Apples iOS updates have pretty much rendered the iPad 1 useless.

Every big iPad OS update has resulted in slower and slower performance on my original iPad, to the point now that it’s horrible to use. All programs open excruciatingly slow and half of them crash most of the time. Netflix, or any streaming service for that matter, function so slowly and poorly that we don’t even use them anymore. Web browsing is incredibly frustrating because the thing has a difficult time keeping up with any sort of scrolling of the web page, resulting in mishit links and other annoyances.

FWIW I’ve done a complete restore on the iPad several times and only have a couple of basic programs on there (Chrome, Tapatalk and Netflix) and it still runs like shit.

Is anyone else experiencing this? It’s really disappointing to watch this thing turn into more and more of a paperweight as each update goes by.

I don’t have an iPad but it should be possible to downgrade iOS to an earlier version. Probably only possible for the technically inclined.

I never upgraded my iPod Touch past version 3 or so and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, it still plays music and games just fine.

I have a first generation iPad, and though it’s not exactly zippy, it’s still very usable. A couple OS’s ago there was a problem with pauses when you type, but they appear to have fixed that. I can’t remember the last time I streamed from Netflix, but just yesterday I streamed from HBO GO and it was fine, and I know I’ve streamed Netflix in the past few months with no problem.

The Netflix app does occasionally crash, but not so much that I avoid using it.

We have tons of stuff on the iPad, and I’ve never restored from scratch.