How to speed up original ipad? Jailbreak?

[bearxor]

Again, I would disagree that an iPad 1 is crippled. We still have plenty in service at my workplace as well.

iOS came out in October 2011. More than 18 months from the iPad 1 release date of March 2010.

 

[ViRGE]

You talk about it being old and out of date all you want, but I bought this thing less than 3 years ago.


Even worse, is that ios5 is what really slowed the thing down, which was released late 2011.


So, apple effectively crippled the device via software within a year after they stopped selling it.

It isn't iOS 5 that made it slow. Time made it slow. Trying to drive a 1024x768 panel off of a SoC that only has 256MB of RAM while applications and websites increase in complexity made it slow.

Even if you could get it on iOS 4, you'd find that websites are every bit as bad (actually it would probably be worse because it lacks iOS 5's new Javascript engine). Trying to browse the 2013 web on a device with less than 256MB effective RAM is a godawful experience, no matter the OS.

I mean don't get me wrong, I feel for you ($500 is expensive). But you were an early adopter; this is generally what happens when we buy something at the front of the curve. To put things in perspective, Samsung will be releasing a new tablet SoC this year with 8 cores; 4 of those cores are very similar to the A4 in performance, and they're on that SoC for power saving purposes. They aren't even the primary cores. Your iPad 1 effectively has 1/8th the memory and probably 1/10th (or less) the compute and graphics power of a 2013 tablet.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

That is, imo, a ridiculous cop-out.

The 'internet' has not in general changed THAT much. Not enough to see a good 25% decrease in speed.

Past that, even simple things like the app store are slow.

Perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic, as it's not unusable, but the principle of Apple pushing out software devices that DRASTICALLY slows down their devices is extremely frustrating.

 

[Rakehellion]

That is, imo, a ridiculous cop-out.

The 'internet' has not in general changed THAT much. Not enough to see a good 25% decrease in speed.

Past that, even simple things like the app store are slow.

Perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic, as it's not unusable, but the principle of Apple pushing out software devices that DRASTICALLY slows down their devices is extremely frustrating.

The iPhone 5 is 4x faster than the iPhone 4. They can either screw over the old users by crippling speed or screw over the new users by crippling features.

No one's forcing you to upgrade. Grow up.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

The iPhone 5 is 4x faster than the iPhone 4. They can either screw over the old users by crippling speed or screw over the new users by crippling features.

No one's forcing you to upgrade. Grow up.

Or, they could either stop updates before they cripple the device or allow us to downgrade.

Of course, that screws up their method of forcing users to upgrade every 3 years... Can't have that!

 

[TheStu]

Or, they could either stop updates before they cripple the device or allow us to downgrade.

Of course, that screws up their method of forcing users to upgrade every 3 years... Can't have that!

When did you upgrade to 5.0?

 

[Rakehellion]

Or, they could either stop updates before they cripple the device or allow us to downgrade.

Of course, that screws up their method of forcing users to upgrade every 3 years... Can't have that!

They don't need to stop updates because many people appreciate the new features. And the types of people still stuck on first generation hardware are usually the types who won't notice a 25% difference.

No one forced you to upgrade to iOS 6. And you claim an iPad 4 is too much money, but make a passive-aggressive threat to buy a Surface.

Grow up.

Be nice now. That kind of hostility is uncalled for
-ViRGE

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I do agree that it's an outdated device. And in "PC" terms, 1ghz 256mb is slow. In hindsight, I should have stopped at the ios4 upgrade. I don't even know when it was upgraded to ios5, probably right when it was released.

But the bottom line is that the impression I've been given, both indirectly and directly from apple, is that ipad and iphone software scales with the hardware and you don't have to worry about this sort of thing. Similar to how they don't allow ios6 on the device, which I can completely understand.

Thanks for the input, lesson learned, and I do appreciate everyone's advice.

 

[mrman365]

You talk about it being old and out of date all you want, but I bought this thing less than 3 years ago.


Even worse, is that ios5 is what really slowed the thing down, which was released late 2011.


So, apple effectively crippled the device via software within a year after they stopped selling it.

SpatiallyAware... Im having the exact same issue with mine! its totally unusable. Very very slow and laggy. Even just typing text it appears on screen several seconds later!
very annoying. Ive tried everything to make it work like it used to.. but no joy.
Totally unusable and its ever since i upgraded the OS.
there should be a way to disable the new functions of the latest OS!
Just a paper weight now..

 

[RadiclDreamer]

You talk about it being old and out of date all you want, but I bought this thing less than 3 years ago.


Even worse, is that ios5 is what really slowed the thing down, which was released late 2011.


So, apple effectively crippled the device via software within a year after they stopped selling it.

You bought an appliance that is not upgradable and was meant for slower less demanding applications. Even a desktop PC becomes sluggish after 3 years since software requirements increase.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Or, they could either stop updates before they cripple the device or allow us to downgrade.

Of course, that screws up their method of forcing users to upgrade every 3 years... Can't have that!

They dont allow downgrade because of jailbreaking, and they dont stop the updates because then people would bitch about them artificially limiting the device.

 

[purbeast0]

this sounds like a pebcak issue.

 

[slag]

I don't think so. They make it so you can't use and play the latest games/apps unless you have recent firmware/ios but then they either limit the ios to a certain level or basically render your device unusable by slowing it down so much. It's a lose/lose with ipad 1 users in this regard.

 

[bearxor]

I don't agree that an iPad 1 is unusable, we still deploy them out here and people are getting along just fine.

But I will agree that the iPad 1 was terribly short-sighted. Some things just don't make sense to me at all in the design decisions for the device. Some things Apple did just to not tip their hand for the iPhone 4.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I don't think so. They make it so you can't use and play the latest games/apps unless you have recent firmware/ios but then they either limit the ios to a certain level or basically render your device unusable by slowing it down so much. It's a lose/lose with ipad 1 users in this regard.

They dont make any games at all, and most of the apps requiring a newer OS is on behalf of the developers wanting to take advantage of new libraries etc in the newer OS. It allows them to program faster and more efficient.

 

[Sleepingforest]

You actually can gain back a portion of your RAM by deleting Launch Daemons in iOS 5.X. Just follow the instructions here.

 

[Barpanda]

Not many users seem to be impressed with the business model of Apple.

 

[HelpWithWoL]

From my experience, jailbreaking does not always make the ipad/iphone faster. It may do but eventually it will get slow, perhaps slower.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

I don't agree that an iPad 1 is unusable, we still deploy them out here and people are getting along just fine.

But I will agree that the iPad 1 was terribly short-sighted. Some things just don't make sense to me at all in the design decisions for the device. Some things Apple did just to not tip their hand for the iPhone 4.

Mine is only usable as a photoframe. A 4 year old $650+ photoframe.

Even the app store takes 20+ seconds to load. ANY text input lagged behind by a couple seconds.


It's not just web browsing (which has not changed THAT much in 4 years)

The device is obviously crippled by ios5.

 

[bearxor]

Mine is only usable as a photoframe. A 4 year old $650+ photoframe.

Even the app store takes 20+ seconds to load. ANY text input lagged behind by a couple seconds.


It's not just web browsing (which has not changed THAT much in 4 years)

The device is obviously crippled by ios5.

Your experience is just not the same as mine is, I suppose.

 

[mmntech]

No doubt iOS has gotten increasingly bloated over the years. I remember when iOS 4 came out and it made the iPhone 3G unusable. A lot of folks were really upset with then. A few lawsuits too but I don't know if they ever went anywhere.

I found the iPad 1 was still usable with iOS 5 but it was really laggy. So going to an iPad 3 was a huge upgrade. When iOS 7 comes out, the iPad 2 & 3 will probably run like molasses as well.

The biggest problem with Apple is they don't let you roll back the OS once you upgrade. At least not easily. So if you have problems with the newer version, you're up s--t creek. It's planned obsolescence for sure.

That said, the iPad 1 wasn't a really well thought out device. Don't get me wrong, I loved mine. Though its 256mb of RAM really crippled it. Ridiculous still that the iPhone 4 came out three months later with 512mb of RAM. Memory is cheap and the more you have, the better. Sometimes I think the iPad could use 2GB or more at times. Atomic always seems to crash if I have more than 4 tabs open.

 

[ViRGE]

No doubt iOS has gotten increasingly bloated over the years. I remember when iOS 4 came out and it made the iPhone 3G unusable. A lot of folks were really upset with then. A few lawsuits too but I don't know if they ever went anywhere.

Going a bit OT here, but the 3G is always going to be a special case though. It had the bad timing of being the last ARM11 + OpenGLES 1.x SoC from Apple. The Cortex A8 + PVR SGX535 SoC that followed was a massive improvement over that; by iOS 4 the ARM11 SoC was a 3 year old SoC and quite literally a generation out of date. This isn't the kind of jump that will be recurring in the future (even when we jump to ARMv8 processors).

 

[luv2liv]

i know how exactly you feel. i had the same issue when i updated my ipod touch 3g.
lesson learned.
so my ipad 1 was never updated and working fast as ever since day 1.

 

[mmntech]

Going a bit OT here, but the 3G is always going to be a special case though. It had the bad timing of being the last ARM11 + OpenGLES 1.x SoC from Apple. The Cortex A8 + PVR SGX535 SoC that followed was a massive improvement over that; by iOS 4 the ARM11 SoC was a 3 year old SoC and quite literally a generation out of date. This isn't the kind of jump that will be recurring in the future (even when we jump to ARMv8 processors).

True enough. Though Apple should never have made iOS4 compatible with the 3G to begin with if the SoC wasn't beefy enough to run it. What really bothered people wasn't so much that their phone couldn't run the OS, but they couldn't roll back once they upgraded. There was a way to downgrade from iOS 4 to 3, which I ended up doing, but most people aren't tech savvy enough to do it. The problem with phones is a lot of folks are stuck on 3 year contracts, so a handset needs to be supported for at least that long. Apple handles it better today but not so much back then.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

3 year contracts? Geez, I've never had to sign anything longer than a two-year.