Thank you for explaining.
Sadly, it means I’ll have to wait 7 weeks before I can receive a new iPad.
Other makes such as Samsung, are the same price as the iPad and won’t integrate as nicely with my other devices, so, it seems I’m stuffed for the next 7 weeks 
Naim could offer a desktop or browser application as an alternative. This is something i prefer in comparison with phone/tablet apps and mobile platforms that have concerning privacy issues and i want to restrict my every day usage of them.
1 Like
quiet a few refurbished ones on Apples website that are presumably available now
Ummm…no, they can’t. It doesn’t work that way. That is just not practical, and would make things prohibitively expensive to even try. What it would also mean is that those of us with latest hardware couldn’t fully benefit from it if the OS had to have unlimited backwards compatibility.
I work on an engineering software product that started life 20 years ago. There is no way we could get the current version (i.e. feature set, security updates, performance improvements, etc) to work on hardware from 20 years ago.
Apple does a pretty good job supporting hardware for a while, but like everyone else they have to make progress to stay competitive. You can’t do that by supporting a minority of users who cling to hardware longer term, where the hardware doesn’t have the memory and processing power to run more modern software.
In the end the real product is the software, and you buy the hardware you need to run the software you want to use. Computing devices just become obsolete after a while. That’s the nature of the beast.
1 Like
Planned obsolescence.
2 Likes
You have to draw the line in the sand somewhere.
You are right to a degree. Apple makes money on hardware, and they give the software away free. But they are good at making new hardware that is compelling, and to implement the compelling parts means obsoleting older hardware that can’t handle the change. Every company making micro-processor based hardware does that.
There is a web client that can be run on a desktop. Not as good as the app. I run the app on my desktop M1 Mac mini.
Can’t you buy a second hand IPad Air 2 on EBay?
Not only that, (in my experience) they do make reliable hardware that lasts a long time, and hence we inevitably have SW compatibility issues as time goes by. I recall my first couple of hand held devices (e.g. Psion) that lasted no more than 2 years. I still use my 13 year old iMac and 11 year old MBAir
I’m sure I could buy a 2nd hand iPad on eBay but, it will be the last generation at best and, will therefore become obsolete even sooner than buying a new one.
I’ve now ordered a new one but, I will carry it with me, rather than keeping one in the UK and one in Australia.
It’ll still be around 7 weeks before I actually receive it though…
I just checked on the Apple website and they could deliver me a new iPad on Thursday. So presumably you are not in UK right now!
First line of my original post…
1 Like
Sorry I don’t accept the historical “… no they can’t.” argument where technology is concerned. If people had been asked in early 2020 whether scientists and drugs manufacturers could create a vaccine for the then newly sequenced Covid 19 that would be over 90% effective, get it approved by regulatory agencies and jab it into millions of arms in a year, the deniers would have said (indeed did say): ‘No they can’t! Drug development and approval is a ten or more year process … and that’s if you’re lucky.’
We are in an equally dire climate and planetary resource emergency and IMO we have to begin to move towards a circular economy. Given the right incentives and some creative thinking I am sure companies like Apple and its competitors could help to reduce wastage. In Apple’s case, perhaps they might be required to take in the redundant iPad for recycling and offer a significant discount on a new one. Or at least allow folk to return to older versions of OSs and apps.
The WEEE Man sculpture was made 16 years ago and if anything the problem of WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) has got worse. I think it’s about time we started trying to turn that round.
Roger
2 Likes
Software/hardware development isn’t drug development. The analogy is non-sensical. It’s not like they took an old vaccine and made updates to it, adding a feature to battle covid.
Supporting old hardware – but still moving software forward with added/improved features for new hardware, security updates, and improved performance – just isn’t realistic. Allowing people to continue to running older versions of OSs and apps opens a really ugly can of worms, since those mostly have security holes that can be or are actively exploited. The software project I work on still supports very old versions of the software, and that is a major headache and very, very costly. If mine were a commercial software project those costs would have to be passed on to customers, just because a small minority want/need to use legacy versions. Do you want to pay for Apple to do everything to support older software and OSs? It will be a significant cost to everyone else.
In the end, if Apple and others supported older hardware (not really possible anyway) and older software (a really bad idea for security reasons, if nothing else), the costs to customers for products would be significantly higher.
I get your point about waste and agree it’s an issue. Recycling is the best solution. Apple does a pretty good job about that, and will accept any older device for recycling, often with a trade-in allowance.
2 Likes
Please no covid/ climate / political messages. There other views also that can also be expressed.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.