Ask HN: What to Do with Old iPads?

Turn it into an AI powered CCTV that detects people, objects and movement https://github.com/roryclear/clearcam

Semi-adjacent: I was given an iPad mini (1st or 2nd gen, not sure) by a former neighbor. Unfortunately it is still locked to their Apple account and I've lost contact with them.

Is there anything I can do to unlock it and use it?

Send them to that guy in the other thread trying to get an old app working https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010951

I use an old iPad as a digital photo frame. Sits on a horizontal cupboard top in £3 Ikea wooden phone stand, powered by a right-angle Lightning cable from ebay. Selfie camera is covered with a glossy black privacy sticker, also from ebay. It works tolerably well.

https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-turn-your-ipad-into-...

The iPad 2 can be downgraded to iOS 6.1.3 or 8.4.1. Both offer better performance than iOS 9 and have untethered jailbreaks. Once downgraded and jailbroken you can sideload hours and hours worth of games. A lot from that era are IAP-free.

I use an iPhone 5 downgraded to iOS 6 (tethered) as an iPod. I love how I can unplug my headphones from my work Mac, plug directly into the phone (no adapter required!) and it effectively mutes Slack without actually muting it. Syncing with the latest version of iTunes still works, albeit slowly.

I also use an iPad 4 (tethered to iOS 6) as an ebook. iBooks works great and I love the pseudomorphic design.

See also: https://github.com/LukeZGD/Legacy-iOS-Kit

I have two old iPads and an old iPhone in my stack.

The iPads are HomeAssistant Dashboards for me. One connects to a VNC server on the HA host, as the browser is too outdated to properly display the dashboards. The other uses the HA app, and can render just fine.

The iPhone is jailbroken, and used as an AirPlay relay server. Connected via Bluetooth to a speaker, MusicAssistant keeps the audio from the aux on my Mac Mini and the audio streaming to the iPhone in sync, creating surround sound audio.

Tried to offload to a friend with a 3 year old and not much money. They threw it out and bought an iPad Pro for the little one.

It’s been a couple of years. But even the oldest iPad - the one from 2010 - was able to download the “last compatible version” and stream Netflix.

Even an older iPad can run Netflix and Plex and maybe a couple of other streaming apps. You should be able to use it for Spotify and definitely Apple Music.