The stuff Hacker News actually recommends.

Tablets · Apple iPad

Apple iPad 1

10owners with an opinion
50%of verdicts positive
2/4positive/negative since 2024
3 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and durability; criticized for software and performance.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 3 yearsStill going
Yeah I have had that experience about 4 times now, like you said, when cracked its completely useless. I broke the first one by sitting the device on the top of a stack of books and research material and then proceeding to pick that bundle up. My thumb holding the nexus 7 and that was enough to put a split from corner to corner. I have given up on the device and Android. I went back to using my old ipad 1 which has been dropped and thrown about for 2-3 years now and not even a scratch or buff on the back and certainly no cracks or chips on the screen. I made the mistake of getting a nexus 7 for my brother and both parents and they have ALL had problems with it (each was about £209 in the UK). They are all getting ipads now.
NeutralOwned 0.9 years
I bought an iPad 1 for $499. It would be hard to sell for more than the $350 that Apple is selling refurbs for, and I can buy a new one for $499. So that means $150 to use it for 11 months which seems rather excessive. OTOH, I could have sold it last month for at least $400, which would be a much better deal but would mean I would have no iPad for one month. OTOOH, if I keep the iPad 1 another year, it will probably still be sellable for $250, and that is $250 for 2 years of use which is not bad.
Doesn’t like it
If you manage to install decent apps in time, you can use these as e-readers or video players. But batteries will eventually fail and all what you'll have will be a fancy fragile chopping board. I was gifted with iPad 1, Air 1 - first won't charge for 6 years now and data I didn't synchronize are gone, second one needs a serious "warm-up" before charging and while Apple released 12.5.8 in the end of January, it won't get any new apps.
Likes it
Damn stuff won't die. One ipod touch has zero battery capacity. One ipad Air2 grew a bulge,but still runs, so I wiped it for recycling. Imac screen quit. Needs repair. Of course stuff gets obsoleted in software conpatibility, but the ipad1 still holds books and music scores, all I asked of it. I suggest simplifying life. Write! Decent text editors ran on CP/M. YMMV, of course. Jerry Pournelle used to just plain write but got dragged into hardware and software reviews and wars. Agree on Apple's low memory entry ststems. At least you can tape an external drive to the case. Not so with menory. Then again MS is going "subscription everything" and Apple s/w is mostly free. Open source runs great excrpt that GIMP file dialogs do not grab the keyboard. They used to. Ob well.
Doesn’t like it
> Back in the mid '90's there had never yet been any reason to "upgrade" your OS Rose-colored glasses my friend. Back in the 90’s, the reason to upgrade was the same as it is now. Old OS versions stopped getting security updates and were a threat, even or especially on those early days of the Internet. The time for an unpatched improperly configured Windows 95 computer to infection was measured in hours. Yes, the fact that I can’t still use my iPad 1 if I actually want to read most articles here because it stopped receiving updates is total bullshit on Apple’s part and I’m not going to defend them on that, but ignoring security is not something a “real” engineer would ignore either. Hell, as recently as a few weeks ago an RCE was found in the (Linux) SMB server.
Doesn’t like it
I still have an O.G. iPad 1 stuck on iOS 5.1. It’s essentially useless. The App Store is a ghost town. No software even exists that runs on it anymore, and the App Store doesn’t even let you download the last working version of third party apps. It’s just totally useless. If I fired up my vacuum cleaner one day and it said “sorry, this device is just too old and the manufacturer just doesn’t want it to function as it did when you bought it” we’d have regulators jumping down their throats. But it’s a-ok to do with devices that rely on a software ecosystem…
Likes it
It feels like the whole software ecosystem: operating systems, 1st party app and 3rd party app developers, are all conspiring to keep us on the "buy, buy, buy" treadmill. I've got a perfectly good iPhone 7 and quite a few of the apps are no longer even on the app store, and my existing ones are starting to get "upgrades" that put up full-screen modal dialogs telling me the app no longer works on my phone. They can't even let me keep the old working app installed! Not to even mention my old O.G. iPad 1 and iPhone 4 which both work as perfectly as the day I bought them, except that none of the software works and the app store is a total ghost town. Software developers are mostly to blame for obsoleting perfectly working hardware.
Likes itStill going
I've got so much perfectly-working e-waste from Apple. It's so sad. I'm on a Late 2014 Mac mini that's stuck on Monterey macOS 12 and a Late 2014 retina iMac that's stuck on Big Sur macOS 11(!!) An iPhone7 that's stuck on iOS15. The display on that iMac is still IMO second to none. These computers do everything I need, yet their software support is stuck back in time. And 3rd party developers are terrible about supporting previous version of macOS. They alway seem to assume you are running the latest and greatest, and deliberately remove support for earlier OSs. Hell, I have an O.G. iPad 1 that still works perfectly as it did the day I bought it, but most of the built-in software no longer works, and the App Store is basically empty. What a sad state of affairs.
Likes it
On the ios side of the world, the ipad 1 has old apps and runs ios 5.x. The ipad air2 is at 10.3.2 and will go only to 15.8.2. Stay old, keep your old apps. I keep old hardware that still runs. They do the basics that I got them for: music scores and lots and lots of book and article reading. And I haven't read them all yet. On the mac end: Supposedly, 32 bit apps stopped running post Mojave. No problem for old hardware that won't go past Mojave anyway, and I recommended sticking with Mojave to a friend who has 32-bit apps. Older mac apps I bought all are downloadable from the app store if they show in the app store under my purchases. And perhaps some are missing, if the apps shown have all been updated to run post-Mojave. I am actually trying to simplify things. (not easy for me) On the ios side of the mac app store, a lot of apps from 2013 and before are not downloadable. So, no Wild Berries and Herbs app for me. At least on a mac you can copy apps from the /Applications directory and sneakernet them. It seems that you need a third-party app to extract ios apps via a cable. Not going there.
Doesn’t like it
> Also first gen iPad was basically slow as a crippled sloth. It was quickly abandoned by both consumers and Apple And it had this bulging back so it wouldn't lie still on a table. It was like a bobblehead. It was a really weird design. The iPad 2 and all further iPads fixed that. And they were all supported for much longer too, yes. It was really a weird 1st gen product. The same with the iPhone now that I think of it, with its horribly slow 2G and annoyingly recessed headphone jack. Again fixed on the second model. Oh and the first gen MacBook that had only 1 (deeply recessed) usb port and this huge clamshell case that looked like a ladies handbag if you carried it by its handle. Cool yes but practical no. And the round mouse so you couldn't feel which way was up. Seriously, sometimes I wonder if someone actually tried to use this stuff before it was shipped out the door XD I had both the iPad 1 and iPhone 1 though and it was cool to be an early adopter. But for the vision pro lol no, out of my price range.