What can I do with a 64MB iPad 3G?
April 24, 2015 11:50 PM Subscribe
I now have an Apple M1337 64MB iPad 3G. It has Safari. What can I do with it?
I used a paperclip to push open the SIM card slot and I put a AT&T 3G SIM in there. OK, that worked.
I discovered that Safari, the Dolphin browser, and the Opera browser, all have their weaknesses and limitations. Lots of em.
I tried installing many apps, but they all ended in frustration: either the app installer would complain about needing iOS 7.0 or greater, or the app would just flat-out crash when run.
ALL SUGGESTIONS WELCOME, the more the better: What can I do with this five-year-old, obsolete iPad?
I used a paperclip to push open the SIM card slot and I put a AT&T 3G SIM in there. OK, that worked.
I discovered that Safari, the Dolphin browser, and the Opera browser, all have their weaknesses and limitations. Lots of em.
I tried installing many apps, but they all ended in frustration: either the app installer would complain about needing iOS 7.0 or greater, or the app would just flat-out crash when run.
ALL SUGGESTIONS WELCOME, the more the better: What can I do with this five-year-old, obsolete iPad?
Picture frame / album? 64 GB is significantly more than most iPads, and you won't be installing apps on it, so all that storage can be used to hold pictures. You'll have to be using iTunes or similar to get pictures on it, as any cloud-based app probably won't install.
Otherwise I'd just sell it before the value drops any further. Looks like you can get around $100 for it here: Swappa Apple iPad 1 (AT&T).
posted by meowzilla at 12:27 AM on April 25, 2015
Otherwise I'd just sell it before the value drops any further. Looks like you can get around $100 for it here: Swappa Apple iPad 1 (AT&T).
posted by meowzilla at 12:27 AM on April 25, 2015
I use my first generation obsolete iPad to read library ebooks. The kindle and overdrive ebook apps work fine. I stick it in a freezer bag and read in the bathtub - I'd be too nervous to do that with a machine that had any value!
Safari and chrome browsers work well enough to read metafilter (I'm posting from it now).
posted by moonmilk at 4:31 AM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
Safari and chrome browsers work well enough to read metafilter (I'm posting from it now).
posted by moonmilk at 4:31 AM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
Take it to a zoo (or a store). http://www.wimp.com/primatephotos/
Use it for a Halloween costume. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fCm9TQQQcA
posted by at at 8:21 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Use it for a Halloween costume. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fCm9TQQQcA
posted by at at 8:21 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Stick it to a kitchen cabinet so that you can refer to recipes on the web while you're cooking. If you can shut off javascript in any of those browsers you've got, that might make pages load faster. Shut off images even, if you don't usually care about them while cooking like me.
posted by XMLicious at 8:46 AM on April 25, 2015
posted by XMLicious at 8:46 AM on April 25, 2015
you can purchase (i would advise only free ones) apps in itunes on a desktop, and if that app has a previous version that is compatible with ios 5, then you should be offered an older version when you try to download on the ipad.
details here
posted by lescour at 9:10 AM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
details here
posted by lescour at 9:10 AM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
you can purchase (i would advise only free ones) apps in itunes on a desktop, and if that app has a previous version that is compatible with ios 5, then you should be offered an older version when you try to download on the ipad.
I have done this and it works decently well and am successfully using a lot of drawing and writing/editing apps on my (older than yours) ipad. Once you get a handle on how the "download older versions" thing works, it's a thing of beauty. I use mine mostly for drawing and sketching applications and for huge caches of ebooks and ebook readers (to get from the public library from Open Library and from the Gutenberg project).
posted by jessamyn at 1:06 PM on April 25, 2015
I have done this and it works decently well and am successfully using a lot of drawing and writing/editing apps on my (older than yours) ipad. Once you get a handle on how the "download older versions" thing works, it's a thing of beauty. I use mine mostly for drawing and sketching applications and for huge caches of ebooks and ebook readers (to get from the public library from Open Library and from the Gutenberg project).
posted by jessamyn at 1:06 PM on April 25, 2015
I feel you on this one. It's REALLY annoying how useless the 1st gen ipad is now. You can't even watch youtube in the browser, much less in the app.
My suggestion would be to jailbreak, then install the newest compatible version of kodi/XBMC on it and something like tvaddons within that. Then get something like this and use it as a streaming media player in hotel rooms, friends houses, when staying with relatives, etc. There's also value in 64gb of space to fill up with whole seasons of shows, movies, etc for flights or stays in places with no internet or reliable cell data.
Worth noting that the youtube plugin within kodi still works, even though the browser/app is broken now.
I've also seen the otterbox case for the original ipad for SUPER cheap repeatedly. Like, $5 cheap. It would make a really good car/trip media player for kids with a sturdy shell strapped on. The speakers on the 1st gen model are awesome, and in my opinion better than any later model significantly. It's practically a jambox in and of itself. It actually has two speakers, even though they come out of one hole.
On the same front of kid-entertainment-device, after some searching it appears that retroarch works correctly with ios 5! That supports emulating like... 14 different game systems from the n64 back on down. n64 probably wont run, but SNES and stuff totally will(infact, i remember emulating that kind of stuff on my 1st gen ipad). So will well, basically everything else you can think of.
I would focus on stuff that runs natively and locally on the device, or maybe some streaming video with kodi. Any apps that try and connect to the internet or a back end of some site/service(IE:netflix) are probably broken now since not just the app, but the software on that companies servers and what calls get made to them and how they're structured. You also have to remember that the reason this ipad got dropped so quickly was how little ram it had, and that may apps that are basically just webviews/a browser with buttons around it are now loading the bigger chunkier assets and you'll get lots of forcecloses/crashes to the homescreen.
Me and my roommates 1st gen ipads had legendary battery life. My ipad mini 2 dies like twice as fast in comparison. We both charged them literally once a week, maybe twice. It was an awesome media player/content viewer on that front, and i'm sure it still is(the batteries are rated for 80% capacity at one thousand charge cycles. that's double or at least hundreds more than basically... every other mobile device on the market). I'd keep it around with kodi and that cable for that reason alone.
posted by emptythought at 4:42 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
My suggestion would be to jailbreak, then install the newest compatible version of kodi/XBMC on it and something like tvaddons within that. Then get something like this and use it as a streaming media player in hotel rooms, friends houses, when staying with relatives, etc. There's also value in 64gb of space to fill up with whole seasons of shows, movies, etc for flights or stays in places with no internet or reliable cell data.
Worth noting that the youtube plugin within kodi still works, even though the browser/app is broken now.
I've also seen the otterbox case for the original ipad for SUPER cheap repeatedly. Like, $5 cheap. It would make a really good car/trip media player for kids with a sturdy shell strapped on. The speakers on the 1st gen model are awesome, and in my opinion better than any later model significantly. It's practically a jambox in and of itself. It actually has two speakers, even though they come out of one hole.
On the same front of kid-entertainment-device, after some searching it appears that retroarch works correctly with ios 5! That supports emulating like... 14 different game systems from the n64 back on down. n64 probably wont run, but SNES and stuff totally will(infact, i remember emulating that kind of stuff on my 1st gen ipad). So will well, basically everything else you can think of.
I would focus on stuff that runs natively and locally on the device, or maybe some streaming video with kodi. Any apps that try and connect to the internet or a back end of some site/service(IE:netflix) are probably broken now since not just the app, but the software on that companies servers and what calls get made to them and how they're structured. You also have to remember that the reason this ipad got dropped so quickly was how little ram it had, and that may apps that are basically just webviews/a browser with buttons around it are now loading the bigger chunkier assets and you'll get lots of forcecloses/crashes to the homescreen.
Me and my roommates 1st gen ipads had legendary battery life. My ipad mini 2 dies like twice as fast in comparison. We both charged them literally once a week, maybe twice. It was an awesome media player/content viewer on that front, and i'm sure it still is(the batteries are rated for 80% capacity at one thousand charge cycles. that's double or at least hundreds more than basically... every other mobile device on the market). I'd keep it around with kodi and that cable for that reason alone.
posted by emptythought at 4:42 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you still have the iBooks app on the iPad, then you can use your computer to run a Calibre server and fetch books from it in the iPad's web browser. Works sweet!
I have a v.2 iPad 64GB, and I keep it stuffed with e-books for easy reference. (Mind you, if someone could recommend an e-book reader for iOs 7 that's not iBooks, I would be very pleased.)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:00 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
I have a v.2 iPad 64GB, and I keep it stuffed with e-books for easy reference. (Mind you, if someone could recommend an e-book reader for iOs 7 that's not iBooks, I would be very pleased.)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:00 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
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Well, I can't go any higher than iOS 5.1.1. That much is true.
posted by shipbreaker at 11:53 PM on April 24, 2015