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Is iPad1 holding iPad2 back - Will iPad1 hold iPad3 back?

Piggie

Piggie

macrumors G3
Original poster
Feb 23, 2010
9,299
4,341
I will admit this is my biggest fear and hatred of backwards compatibility.

Let me say, I do of course know and understand why people love backwards compatibility. I can see the advantages myself, however, on the other hand I hate the way that trying to maintain backwards compatibility can wreck the speed of advancement of new devices.

Sometimes it takes a clean break to move forwards, otherwise new better hardware is always going to be held back by programmers not wanting to lose profits on selling to old equipment owners, and by manufacturers not wishing to upset past customers.

Like the move from the Xbox to the Xbox360 and the PS2 to the PS3. At times, whilst painful at 1st, we all benefit in the end from focussing on what a new product can do.

With that in mind, are we going to start seeing iPad2 products that won't run on the iPad1, and in the future iPad3 product that won't run on the iPad2 ?

When I saw won't run, perhaps due to lack of RAM or the frame-rate of a game would make it unplayable?

You may think I'm strange, but when I upgrade to the latest platform, let's say a Xbox360 or PS3. I want my new software to fully take advantage of every single aspect of my new purchase and push new hardware to new limits. The past thing I would want to do it to play PS1 games on my PS2 or PS2 games on my PS3.

I know this, in general is not the way Apple works or does things.
I'd just hate to have a iPad4 and it not being used fully as Devs don't want to miss out on iPad1 sales.

I'm not yet hearing comments along the lines of "Wow, this new game is superb, it really makes use of all the ram and new GPU effects of the iPad2, but understandably it won't run on the iPad1"
 
Last edited:
Easy there killer. You already see Factime separating the two. My guess is iOS 5 will really widen that gap.
 
87am said:
Easy there killer. You already see Factime separating the two. My guess is iOS 5 will really widen that gap.
Click to expand...

Killer :D

Well yes, of course, a camera is a fundamental change, and you can't add a camera onto an iPad1 with clever software ;)

I can see both side of the argument of course, but I am in no doubt that backwards compatibility does slow down progress.

It's how we progressed so fast during the 1980's as every time a new machine was launched, totally new software was needed.

It was painful, but it meant very fast progress and no new machine was held back due to the old machine.

Those days are gone of course.
 
I'm not sure why you are saying this Piggie, Apple Has been doing what you want even since the iPod days and on computers too.
Just like iOS 5 is making the iPhone 3GS obsolete so will the iPad 3 make the first one obsolete in many aspects.

Developers are very much the same as there are many apps you can't upgrade to without having the newest iOS.
I ran into this with my jail broken iPhone as I stayed on 4.2.1 for a long time but had to finally upgrade because of that reason.
 
Not really... there are plenty of Apps on the store that won't run on original iPhones or even iPhone 3G.

The original iPad and iPad 2 aren't THAT different... once we get further along in the product timeline, and the gap in hardware starts to widen, then people will realize that developing for old technology isn't worth it.
 
If we use the iPhone as an example, Apple have really only offered full backward compatibility with the previous generation model after that some features are ripped out/unavailable yet. I think it's safe to say Apple will do something similar with iPad so it's unlikely backward compatibility will slow down innovation moving forward.

If anything, the only thing slowing down innovation is Apple (and all other manufacturers/software developers to be honest) not wanting to deal all their cards at once. Meaning they're more than capable of introducing some features, generations before they actually do. MMS, video camera, video chat, just a few examples.
 
I think, in this case, Apple needs to be damn careful not to alienate the 15 million or so people who spent money making the original iPad the game-changing success it has been.

My belief is that whilst iOS5 may well contain elements that will not be available on the original iPad, the vast majority of it will run just fine.
If Apple does turn its back on those customers (many of whom are definitely NOT rabid Apple fans, just gadget fans) then many of them (me included) will start looking at some of the rapidly coming of age Android devices.

I realise that Apple made substantial changes to the original iPhone not too long after launch (mainly due to the colossally stupid notion of a data heavy smartphone running on 2G) but the iPad is a different class of device.

Basically, cutting the original iPad out of iOS updates only a year into its life and thus leaving the customers who made the iPad a success in the first place would be a dick-move of massive proportions.

Sensibly, the iPad 1 should still be receiving updates for another 12 months especially given how little real incentive there is for owners of the orignal iPad to upgrade.
The iPad 3 should be the death-knell for the iPad 1, not its immediate successor.
 
Fubar1977 said:
The iPad 3 should be the death-knell for the iPad 1, not its immediate successor.
Click to expand...

I agree with that.

Ipad 1 should run iPad2 stuff, albeit perhaps not as smooth or as detailed for some things.

But iPad3 should not be held back from it's full potential due to the iPad1.

I think that's fair enough. That way, any buyer will of had a full two years use at very least from any purchase, and of course, even at this stage iPad1 will run many things.
 
There's a few things that will swing it:

- Many apps don't need anything from the ipad2/3/ios5/6/7/etc. If it runs fine on iOS3 + ipad1, the developer will normally write it for that because they'll sell more.

- Some apps (particularly games) can have additional effects added quite easily for iPad 2 (look at infinity blade, they added better lighting effects and antialiasing so it looks better). This way, again, you can sell to the whole market, and the ipad2 features are a good selling point.

- Some apps just need the new hardware features, so the ipad1 isn't going to get them either way.

Eventually, apple will start 'dropping hints' that old systems shouldn't be supported. E.g. the current version of xcode has no way of selecting iOS 2.x as the minimum platform - so if we want to support iphone 1, we have to mess about a bit to enable it.

Because of that, few recent apps will run on iphone 1, whether they could/should or not. Then again, how many % of iphones are iphone 1 now?
 
Fubar1977 said:
Basically, cutting the original iPad out of iOS updates only a year into its life and thus leaving the customers who made the iPad a success in the first place would be a dick-move of massive proportions.
Click to expand...

A dick-move that would see many of those original iPad people upgrade to the newest iPad and get Apple more money

I get as mad as you and others with the corporate, all-about-money moves and I rant and rave....yet at the end of the day (like most, imo), I spend the money
 
Developers have to consider how many people are using each device. Still more own iPad 1 than 2. Deal.
 
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