Yesterday, Apple unveiled the iPad mini 3, a slightly updated version of the second-gen iPad mini with Retina display. But even though it’s two generations old at this point, Apple still sells the original iPad mini for $249. That makes it the cheapest iPad yet, albeit for good reason: It packs the same A5 chip and other silicon guts that the iPad 2 did way back in March 2011.
That might actually seem like a good deal for consumers, but it’s turning out to be a nightmare for developers who will likely have to support the iPad mini until 2017.
Here’s the problem, as laid out in an excellent post by Allen Pike. The iPad 2 seemed cutting-edge at the time, but its performance is simply blown out of the water by the last three generations of iPad: the iPad 4, iPad Air and iPad Air 2. In fact, the iPad Air 2 is over 100 times faster when it comes to graphics performance than the iPad 2.
That’s causing serious problems for developers of games and other graphics-intensive apps. When BioShock was released on the App Store, for example, it did not officially support the iPad mini or iPad 2, but the only way for 2K Games to signal that was as part of the app’s description text, leading to numerous complaints.
The only foolproof way a developer can cut off support for an older device is by making sure that the app doesn’t run on older versions of iOS, but that only works if Apple isn’t still supporting older devices in the most current version of the operating system. And since Apple intends on continuing to sell the original iPad mini for the next year, that means iOS 9 will likely support A5 chips. Pike spells it out clearly:
The only thing we can do as developers to disavow support for these devices is require a version of iOS that won’t run on them. Unfortunately, Apple will surely continue support for the A5 in iOS 9. If they do so, we won’t have a mechanism to cut off support for these old iPads mini and iPods touch until iOS 10 has reached wide adoption, likely in early 2017.
2017.
Pike calls these shambling, lumbering iPads “iPad Zombies” and he’s right — they’re a huge problem for developers. But what can be done? One suggestion: Apple could start allowing developers to choose to support individual generations of devices, instead of just supporting versions of iOS. But it’s possible that would just cause further problems, and fragment the App Store.
Source: Allen Pike
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
35 responses to “Why Apple’s heading toward a ‘zombie iPad’ apocalypse”
I really don’t see a problem with that.
I am an iOS developer my self, and i’m not going to support iPad Mini in my apps.
well, then you loose % of iPad owners – possible customers.
Of course. But I think it’s not worth the effort.
I also think that this model (249$) is not going to sell well, because you can just 50$ and get much better version of the device. I mean 2 years different in just 50$.
It’s probably for schools/education and elderly people on a limited budget is my guess. It’s just a way for Apple to not completely miss out on the lower end opportunities. They only do this if there is enough demand to make it worthwhile. Some users only use these things for VERY specific purposes that don’t necessarily require state of the art.
You shouldn’t look at it as losing customers, that’s a good way to go out of business.
Suppose you make $5,000 from the iPad Mini owners. And that it costs $10,000 to do that support. Don’t you *want* to lose those customers?
I only use my iPad2 as a place to store my knitting patterns and Ebooks. It will not be a problem for me if developers don’t support the “zombies” with their graphics-heavy apps.
I think Apple’s going to have to make older 32 Bit ARM products for at least another year. What Cook seems to be doing is trying to capture a bigger market share by offering older, less expensive models, which is one of the reasons why Android has so much market share. They are catering to a larger audience . For a portion of Apple’s customer base, they don’t really need or utilize 64 Bit processors or just need a basic functionality product. But I see Apple making their 64 Bit transition within a few years. Apple could finish the transition next year when they release the next top end models and just shift everything down like normal, but in this case they are purposely going to extend the transition to 64 Bit of their install base. They do have time to spare since Android hasn’t even gone 64 Bit yet, and it’s going to take them at least 8 years to completely transition to 64 BIt.
Did anyone find out if the next IPad Air 2 has 1 or 2GB of RAM? No one has officially said what it actually is. I certainly hope it’s 2GB, otherwise I’m hanging onto my iPad 4. Apple really needs to get off their rear end on this.
that is just numbers. They cannot be compared across different platforms. Its like ghz for processors or megapixels for cameras, bigger numbers are not always better as there are always things that are more important.
Apple 2014 is looking more like Apple 1996 with a bloat of products. Cook needs to learn how to trim the fat.
Most of the products were just upgrades. The only “new” product is the AppleWatch. I don’t really see any bloat of products really…
I made the mistake of choosing the cheapest available iphone (4) about 18 months ago. I am now unable to update to the latest version of IOS but can’t upgrade my phone for another 6 months without paying a large early termination penalty. Previously, my son bought an ipod touch that was rendered obsolete in well under a year. Lesson is learned, I will never again buy a low-end apple product again.
update through your iTunes on your computer…file size is much smaller. OTA updates require it to make space on the phone that gets freed up after.
Not a space problem, just a obsolescence problem. IOS8 won’t run on an iphone 4 at all, regardless of space. Similarly, my son bought an ipod touch 4th generation with his Christmas money in early 2013. By September of that year, it was rendered obsolete (i.e. unable to run the then-new IOS7).
iphone 4 is 4+ years old. iPod touch gen 4 is 3+ years old.
your things were not obsolete simply because iOS 7/8 came out. they were still able to function the exact same way the day before iOS 7 came out. newer software sometimes requires newer hardware. apple releases new iOS versions for older iphones/ipads/ipods with different hardware, even if some functions are limited.
other mobile tech companies don’t support anything that old while adding new features based on hardware.
sell em on eBay and get money to buy some new ones maybe.
Which is the lesson planned obsolescence seeks to inculcate in the masses, so that we no longer expect people to maintain a product we purchase.
forced obsolescence.
so tell us who is doing better at that? techs moving fast.
there hasn’t been vast tech improvements. its changing but its not that vast a change. if anything the coders should be getting better more skilled, able to code more with less but they were given a new programming language and APIs to work with on a new OS which works on the new Hardware…
so then why dont u start coding and getting ‘better more skilled’ whatever that means. you sit here and complain, yet you couldn’t do the work required.
really all of what u said makes no sense.
I wish the “post pc” world hadn’t thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Can you imagine the uproar there would be if desktop PCs couldn’t run a current version of an OS within 2-3 years, and started an increasing trend of application incompatibility from there?
Why do we accept such artificial obsolescence from our mobile devices? Perhaps if we weren’t quite so eager to throw our money at these companies they’d make products a little more worthy of said money.
progresses, and the iPad is static. The websites become heftier, and the antiquated hardware has a tougher and tougher time chewing threw the data. I’ve had multiple occasions where the iPad 2 just freezes and then Safari crashes because the website had too many images or embedded YouTube videos (like 2). I mean, Jesus, I’m just pressing to sleep/wake button, and the screen sometimes doesn’t turn on for a good 20 seconds… Trying to write a paper in Pages and need to access an article online to write it? I hope you have a photographic memory, or a printer, because if you’re planning on using the multitasking feature in iOS, you’re going to have to take 30x as long as it should since it’ll take about 10 seconds to open the app switcher, another 5 to get it to actually switch to Safari or Pages, then another 10-30 seconds to load the app and whatever contents it had before it was excommunicated out of the RAM, and then have a fun, jittery, laggy time scrolling through that document, then time to go back to the other app… Rinse and repeat. Yeah, so basically death. I honestly was shocked that Apple is STILL going to sell the iPad Mini, and I can only hope they take it out of the lineup halfway through the year…
It’s not any good for consumers either… Maybe the most BASIC users. Literally having an iPad for email and ONE website, no tabs. I’ve had the iPad 2 since release, it’s still my current device, and let me tell you it is an absolute miserable experience on iOS 8, hell, even iOS 7. CPU chokes on most applications, not horrible, but just meh. Graphics on current 3D games, forget it. Biggest crippling factor for the iPad 2, and hence the iPad Mini 1st generation is the RAM, 512 absolutely murders the experience. Like I said, ONE tab, that’s it, ONE, and if you switch to a second tab be prepared to wait for quite a while for the website to re load. And this is only going to get worse, because technology
Seeing how the A5 powered iPhone 4S got its last update with iOS 8 this year (& is clearly having troubles running it smoothly), on what basis do developpers think other A5 powered devices will get iOS 9 next year?
On the basis they are going to still sell the iPad Mini with an A5 chip as a new product this holiday. You think in 9 months from Xmas they will tell people they can’t upgrade ?
Well the original iPad was dropped from iOS updates pretty quickly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they would drop all A5 powered devices in one go as well.
They should. it’s much better than trying to support the A5 which can (in many cases it has) result in a poor experience. That hurts Apple more in the long-term.
forced obsolescence. Its the current business model. along with Paid DLC, pay-to-win, and in-app purchase… you bought into them now you want out. I hate it, my Macs would run for years and years now its a lot less.
iPad 1 still in use in this house. Never update unless you have to.
try to use the WSJ’s old app on your iTouch you can’t even use the last one in iOS7 you update to the newest HW or you can’t use the service you paid for.
I’m not a actual developer yet, but I get sick of reading complaints from people with old devices that can’t get the newest games to work. Can a ps3 run ps4 games? True the app shouldn’t show up as being available to buy. Just as you can’t download iPad apps on iphone. All it is, is code. The App Store should configure its selection based on internal hardware and not just is it an iPad or iphone.
Apple stopped signing iOS 7.x so if you didn’t install it you are locked at what you had or 8.1 if you can run it.
Meh, it’s not fragmentation, it’s diversity. Not just os version, check for hardware capabilities, and run on the hardware your app needs to run. Scale up/down as needed.
This is all tried tested and working tech PC’s have dealt with for years, we can make it work on phones/tablets.