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is there anything much useful I can do with an iPad 1? (not picture frame) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have an iPad 1. I barely used it when it was given to me and then it more or less sat unused apart from the occasional booting to see if it still works every few years.

I'm fairly sure it would still work today though I haven't tried for about 3 years. Trouble is, it never got much use because when I got it from my Mum in 2012 it was already becoming obsolete and after about a year I couldn't do basic web browsing because almost every site just crashed whatever browser I ran, none of the apps in the app store would work anymore and the bookshelf app (think that's what it was called. Came with the tablet) I tried to use to make it basically an e-reader device stopped working. There were many similar issue I forget the specifics about but basically amounted to the hardware working fine but being mostly unusable even for old software.

I wondered if there were any good ways to make use of or generally rehabilitate this device. I had hoped there'd be a lot Linux options for something like this but it looks like the earliest model anyone made.any progress with was iPad 2.

Any suggestions besides picture frame?

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[–] GuStJaR 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have a first gen ipad air and we use it as "the music ipad" for my kids. If you can't get Spotify running, then you could fill it with mp3s and use it that way. If you don't have kids, you could have it hooked to a bluetooth speaker in the kitchen where it could double up as a e-cookbook or notepad for shopping lists which could then easily be emailed to yourself for when you go out to do a shop

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is the kind of thing I was thinking of, it's entirely within it's capabilities when new. The frustrating thing is though that I'm not really sure how I'd actually do it now. I doubt I'd be able to get the Gmail app on there and it'd be a bit of a pain to plug it in to the computer to transfer files to it every time. Although maybe that's not too onerous. I wonder I iTunes will still talk to it.

This is why I was wondering if there was something that could be done to breath some life in to it. I take what many of the responses have to say about it being really just too old, but the thing is, I'd like it to at least be useful for the things it used to be useful for in it's day I find it frustrating that it's artificially locked out of most of that, like the stupid e-reader app not working anymore when theoretically all it needs to do is facilitate payment and receipt of a file and then display text for me to read.

I kind of hoped there might be some means of putting a new OS on there that is light weight and would allow to do all the things it used to be able to do.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I recommend just data transfer through cable. Anything with an internet connection with this device is a security vulnerability

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can use the browser for email.

[–] minorninth 3 points 1 year ago

I wouldn’t expect Gmail or most web mail hosts to work in a browser that old. Maybe if you used Gmail in basic HTML mode.