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rkastner22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 7, 2017
1
0
My company has a number of iPad Air Gen 1. We've upgraded them to iOS 11. Do you think this model will be able to run the next update (presumably iOS 12)?
 
Apple uses a four-year cycle based on the processor for major iOS updates.

The A7 processor was released in 2013. iOS 11 should be the last supported OS.
 
Who really knows besides Apple and they probably won't decide until we get closer to next years WWDC. That said iOS 11.2 runs great on my original iPad Air so if the performance is about the same, I don't see why not.
 
Who really knows besides Apple and they probably won't decide until we get closer to next years WWDC. That said iOS 11.2 runs great on my original iPad Air so if the performance is about the same, I don't see why not.

Apple wants customers to buy new hardware.
 
Apple doesn’t really post any guidelines on what will be supported for how long so it remains a guess at this stage. When the next beta for the next OS becomes available we’ll know more.
 
I would say yes, but perhaps not well. Apple killed support of the A6 (and earlier) devices in iOS 11 only because they wanted a purely 64-bit OS, and the A6 was 32 bit processor. That was logical. What is more likely is that your Air will run iOS 12, but not well due to only 1GB RAM in the Air. Newer iOS devices have at least 2GB RAM which makes a huge difference in performance.
 
I would say yes, but perhaps not well. Apple killed support of the A6 (and earlier) devices in iOS 11 only because they wanted a purely 64-bit OS, and the A6 was 32 bit processor. That was logical. What is more likely is that your Air will run iOS 12, but not well due to only 1GB RAM in the Air. Newer iOS devices have at least 2GB RAM which makes a huge difference in performance.

Apple planned the phase-out of 32-bit with the A6 a long time ago. This is evidenced by code in iOS 10.

The 64-bit cutoff for A7 and newer isn't some one-off move. It is consistent with a 4-year iOS cycle.

iOS 9 = support for A5 and newer
iOS 10 = support for A6 and newer
iOS 11 = support for A7 and newer
iOS 12 = probably for A8 and newer
 
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