Ask HN: What to Do with Old iPads?

I have a bunch of old ipads which have become almost useless being stuck on iOS 9.3

I've been looking for solutions to this and it seems the only possible option is to jailbreak and downgrade iOS to a more usable version.

Any ideas?

28 points | by owenmakes 1 day ago

10 comments

  • Vuska 1 day ago
    The iPad 2 can be downgraded to iOS 6.1.3 or 8.4.1. Both offer better performance than iOS 9 and have untethered jailbreaks. Once downgraded and jailbroken you can sideload hours and hours worth of games. A lot from that era are IAP-free.

    I use an iPhone 5 downgraded to iOS 6 (tethered) as an iPod. I love how I can unplug my headphones from my work Mac, plug directly into the phone (no adapter required!) and it effectively mutes Slack without actually muting it. Syncing with the latest version of iTunes still works, albeit slowly.

    I also use an iPad 4 (tethered to iOS 6) as an ebook. iBooks works great and I love the pseudomorphic design.

    See also: https://github.com/LukeZGD/Legacy-iOS-Kit

    [-]
    • kingkongjaffa 8 hours ago
      I know what you mean, but a pseudomorph seems to be a geology term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomorph

      What you meant was:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

      Skeuomorphic means designing digital interfaces to resemble physical-world objects to make them more intuitive and familiar to users. Like how iBooks was made to look like an actual bookcase.

    • owenmakes 21 hours ago
      Got it downgraded, and it is a much better experience. It is actually useful, though I have yet to play around and see which apps I can load on this
  • andyjohnson0 1 day ago
    I use an old iPad as a digital photo frame. Sits on a horizontal cupboard top in £3 Ikea wooden phone stand, powered by a right-angle Lightning cable from ebay. Selfie camera is covered with a glossy black privacy sticker, also from ebay. It works tolerably well.

    https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-turn-your-ipad-into-...

  • nancyminusone 1 day ago
    Send them to that guy in the other thread trying to get an old app working https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010951
  • dpoloncsak 1 day ago
    I have two old iPads and an old iPhone in my stack.

    The iPads are HomeAssistant Dashboards for me. One connects to a VNC server on the HA host, as the browser is too outdated to properly display the dashboards. The other uses the HA app, and can render just fine.

    The iPhone is jailbroken, and used as an AirPlay relay server. Connected via Bluetooth to a speaker, MusicAssistant keeps the audio from the aux on my Mac Mini and the audio streaming to the iPhone in sync, creating surround sound audio.

  • vivzkestrel 1 day ago
    Turn it into an AI powered CCTV that detects people, objects and movement https://github.com/roryclear/clearcam
  • blitzar 1 day ago
    Tried to offload to a friend with a 3 year old and not much money. They threw it out and bought an iPad Pro for the little one.
    [-]
  • sphars 1 day ago
    Semi-adjacent: I was given an iPad mini (1st or 2nd gen, not sure) by a former neighbor. Unfortunately it is still locked to their Apple account and I've lost contact with them.

    Is there anything I can do to unlock it and use it?

  • sixtram 1 day ago
    I have two iPad Airs, first generation, but the latest YouTube app no longer works on them. Skype and Teams don't work on old iOS either. Do you have any ideas other than using them as photo frames?
    [-]
    • leobg 1 day ago
      I had the same problem. All SSL connections are failing. I now run a copyparty server, without SSL, allowing my iPad to stream audiobooks and videos.
      [-]
      • owenmakes 1 day ago
        Ok this seems like a great idea. You need to watch/listen everything from the browser though right?
  • owenmakes 21 hours ago
    Update: Downgraded one of the iPads to iOS 6.1.3 (writing from it now). Will try to host a home server on it since I can now SSH into it.
  • JustExAWS 1 day ago
    It’s been a couple of years. But even the oldest iPad - the one from 2010 - was able to download the “last compatible version” and stream Netflix.

    Even an older iPad can run Netflix and Plex and maybe a couple of other streaming apps. You should be able to use it for Spotify and definitely Apple Music.

    [-]