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Apple to Classify Third-Generation iPad as Obsolete Later This Month
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Same as me. Worst iPad ever, damn me for buying it.
I kept mine until quite recently. I must have had the magic pixie dust version, I was able to keep using it. Yeah it wasn't 'fast', but it was hardly the useless relic some of you non-iPad 3 users claim it was.
But hey, keep buying brand new Apple devices every time one comes out if that floats your boat.
But hey, keep buying brand new Apple devices every time one comes out if that floats your boat.
It is worse than an iPad 2. It simply can’t cope with the Retina display.
there was nothing wrong with it when it was launched - it was killed by later iOS upgrades that added features it didnt need and used too much memory. it was far more usable for longer than the first gen mini that we purchased 6 months later that had half the RAM of the 3
we still use the iPad 3 in the kitchen for recipes and things. the mini is used by our 3 year old and it just barely keeps up with some of the kids games.
we still use the iPad 3 in the kitchen for recipes and things. the mini is used by our 3 year old and it just barely keeps up with some of the kids games.
I traded mine in last month at Currys for £83 and put that towards an 10.5' iPad Pro.
It was an amazing deal and I knew it wouldn't last as other retailers were offering much less for the iPad 3.
The retina screen was a gift and a curse, it made the iPad lovely to look at by the GPU and CPU were under-powered. It didn't help that every Apple update made it slower. I should have stopped updating after iOS 6. Every subsequent update made the it more unusable even if you have no content or apps on it.
It was an amazing deal and I knew it wouldn't last as other retailers were offering much less for the iPad 3.
The retina screen was a gift and a curse, it made the iPad lovely to look at by the GPU and CPU were under-powered. It didn't help that every Apple update made it slower. I should have stopped updating after iOS 6. Every subsequent update made the it more unusable even if you have no content or apps on it.
I owned one and it was a pretty decent upgrade, at the time, over an iPad 2. It had a retina display and was the first and only iOS device to support LTE data when released, which was a pretty big deal. Yeah, it was heavy and I could fry an egg on the back of it but it was a workhorse.
underpowered from the jump, only got worse over time. Still using mine to this day, but you have to wait a good 5-10 seconds between interactions for it to catch up. One of the worst Apple devices ever, from a usability standpoint IMO.
Mine is still going... it's good for my toddler... has a Otterbox defender case so it'll never die 
Just joining the chorus to say how much I hate myself for buying this iPad. This was my first iPad and I sold some valuable records to afford it. I didn’t care that Apple upgraded it just a few months later (although that was my first time really being burned by Apple in that regard), but I did care that this iPad rapidly turned into a slow piece of crap. My kids still use it but it takes forever to do literally anything.
That would be the iPad Air 1.
iPad 3 was slow, but reliable for few years, and 32bit iOS ran fine with 1gb ram.
The iPad Air brought a plasticky screen, was crashy, reloaded/refreshed everything every time you moved from one app to another. Pause a podcast, check your email, unpause....and music started playing 'cos the podcast app had been flushed. A terrible experience, 64bit devices never should have shipped with 1gb ram (the 5S was okay thanks to less intense requirements, the 6 Plus was lousy like the Air 1).
I sold my Air 1 and went iPad-less until the Air 2 came along. Air 2 was redemption, superb device, replaced by a 10.5" when that was released.
The 3 was a huge improvement over the 1 (memory 2x and retina) and better than the 2 (retina). Got it for $400 used. It was glitchy. We upgraded it to an air 2 (still in use, purchased used for $300 with 64gb). Sold the 3 for $150 at the time. I had an Air 1 that I gave to my 67 yo neighbor that uses it to this day with hardly any support. Upgraded to the pro 12.9. I suspect i’ll be with the pro 12.9 for another 2 years. Years later it still rocks. Son’s Air 2 was an exceptional buy, how old are those things now, 3? Not a bad device for the money ($300).
The crux of my story is that if you buy wisely (especially used) you can get a lot of value out of these devices and then sell for a reasonable amount to upgrade. Just have to hang onto them for a bit and skip every 2-3 generations. Which is what we do in our household of 3. It saves a ton of money.
The crux of my story is that if you buy wisely (especially used) you can get a lot of value out of these devices and then sell for a reasonable amount to upgrade. Just have to hang onto them for a bit and skip every 2-3 generations. Which is what we do in our household of 3. It saves a ton of money.
Well I must have hit the lottery then. I'm still using mine, and this is the first year it's started to feel really sluggish. Keeping the memory free with little storage and apps, limiting the number of tabs open in Safari, all improve speed and efficiency. I haven't had a single repair on this thing ever, and I'm still getting about 6-8 hours out of every charge with normal use.
I don't have that issue at all. It didn't do it when it was new and it doesn't do it now, under most circumstances. I even took it into an Apple Store and did a side by side comparison loading websites I frequent with an iPad Air a year ago, and it held its own. I'd actually categorize it as one of the best Apple investments I've ever made.
Delete all but essential apps, clear off photos and heavy storage, keeping lots of space free, turn off background processes on all but essential services, and restore the device from factory settings. All these things keep it running in peak condition. It can't compete with an iPad Pro, but then again, I don't need that, nor expect it from this device.
This is the only iPad I've ever owned, and the one I still own. Once the larger iPhones came out (6+), I found myself using it less and less. Now I slip it into a waterproof case occasionally and take it out to the hot tub to stream TV, so it lives on and is still worth keeping charged.
The fact that the iPad 2 didn’t reach this status first is a sign that the iPad 3 should have never existed.
Apple's red headed bastard child device. I had one and it always ran so hot I would have to turn it off to let it cool down cuz it would burn my legs. Gave it away, and in the next update, the person said it bricked and Apple said nothing could be done about it because it was given and not purchased.
The only iDevice I ever bought that actually made me angry. 35 days after I bought it Apple introduced the iPad 4, which fixed a lot of hardware shortcomings in the poorly-designed 3. Sold the damned thing but obviously still remember that experience quite negatively. The shocking thing is that it was "supported" for so long - not that this helped its crippled performance.
I loved mine and did quite a lot of drawing on it with pressure sensitive styluses.. My wife now uses it for occasional browsing/youtube etc. It's slow compared to modern iPads but all the old ones are? I never had big problems with it.
The hate for it seems a little overblown.
The hate for it seems a little overblown.