I think there are three aspects to this.
-Apple should allow downgrading. There’s absolutely no reason not to barring Apple’s desire for users to buy new devices.
-Apple should provide security updates to the device’s current major iOS version regardless of whether it supports new iOS versions. I got a new update for my iPhone 8 which I won’t install because its running iOS 14, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to install iOS 14.8.2, for instance, if Apple cared about it.
-Apple should not support devices that work too poorly in terms of performance and battery life. And I firmly concur that Apple’s current support standard is too low. They should want better.
All of this said… I stand by my previous statement. If a long-term iOS user is NOT forced out of their original iOS version (such as the A9 on iOS 9 activation issue, due to which I lost two A9 devices on iOS 9 after iOS 12 and 13 were released. That loss was out of my control), or of a version that works properly, and that user willingly updates a five, six, seven-year-old device to the latest version… then, in my opinion, they have lost any and all valid claims to complain.
If you have a 3rd (A12X, 2018), 4th (2020), or 5th-gen (M1) iPad Pro; or a 3rd, 4th, or 5th-gen (M1) iPad Air, and you update willingly, then, in my opinion, you have no right to complain. You know how this works. You know Apple does not allow us to go back. At some point, you have to work with what you have.
This is the situation. Stay behind from day one and tolerate and juggle compatibility issues, or update far enough and use garbage. It’s your choice.
I already know the answer to that, as I am typing from:
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I agree with most things, but as I have said in the past,
battery life and performance are 2 distinct things.
Some (many?) people don't care about having 10 or even 5 hours of screen on time, because they never use their iPad for that long in a day or have multiple devices to switch to (or leave the device plugged in all the time anyway).
Lags are annoying to everyone, instead, although some people are more tolerant than others.
But what happened with lags in the past is not indicative of what will happen in the future.
Historically the iPad have been a severely underspecced machine compared to laptops and that worked only because it ran an extremely limited OS. As the OS "expanded", getting closer to a laptop OS, those specs showed their true nature, so the 500MB RAM devices were killed by iOS 9 and the 1GB RAM ones were made barely usable.
And iPadOS 14 and 15 started making laggy devices with 2GB RAM and a slow A8 chip such as the mini 4.
Now iPadOS 26 seems to slow down (although not as much) 3GB RAM devices like the iPad 9.
But since the introduction of the iPad pro the gap between laptops and iPads has progressively shrinked and since the M1 they are virtually on par, although with the M4 they fell behind again in RAM.
How is the performance of the M1 on iPadOS 26 after 5 OS updates and only 2 more to go? Very good, essentially as good as day 1 on the end of the beta / public release.
However the reloads increased with iPadOS 18/26 and now my 8GB M4 on 18 reloads more than my A12X with 6GB RAM on 17.
But do reloads count as performance degradation? They are not lags after all.
There again some people don't care in the slightest about reloads, don't even know they exist, but I am one of those who care a lot.
So I agree that it's best to stay behind if one doesn't care about security.
Personally I don't stay behind to the point the device becomes an historical wreck and I would need to buy a new one anyway.
But I stay behind for as long as compatibility becomes a big issue and then I update directly to the latest version, unless the device is know to become extremely laggy on that version, which, as I explained, happens less and less.
For instance I'll leave my non M devices (mini 5 and A12X) on 17 for a few more years so that they stay fast and when the compatibility issues become unbearable I'll update to 26 to get a few more years, although with some speed penalty or more reloads.
My M devices with 16GB RAM will instead move to their latest version without staying behind more than a couple of months, unless some important feature is removed, because I know performance will be more than fine.
With the exception of my 11" M1, which is on 15.3 just because it's the only way to keep Windows 11 on it. But I can already see some compability issues on iPadOS 15 so at some point I'll have to say good buy to Windows and update to the expected latest version for the M1, iPadOS 28.