Unlike iOS 4, Apple’s promised not to leave any iOS devices behind with the jump to iOS 5, but older devices might lose some features. The iPhone 3GS under iOS 5 tellingly doesn’t support many of iOS’s new photo abilities, but even last year’s iPad might get the short thrift with the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system: users are reporting that the original iPad running iOS 5 does not support the new gesturing feature.
What’s gesturing? It allows you to use four or five fingers to swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, pinch to return to the home screen and swipe left or right to switch between apps.
Gesturing was present in the original iOS 4.3 betas, and is also promised to land in iOS 5, and indeed it does apparently work on the iPad 2 under iOS 5… but not the first-gen iPad.
It’s a strange omission, given that gesturing works just fine under iOS 4.3 on the iPad. Our guess is that while this could indicate that Apple’s is going to prune features from iOS 5, it’s most likely one of (many) bugs that are ubiquitous in Apple’s iOS developer previews, and will be fixed by the time the next beta comes around.
At least, we hope so: we’d hate to see Apple already looking for cool features to purge from their revolutionary, year-old tablet. What do you think? Bug or purposeful omission?
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.
29 responses to “First-Gen iPad May Not Get All Of iOS 5’s New Features”
bug! Please, oh please, bug!
I’m hoping bug as i’ve been using these features on iOS 4.3 through the hack thing on my iPad 1 fine for months… Would hate to seem them go away with iOS 5, as they’re extremely useful!
I was wondering why those features stopped working. It’s really annoying. Begging for a bug.
Also, isn’t AirPlay mirroring not supported by the iPad 1? Guessing it’s a processor limitation (or at least that’s what Apple will claim).
As stated on the iOS 5 website, it’s seems taht the iPad also lost the iOS5 ability to mirror the iPad screen trought an Apple TV… :(
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/…
Simply not true. I have an iPad 1 and unlocked gestures a month ago using a Developer account and it works just fine. Pinching, swiping left or right and swiping up to manage running apps…
Just a bug. That´s all.
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Please be a bug! :S
Welcome to how 1st and 2nd generation iPod Touch users feel! Just left behind…
The devices are old. There is no way that Apple can keep you up to date on this stuff. Stop complaining, your devices already do more that what you paid for when you first bought them
If it is an on purpose ommision it is certainly just marketing and spite
Doesn’t mean they can’t be assholes and disable it :p but yea, hope it’s a bug
Which I doubt, won’t be much more CPU heavy over wifi than a cable :p
They really can’t use CPU for an excuse for anything, they say ram and i might buy it, not for mirroring though
Sure hope it’s a bug…
But, if it ends up not being I guess ill just go in and enable it, Apples use of plists makes enabling or disabling many OS features pretty easy once you’re jailbroken.
Uhhh, that’d be “short shrift” not “thrift.”
this is apple saying ditch your ipad, get an ipad 2
It maybe marketing, but it’s not spite. Apple has of late been pursuing a more aggressive program of forced obsolescence.
“Holding onto that Apple device more than 2 years? Didn’t buy into the latest design? We’re going help you move on, thru software!”
Considering the dime’s worth of difference between iPad 1 and iPad 2, I’d be surprised if this were more than a bug. Unless Apple is implementing planned obsolescence.
My experience is that iOS5 is MUCH more buggy on my gen1 iPad than my iPhone4. But YMMV.
if it isn’t a bug, my new tablet will not be an iPad… Actually, my new phone is an Android after two iPhones (2G & 3GS) and a bunch of accessories that stopped to work after an iOS update…
Of course, this looks like a bug. I liked it when I saw this feature in iOS 4.3. Hope apple fixes along with lots of other crash bugs and UI improvements.
Yeah, but Apple just randomly drops these devices. I believe the EULA says that the iPhone will get ‘all future upgrades’ so fail on Apple’s part
it is an intentional omission.
it is the way apple does!!!
I have multiple gestures running on my iPad, in 4.3.3 and I didn’t have any problem, but I prefer to think that is just a bug, because I cannot see any reason to retire this featured to a such recent device. On keynote we saw steve jobs saying that 3GS will not receive all featureds and saw that iPad is not capable to connect to apple tv, but I think that’s all…
Now, i have the beta 2 on my ipad; again, no gesturing and no option in the settings!
i’m a developer and i’m really angry about apple and his store rules (and the time they need to check the in-app purchases…). now the cut off features that really worked nice on 4.3 (if you are an developer)?! my next pad will be an android or webos one… your systems are great apple, but your politics are really bad – the competitors doesn’t sleep… take care…
iOS 5 is useless for iPad first gen. I don’t see anything changed. Also he said that safari will be multitasking but it’s not. The tabs are not running at the same time. I wish I could go back to ios 4.
Do not update to iOS5 if you have a 1st gen ipad. There is not point, many of the new features are for ipad2 with camera. Also, you will take a huge performance hit. Stick with 4.3.5