When my first gen iPad was no longer able to keep up with the increasingly bloated web, I sold it and got a 3rd gen. Eventually that too succumbed to the increasing bloat.
The Safari tab reloading was one of the biggest problems. If I was writing an HN comment on the iPad and needed to look something up, I had to select my in progress comment, copy it, switch to Notes, and save it there just in case Safari decided to refresh the HN tab. If after my lookup, Safari did indeed refresh the tab and wipe out my comment, I'd try pasting. Sometimes that would work, but sometimes that was gone. Then it was off to Notes to grab the saved copy and paste it into Safari.
The iPad Pro was fairly new at this point, and I considered getting one but could not find anyone who could tell me if they ad improved memory handling enough to get rid of the issue. Instead, I went with a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. The browser situation wasn't the sole reason--I also wanted something with a stylus what would be good for writing math/physics/electronics notes, and I had seen several positive reviews by scientists and engineers of using OneNote and the Surface Pen for that.
Browsing on SP4 was great--I could have many tabs open and switch between them without losing anything. The Pen and OneNote worked well too.
However, I'm not sure I can recommend Surface Pro. I used it heavily for a couple years for browsing, reading PDFs, and taking notes. But then I took advantage of Comcast's baffling iPad offer [1] and got a 6th gen iPad.
The iPad quickly became my choice for light browsing. Later I got an Apple Pencil and the iPad took over most note taking (using the Notability app). (I just really need the electronic equivalent of paper with multiple ink colors and copy/paste, and so a simpler program that does that well is fine).
After a couple years of that, with the iPad used daily and the SP4 used less frequently--the SP4 battery is heavily degraded. I think part of this is because it is not obvious how to really turn an SP4 off so if you take a fully charged SP4 and don't use it for a week it will be significantly drained. So even if you are infrequently using it, you are still putting mileage on the battery.
At 4 years old, now my SP4 does not run very long off charger. An out of warranty battery replacement from Microsoft is something like $500.
My iPad battery is degrading much slower than my SP4 battery did. I'm confident it will be in way better shape when it reached 4 years old than the SP4 was. And if it isn't, an out of warranty iPad battery replacement from Apple is $99.
Anyway, if you need to do a lot of browsing in multiple tables using a tablet, and are OK with the power management issues I mentioned above, the Surface products might be worth a look.
[1] Comcast had an offer open for a while to most of their subscribers to get a 128 GB WiFi iPad for $5/month for 24 months (which you could pay off faster if you wished). That's $120, which was around 1/3 of what you'd expect to pay.
I've semi-retired my iPad first generation mini because it has trouble rendering beffier web pages like Business Insider and New York Times. It reloads several times when it runslowon memory for rending. Pages with multiple viedos are a problem. Also Apple no loner upgrades the OS for this model.
I replaced it with the new cheap iPad. It has twice the memory, twice the screen resolution and 20 times faster CPU, and costs less.
Speaking as the owner of a 1st gen iPad, they have the same obsolescence problem on a slightly longer timescale. It's barely usable, up-updateable, Safari crashes a lot, so I only use it for Spotify.
Agreed. I hated browsing the web on the iPad one because it could only hold one tab loaded at a time, and refresh the others when you moved between them.
iPad 3, sorry, 'new iPad' is vastly improved. iPad 1 is now kid's iPad: iView & jigsaw puzzles. :)
scarface, you're defending the indefensible. Stop trying to justify Apple's scheduled technology obsolescence.
I'm not talking iPad 1st gen, which was always slow. Soon after release it was clear that iPad first gen was underpowered.
I'm talking about iPad 3rd gen, which has 1 GB RAM, a retina display, and does not crash when loading web pages. It has enough RAM to load any web page. "Hardware improvements" are not needed on this device. Software improvements ARE needed including updating the browser to cater for things like ES6 which does NOT require better hardware, only a minor updated browser software.
You don't think Apple should update the software, and instead I should... go to the store and buy a new iPad to get a slightly better web browser? You are part of the "throw away" culture problem, you are not helping.
Let's take a look at Apple's glossy "helping the planet" page...
"To ask less of the planet we ask more of ourselves."
Nothing about extending product life, it's all fluffy feel-good futuristic gazing pre-packaged catch phrases. Well I'm asking more of Apple too, like software updates for an iPad3. Asking more of ourselves is not enough, we also need to act on those questions, not just copy and paste the slogans on a "helping the planet" page.
I have an iPad 1 myself, and I am looking to replace it.
Browsing - complex pages (techcrunch is one particular abomination) have a tendency to crash Safari. Chrome was far too slow to bother with.
Old Twitter app was crashing several times when loading in-app browser.
Applications in general tend to quit a lot.
It worked wonderfully when it was out, but its barely usable now.
The ipad is a second class browsing experience not because of the lack of flash, but the lack of cache. It's just not anywhere near as snappy reading as a Real Computer(tm) because it's constantly reloading stuff that's been purged.
My usual style of reading (on the desktop) is to pop open a pile of stuff in tabs, then batch read through. Can't do that on the iPad.
Safari could also use a few more cycles to make it seem that much snappier. While it feels like magic, and I would have killed for its browsing performance a few years back, it just doesn't feel quite there yet.
Also, just in the last month or so, I've noticed some sort of background task that causes stuttering in some places. (mainly in angry birds). For the first time, I've noticed that I needed to restart it. Its' a small thing, but it's also the first time I've had to resort to computer troubleshooting on it.
Interesting, thanks for the history lesson! I got my iPad 3 at a discount when they were running out stock, and chose it specifically for the retina screen. It's done well, all things considered, but it definitely seems underpowered these days. Apps are fine but web browsing is quite clunky.
As counterpoint, I used my first generation iPad until I broke the screen last year. (It withstood more than a few drops as the corners attested before finally succumbing.) Granted, my use case wasn't overly intensive: mostly just web browsing and video viewing (Netflix, HBO Now, iTunes). My primary gripes are with iTunes and video storage management, and while that was more acute with the limited storage of the first generation iPad, it hasn't changed with its 9.7" iPad Pro replacement. But that first generation iPad worked well for me, even with iOS 9.
Based on the user data I went through last year to see if we still needed to support anything before Safari for iOS 16 there was a surprising number of ancient iPads hanging about. I get the impression a lot of iPads are handmedowns.
With pencil support and sidecar, I see hardly any reason to move on from the 6th gen model. Maybe they'll disable sidecar on it when it's no longer supported or something.
Think the bulk of tablet use is fairly resource light; nowhere near the scale of multitasking going on as there is on phones. I've a ten year old Android one that's still pretty usable for me (OLED screen so mainly reading and media; it struggles with the web unless you've adblockers and whatnot though)
Yeah safari barely works on it, which is maybe half because its outdated and half because websites have gotten a lot heavier since then. The iPad had a tiny amount of RAM by today‘s standards. Something like 512 MB, or even 255? iOS was aggressive about killing apps (esp safari) when RAM runs out. Not sure if it can even swap, or could back then?
My original iPad Pro from 2015 is still used and is still perfect for not just everything I want to do with it but always has no issue with new stuff... except, Apple finally decided that it won't get OS upgrades, and so the few bits of software on it that I use are going to rot -- even the web browser these days doesn't work long as people no longer believe in progressive enhancement... the few-year old version of iOS on my iPhone would just render blank white pages for major websites, which is what finally forced me to upgrade: the device has devolved to not much more than a dumb phone -- and so this iPad, with its glorious large screen, will soon be trash.
If I could install an alternative third-party web browser -- though it would have to be one by someone who also understood the importance of supporting the old OS -- or if I could pitch in and help maintain the operating system myself, even using binary patches if required (look into who I am if you laugh here, and then stop laughing: we can do quite a lot without source code) I would be able to keep using it, but only Apple can save it now, and they have absolutely zero in incentive to do so.
My first iPad, I believe it was the third generation: I would have never used it if it were as slow as it has become today. It also lost some synchronization options, though I don’t recall what it was.
That being said: I kept my 2013 MacBook Pro retina until a few months ago, one year after a battery replacement which ended up breaking other parts and becoming to expensive to fix. Otherwise it ran perfectly fine and the high quality screen was almost on par to current screens.
My first-gen iPad Pro, the big one from 2015 or '16, is getting really slow, particularly with Safari, and it gets all the updates. Having some trouble understanding what's going on here.
I bought my iPad 5th gen years ago pretty much for reading PDFs. Sadly, it's barely even usable for that, even after a fresh device reset it's laggy and so slow. I'm not sure if it was always that way; I don't think so. I've stopped upgrading iOS but I think I'm already at 15, if there's a way to go wayyy back that's probably what I want to do, but it's sad that even an iPad can be bogged down so much as to barely run PDF readers. And I always wished mine supported pencil / annotations, but I think I'm one generation behind.
I imagine most employees who get by in cloud docs (Google/Microsoft/etc.) and don't really open apps other than browsers can learn to be comfortable with an iPad, but many people don't want to. I have friends who refuse to even learn to use a trackpad on Macbook because they are so set in their ways.
I still have an iPad 1 and I have the opposite feeling. Many websites kill the browser and I can't install another one. I'm gradually running out of use cases (browsing the web in a comfortable position is my main use case) and the device hardware itself is in perfect shape.
I still have my iPad 2, and it is "technically" a useful tablet. But it is worthless with Safari on modern (bloated) sites and doesn't show Netflix in HD, my two main usecases. No security updates either. I should recycle it but haven't been able to do it.
Here's why I upgraded my Ipad : webdesign.
My Ipad 1 still works perfectly, unfortunately it cannot handle javascript heavy websites. People love to talk about planned obsolescence but React, Angular (and others frameworks), stupid parallaxes etc bricked my Ipad, not Apple.
It's more than that: Safari could be fine on these devices, but the original iPads had very limited memory, and websites these days are resource-intensive. It's hard to browse the web, when otherwise it would be a great web and ebook reader (it's just the latter now).
The Safari tab reloading was one of the biggest problems. If I was writing an HN comment on the iPad and needed to look something up, I had to select my in progress comment, copy it, switch to Notes, and save it there just in case Safari decided to refresh the HN tab. If after my lookup, Safari did indeed refresh the tab and wipe out my comment, I'd try pasting. Sometimes that would work, but sometimes that was gone. Then it was off to Notes to grab the saved copy and paste it into Safari.
The iPad Pro was fairly new at this point, and I considered getting one but could not find anyone who could tell me if they ad improved memory handling enough to get rid of the issue. Instead, I went with a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. The browser situation wasn't the sole reason--I also wanted something with a stylus what would be good for writing math/physics/electronics notes, and I had seen several positive reviews by scientists and engineers of using OneNote and the Surface Pen for that.
Browsing on SP4 was great--I could have many tabs open and switch between them without losing anything. The Pen and OneNote worked well too.
However, I'm not sure I can recommend Surface Pro. I used it heavily for a couple years for browsing, reading PDFs, and taking notes. But then I took advantage of Comcast's baffling iPad offer [1] and got a 6th gen iPad.
The iPad quickly became my choice for light browsing. Later I got an Apple Pencil and the iPad took over most note taking (using the Notability app). (I just really need the electronic equivalent of paper with multiple ink colors and copy/paste, and so a simpler program that does that well is fine).
After a couple years of that, with the iPad used daily and the SP4 used less frequently--the SP4 battery is heavily degraded. I think part of this is because it is not obvious how to really turn an SP4 off so if you take a fully charged SP4 and don't use it for a week it will be significantly drained. So even if you are infrequently using it, you are still putting mileage on the battery.
At 4 years old, now my SP4 does not run very long off charger. An out of warranty battery replacement from Microsoft is something like $500.
My iPad battery is degrading much slower than my SP4 battery did. I'm confident it will be in way better shape when it reached 4 years old than the SP4 was. And if it isn't, an out of warranty iPad battery replacement from Apple is $99.
Anyway, if you need to do a lot of browsing in multiple tables using a tablet, and are OK with the power management issues I mentioned above, the Surface products might be worth a look.
[1] Comcast had an offer open for a while to most of their subscribers to get a 128 GB WiFi iPad for $5/month for 24 months (which you could pay off faster if you wished). That's $120, which was around 1/3 of what you'd expect to pay.
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