[dallen33]

The list of supported devices is impressive. The iPad Air 2 came out in 2014.

  12.9-inch iPad Pro
  11-inch iPad Pro
  10.5-inch iPad Pro
  9.7-inch iPad Pro
  iPad (7th generation)
  iPad (6th generation)
  iPad (5th generation)
  iPad mini (5th generation)
  iPad mini 4
  iPad Air (3rd generation)
  iPad Air 2

[dhritzkiv]

I'm still impressed by my iPad Air 2. I originally bought it for product demos/ as a presentation tool for work, but now use it regularly for personal use. My only regret is getting the 16GB version.

[jacurtis]

I too still use an iPad Air 2 (with Lightning/3rd Gen) every single day. It is starting to slow down but is still perfectly usable. Only recently have I even considered upgrading as they now offer the 9.8" iPad Pros. Until recently, I haven't even felt like there was any point in upgrading. Only minor features have been released (most of which affect things like cameras that I don't care about). The body style has barely changed and most people can't tell that I have a 5-year-old iPad. I've been very happy with it.

To this point, I wonder how much Apple is struggling with this "problem". There is very little value in upgrading to newer iPads. Even for those of us that have the disposable income to spend on them, we can use a 5 year old iPad which acts almost identically to the newer ones. Yes, Apple has pushed some of the power features that the newer ones can do, but for those of us that just use it for notetaking, internet browsing, social media consumption, etc there has been virtually no need to upgrade. The second hand market is saturated with perfectly good devices for $100-$150 that perform in ways that are nearly indistinguishable from brand new iPads for the 95% of the population that are using these devices for media consumption.

Sure if you use the iPad for media creation then you can benefit from a newer one. But for media consumption, the older iPads perform nearly indistinguishably from the new ones.

[chaboud]

I noticed that my iPad mini 2 finally falls off the list, but that thing is somewhat ancient.

However, my Thinkpad X220 (maybe circa 2011?) still runs Windows 10 and Ubuntu, allowing it to stay up to date on security patches. In a way, Apple's support levels are only impressive because we're inured to quick device expiration in other contexts (e.g. phones).

[Infernal]

To be fair, mobile development is a few years behind laptop development, and it makes sense that it would plateau later (thought with the current generation of smartphones we may be reaching that plateau).

A 2011 MacBook Pro 13" is comparable to your X220 (dual core i7 available, 8GB supported RAM, Intel HD 3000 graphics) and while it does fall off the supported list for macOS Catalina (mid-2012 MBP is the earliest supported) there's no reason to expect it wouldn't run Windows or Ubuntu comparably to the X220.

When comparing (tablet) apples to (tablet) apples, I wonder if any of the tablets mentioned here are still supported in 2019 like your iPad mini 2 was? https://www.zdnet.com/pictures/best-android-tablets-septembe... It's a genuine question as I'm not that familiar with the Android ecosystem.

[savoytruffle]

It supports iPads with an A8 series chip, while iOS 13 does not support such iPhones (which would be a 5S). It's presumably because the iPads of the same CPU generation usually have more RAM, more CPU cores, more GPU cores.

[simonh]

It’s almost certainly memory. All the supported devices have at least 2GB RAM.

The iPhone 6 had the A8 with 1GB RAM and is not supported by iOS 13. The iPad Air 2 has the A8X with 2GB RAM and is supported by iPadOS 13.

In the past the break on unsupported older devices has been down to hardware. Usually memory, but also on the 64bit transition. I’m not aware of a single break in support that wasn’t determined by hardware requirements.

[saagarjha]

iPad Air 2 has an A8X, and iPhone 5s has an A7.

[dep_b]

It looks like the cutoff was 2GB of RAM.

[Miraste]

Those decisions are pretty arbitrary. Way back on iOS 5, the iPod Touch 4 got the update and the original iPad missed it, despite using the exact same processor and RAM.

[mcintyre1994]

iPad Air 2 is still really really good, I bought mine refurbished but it must still be 3-4 years since then and it's never felt slow at all.

[knolan]

The iPad Air 2 was notable for being a powerhouse. The successor was actually slower. I guess iPadOS was in the oven for a long time.

[gowld]

Age doesn't make hardware incompatible with an OS. Architecture changes do.

[paggle]

That's why Apple devices are much cheaper than Android devices. They're secure and usable for far longer, as long as you don't break them, so the amortized monthly cost is far less.

[username3]

iPad Air 2 users beware. An iPadOS update made my iPad 1 useless and crash all the time.

[mistersquid]

> An iPadOS update made my iPad 1 useless and crash all the time.

Do you mean mean an iOS update? iPadOS was not released until today, 24 Sep 2019.

[jonny_eh]

I've been using the 13.1 beta on my iPad Air 2 for a couple days and it has been fine.