iPad the iPad Mini 4/ Air 2 and the powerful iPhone 7/7+

[Homme]

the thing at WWDC where no one was expecting and took all of us by surprise was Apple dropping support of the iPhone 7 and 7+ amongst other items like the 2014 iPad Air 2 released less than 2 years before the Phone 7 lineup and the iPad Mini 4 which has the least powerful SoC out of the iPads/iPhones and the iPod Touch to support the current iOS/iPadOS, I find it unbelievable that the iPad Air 2 survived software support to the point that it, the Mini 4 and the micro architecture which got affected from the A8 to the A10 Microarchitecture,

The Air 2 survived from iOS 8.1 and when the A5 SoC to getting dropped at the same time as the iPhone 7. What a huge surprise for the Air 2 and iPhone 7 to not get sweet 16

What do you all think😊

 

[Slartibart]

I think that it is quite difficult to follow the line of thought within your writing, isn’t it?

Having read (probably) similar current threads or comments elsewhere and trying “to read between your lines”:

iPadOS 16 doesn’t support the iPad Mini 4 which debuted in 2015, and the Air 2 is from all the way back in 2014; iOS 16 continues to support all the phones Apple has released since 2017.

If anything, it's a testament to their staying power that Apple supported them all the way up to iPadOS/iOS 15.

 

[Shirasaki]

I’m not surprised as much. There were already precedent where they drop two generations of devices. As apple silicon goes more mature, they could drop support of older devices faster and push everyone into the M series across the board.

Also, given Apple is still Band-Aid their iPadOS into a hybrid without Being a hybrid, I can see why A9 iPad and A10 iPad survived this cutoff, tho nothing new for them tbh.

 

[*~Kim~*]

I don’t think there’s been such a far reaching drop before (A8 to A10 devices impacted.) iOS 10 dropped a lot, including 2 generations of iPad, but then they were on the same generation of A chip. iOS 13 only dropped A7 and A8 devices, with a clear differentiator on the RAM.

I hadn’t realised until I read the Macrumours article that this is the first time anything has been dropped since OS 13, so in that sense a drop on the larger end was expected, but it just doesn’t follow a ‘rule’ in the same way. It was felt that perhaps they didn‘t drop for an unprecedented amount of time due to COVID, but equally dropping so much during a cost of living crisis feels wrong. Who knows how long it will be before things are back to normal.

I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid had the 5th Gen iPad gone with the Air 2 and Mini 4, and there was debate around the A9X Pros. It feels like they have allowed more iPads to escape the drop than expected, while being ruthless with the phones. A9 phones, A10 phones and this time extra RAM doesn’t secure an update.

I expected the iPod Touch to go before the iPad and iPhone with corresponding specs, given the downclocking, but surely it has more power than the 5th Gen iPad, also with 2GB of RAM? Also isn’t the 9.7 Pro with its A9X roughly in line? In a sense maybe they want to ensure that it doesn’t become an annoyance to use as no upgrade is available, but equally this means that it will run into app compatibility problems sooner. Dropping it soon after discontinuation is the same as they did with the 6th Gen, but I had the feeling that part of that was to sell more 7th Gens given that they were visually identical.