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All iPads Is iPadOS going to be too much for older devices?

A

ACG12

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 9, 2015
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I’m actually shocked that the A8 and not the A10 was the minimum requirement for iPadOS. Anyone else worried about their older devices becoming the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s on iOS 9?

I could see the A9(x) being ok, but the 5 year old A8 in my wife’s mini 4 worries me...I had both of the devices mentioned and they were HORRIBLE on iOS9.
 
redheeler said:
I'm not concerned. I skipped iOS 9-11 on the iPad Air 2, but iOS 12 runs fine and I haven't had any complaints with the performance.
Click to expand...

That’s because Apple finally got their stuff together on iOS 12 for aging devices. But nothing ran better than iOS 8.4.1 on my Air 2. I hated it after I installed iOS9.

I’m just worried that 1st year of iPadOS will be the final year for updates for it, and it’ll end up ruining it.
 
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I’m hearing rumors from folks that installed the iOS 13 developer beta that it actually feels faster than iOS 12... and it’s only the first beta. It seems after the disaster that was iOS 11 Apple is actually taking optimization seriously again. All the iPads that Apple is supporting are relatively powerful and I suspect they’ll all handle iOS 13 gracefully.
 
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Yes, i have 11" ipad pro, but that is irrelevant since is a new hardware and the beta is running fast (with bugs, but fast)
but even my 4 years old ipad mini 4 is running a little faster than ios12, i can see it very easily especially when moving from app to app, go home screen, slide over, and two apps side by side
Since this is beta the first beta....i can say just Well Done Apple
 
I’m not really concerned from a performance perspective. Apple knows that in order to stay profitable they need to sell more services hence there’s a strong interest in making sure hardware performs adequately.
 
ACG12 said:
I’m actually shocked that the A8 and not the A10 was the minimum requirement for iPadOS. Anyone else worried about their older devices becoming the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s on iOS 9?

I could see the A9(x) being ok, but the 5 year old A8 in my wife’s mini 4 worries me...I had both of the devices mentioned and they were HORRIBLE on iOS9.
Click to expand...
I think it is time to update your point of reference. :) I understand feeling concerned after being bitten by iOS 9 on those devices. But, except for a misstep with iOS 11, iOS has recently been on a positive trend performance-wise.

I kept my Mini 4 on iOS 10.x until just recently when I upgraded to iOS 12. It feels about 90-95% of the performance it had under 10.x. During the WWDC keynote it was stated that app file size and load times have been significantly reduced in iOS 13. That's going to result in a MORE responsive experience. Hard to believe, but I'm encouraged.

I think too many people are placing too much emphasis on the hard specs and applying an older paradigm to those numbers. I understand that. Generally speaking, more is better, but there is also law of diminishing returns at play here, and perspective to consider as well.

When the 2018 iPad was released, I said at the time that it was terrific news for those concerned with the longevity of their devices. If that is the level of hardware that Apple released in 2018, then it means that any iOS device with comparable specs just had their lifespan extended.

Having said that, even though I am eager to use the added functions introduced by iPad OS, I know that every new release has a rocky start and so I won't upgrade until at least 13.1 or 13.1.1.
 
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Unfortunately my iPad mini2 will no longer get iPadOS 13 but that was expected to happen with it's specs and age.
It's however great to have read that my iPad Air 2 will get iPadOS 13.
 
While the A8 wasn't too much of a CPU bump over the A7 devices (which were dropped) it was a big step up in graphics capability and of course the mini 4 and Air 2 have 2GB of RAM which seems to be the determining factor for this release. As they were selling the mini 4 up until a few weeks back, it would have been quite harsh to immediately drop support for it (they did this with the iPod touch, however!) If iOS 13 is also an optimisation release like 12, it's probably fair to say it's unlikely to make performance too much worse, and again the biggest bottleneck for the mini 2/3 and the Air 1 seemed to be the RAM. At this point, performance is likely more dependent on how well optimised software is than raw power - iOS 11 ran pretty poorly on the X and 8, iOS 12 ran pretty well on the 5s.
 
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AutomaticApple said:
Wait, seriously?
Click to expand...
Yes, there are even some Youtube videos popping up, although so far I've only heard about it for recent devices (A11, A12 & A12X based) so we'll see how that translates down to older devices.

I think people automatically assume that what happened to A5 devices (iPad 2, iPhone 4s) with iOS 9 will eventually happen to all iOS devices later in their life, however the Mini 4's A8 has roughly 6 times the CPU performance of the A5 and comes with 4 times the RAM, whereas in the grande scheme of things the software of today isn't much more resource heavy than just a few years ago (i.e. iOS 13 isn't doing 6 times as much as iOS 9 was...)
 
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As I said recently in another post. what happened in the past may not apply to the future. A lot of people were burned by ios 9. IOS 10 did not really improve or made things worse, IOS 11 did make things worse but was more than corrected by IOS 12. And IOS 12 is faster than IOS 10 (I have done comparisons of and ipad air on 12 and a mini 2 on IOS 10 and the air in noticeably faster). And it seems that IOS 13 will be even faster. But no 1GB RAM device (except the new ipod touch) will get it. IOS 9 + the move to 64 bits killed 512MB ram devices and almost killed 1GB devices too. 2GB devices are still very decent. Even the slowest, the mini 4, is surprising useful and closer to the 3 times faster (in CPU) mini 5 than to the mini 2/3 (which is not so much slower in CPU benchmarks). To be honest there is also another element, storage, and I have tested all my ipads and the mini 2 has a slower storage too. So honestly I wouldn't worry too much about the mini 4 and air 2, but it's always best to wait for comparisons of IOS 12 vs 13 that will inevitably pop up online this fall.
 
I have a first-gen 12.9. iOS 13 feels fine on it from a performance standpoint. Some features aren’t 100% compatible. I can use usb flash drives with the camera connection kit, I need to hook a power source into the kit. However, a battery brick works for that.

I also cannot get the different pairings of the same app to work. I can get two Notes windows in split view, but I can’t get Noted and Photos and Notes and say, Things to pair. It receives the fPhotos/Notes pairing. I think the original 12.9 doesn’t have the ram needed for this.
 
Brammy said:
I also cannot get the different pairings of the same app to work. I can get two Notes windows in split view, but I can’t get Noted and Photos and Notes and say, Things to pair. It receives the fPhotos/Notes pairing. I think the original 12.9 doesn’t have the ram needed for this.
Click to expand...
Report it as a bug. OG 12.9 has 4GB RAM same as the latest 2018 iPad Pros barring the $1.5K+ configurations.

It doesn’t make sense that Apple would intentionally limit this feature to probably less than 1% of iPads in use.
 
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rui no onna said:
Report it as a bug. OG 12.9 has 4GB RAM same as the latest 2018 iPad Pros barring the $1.5K+ configurations.
Click to expand...

I don’t think this machine supports the 3 apps at one time (two split view and a slide over). This feature may require that. I’m not sure though.
 
Brammy said:
I don’t think this machine supports the 3 apps at one time (two split view and a slide over). This feature may require that. I’m not sure though.
Click to expand...
I thought all 4GB RAM iPads supported 3 apps (2x split view + slide over)?
 
I have a first gen 12.9" iPad Pro and it can handle two split view, slideover and picture-in-picture simultaneously.

Edit: I was wrong. You can’t do this on a first gen iPP 12.9. I know I used to be able to though.
 
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