bother since all it does is display a webpage. One of the things I like about Samsung tablets is that they have a "Battery saver" feature where you can restrict it from charging the battery past 85%, which is a generally good move if your tablet is going to be permanently plugged into power and used as some sort of fixed display. I've had MANY brand name devices with lithium batteries bulge when left constantly plugged in at 100% battery for months and don't want to risk an explosion.

LtWorf 3y ago
I do this with an old samsung phone I have, but I can't do updates on it, because on that model samsung included an overlay with ads along with the updates. So I see ads (even videos!) instead of my simple html page, or on top of it. It's terrible!
- MaKey 3y ago
  Are you sure this came from a Samsung update? I've been a Samsung phone user for over a decade and never saw such behavior.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    Yeah. Samsung update. I just factory reset, then if I do the system updates from the control panel they come back. It's reproducible. I don't install any app since I really only need the browser to display an html page from a server on my LAN.
- jve 3y ago
  Which Samsung model is it? S models never did that. Can't be too old as you are still getting updates.
  - LtWorf 3y ago

benterix 3y ago

> For me that’s a great example. I personally know many old (even obsolete iPads) lying here and there collecting dust, as their software (and hardware) vendor decided they are all in for nature and ecology (sarcasm), so let millions of perfectly capable devices would be thrown away as a trash. This really infuriates me because we (iOS developers) were all forced to see how it was happening. If you want to stay in the game, you have to develop for the newest devices, In order to do so, you need to upgrade your Xcode. In order to do so, you have to periodically upgrade your mac. And this is more or less fine. But at the same time newer xcode drops support for older yet perfectly functioning devices. What can you do? Keep older macs with older xcode versions and at least be able to develop solutions for your own devices. But this is not a solution, it doesn't solve anything really, and it wouldn't help much in your kitchen example.

miramba 3y ago
> If you want to stay in the game, you have to develop for the newest devices Even if you don't care, you have to upgrade to the latest Xcode to build against the latest iOS version with the cascade of consequences you described so well.

watersb 3y ago

I still use my iPad 4 every day. The YouTube iOS app stopped working a while ago, I suppose the backend API changed. But YouTube still works via Safari on the iPad 4. I generally keep JavaScript turned off in Safari on that old tablet; I think it's a RAM limitation but it could simply be that the JavaScript version is too old. Many sites just don't work. But with JavaScript enabled, YouTube still does fine.

cookiengineer 3y ago

I refuse to buy hardware when it comes out, and I only buy used hardware from private sellers on ebay. And only hardware that I know there's a possibility of me (read as: my clumsy hands) repairing it without having equipment worth 10k$. The reason I am doing this is because I had several Macbooks and Ultrabooks when they were cool and shiny, and all of them died within less than 2 years. So I kinda learned my lesson. This sadly limits the options to less than let's say 10 devices. For now I am still using my 10 years old T440p because it's the last generation laptop that can both run coreboot and is still repairable (and it survived all the Ultrabooks I mentioned before. WTF?). But it's too old for Vulkan because there is no Haswell support. It was the perfect laptop until around 2020 when Vulkan was rolled out. Can forget games that ran before that now, because of mesa dropping support for it. The framework will very likely be my next laptop if the current one dies, but only time will tell if the promise is worth the price. Fairphone 2/3 are kinda useless as an ideology if there are no replacement parts available 12 months after the phone came out...so yeah, I got also two broken Fairphones I cannot repair for the moment because the bottom module isn't available anywhere. I kinda refuse to buy a full phone just for spare parts because I can do that with literally every other cheap Chinese Android phone. With the T440p there's no working new mint condition batteries available and only used ones that have less than 60% capacity when you buy them, so I am currently trying to design a battery case that can use 18650 cells directly without soldering. Takes a lot of time to iterate, and very hard to print with a cheap 3d printer. I think I am way too stubborn for this world, given the amount of time I spend on fixing my old hardware.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

See, even when people get rid of their old tech because they get a newer replacement or whatever, the old stuff is often not broken; with repairs like a replacement battery, or the option to use it without one, it can easily last over a decade. This is why right to repair laws and standardization are so important, to reduce the amount of discarded electronics, and to allow a "trickle down" kind of economics, to the point where people can get access to technology for free.

miramba 3y ago

Same here - my iPad 3 was used by me and then 2 children growing up. It's still working perfectly fine and has even decent battery life. But the app store shows a blank page, and even if it wasn't, all recent apps have a higher minimum iOS version (edit: because recent versions of Xcode will only build against recent iOS versions). And Apple is actively removing apps from the app store that haven't been updated in a while. So the hardware is still fine, but there is no software available anymore and no way to sideload.

sspiff 3y ago

I recommend against the Nexus 7. We used it for some 10 years, mostly with Lineage OS, as a video player for our kids. We had two, and both batteries are dead. No longer charging at all. Additionally, even before the batteries went, video playback was far from great at the end. I used NewPipe for youtube videos and VLC for downloads. And while once playing, it worked fine enough, the UI interactions were frustrating because of lacking responsiveness, and the 7 inch thick bezelled form factor made it hard to watch anything without holding the device in front of you. We've since switched to a couple of cheap 10" tablets and they provide a much nicer experience.

walteweiss 3y ago
Oh, thanks for your feedback! I was worried about the N7, as the iPad is very snappy in that regard (playing video). I see almost no difference with any newer models, with the exception of super new HDR/Spatial Audio ones. (Not needed for YouTube anyways, as even if there’s content, we don’t truly watch the iPad, but listen to it.) And it plays local H264 720p very well, usually. However, for us 480p is plenty most of the time.

rplnt 3y ago

Don't buy Nexus 7. Or if you do, find a new one and don't update. Google virtually bricked them with an update to a newer android version. Maybe you can still find posts of people complaining and trying to fix it. I know I won't ever buy hardware from Google after that.

jraph 3y ago

I wish I could install an up to date version of (real) Firefox on the iPad 2 I inherited and for which updates stopped in 2016. This alone would make it massively more useful. Today it mostly serves displaying music sheets, it's fine as a PDF viewer (although there's nothing to prevent the screen from going off too soon, which is incredibly dumb and annoying). Even better, I would very much like installing some Linux mobile distro on it. It's limited but perfectly fine hardware with a good screen and impressive battery time. If only the software were any good. Also: - Yes, I know there's no sim card in it. - no, I won't log in to iBooks, this is a freaking PDF viewer for me. Every restart. Linux mobile software is flawed by accident. iOS is flawed by decision and I can't rebuild and fix it.

walteweiss 3y ago
Yes, yes, yes! A million times yes! Our iPad 3 may have a bit of ‘kids device’ time, but after that it’s useless. Its battery life is over any laptop I have in my household (except just one with M2, obviously). My wife is Ukrainian and we do live in Ukraine. And hadn’t left, as our city is relatively safe from missile and drones attacks. But the winter was harsh and we had extreme blackouts last winter. We could have from days (at worst) to hours (at best) without any electricity and internet connection. I bought top of the line MacBook Pro 16 with M2, just to do my work, which involves heavy renders quite often. Also we have a generator and a huge battery pack that can power some critical devices up to a day. Still, given all that, the iPad saved our winter, as we could download offline most of the various content and almost never its battery was depleted during those blackouts. This tablet ($30 on a used market) and a $4K laptop were two devices that held its battery basically without need to be recharged either from generator or the battery pack. Now Apple and Google tell me I have to retire the tablet just because. Also, I have an obsolete 10” Intel Atom netbook somewhat 5 years older than this iPad (ca. 2007–2008), and it runs fresh Arch Linux with the latest Firefox. Its battery is dead, but I know I can replace the cells, when needed. It can run many of my tasks, has an HDMI port and 4 GB of RAM. And is perfectly usable in many cases. But the iPad that could run rounds across the netbook, if allowed to remove all the bloat and update what’s needed— well, you know. You better buy a new one to watch YouTube and your precious local content.

bigpeopleareold 3y ago

This doesn't happen much to me and my wife since we don't buy much electronics without discretion. However, my wife has a specific Fossil/Kate Spade hybrid watch (analog but can be controlled remotely) that had an app with it. One day, she was cleaning out her phone and accidentally deleted the app to control it. She tries to go back and the app is gone from the store. The watch can probably controlled with the generic software they have, but that's not the purpose (despite the fact that watch/app has/had novelty features.) It's really annoying though. The watch ticks, but it was built with features that the developer decides it can't support anymore after a few years. I found the Android version outside the google play store and I decompiled it to find the problem she described, which is a seemingly frivolous login feature (to WeChat login service! why?!? I think all Fossil watches in the past few years do this) to control the watch. I might make it a project to fix it one day. I almost went down the path of buying a panel heater with an app - but, as a rule, no source (free to view, free to modify), no buy. Talking about iPads, we have one, an iPad mini, that is just an alarm clock now. It's useless otherwise.