is there anything much useful I can do with an iPad 1? (not picture frame)
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?
I agree the iPad is almost completely useless, but I don’t think comparing it to 13 years before the iPad is useful. My MacBook Air is 11 years old and it’s still great because it’s good enough to run YouTube, all the major websites, office suites, etc. It’s still getting security updates from Apple. I think that’s what 90% of people use a laptop for. A computer two years older than it, on the other hand, might be useless. It’s not really linear. Hopefully, iPads from 5 years ago can last over a decade.