New iPads have made my old iPad worse

I don't mean that they make it seem worse because the new ones are faster, have a better screen, and additional features (e.g., a camera). I mean actually worse. There are two reasons why:

1. New versions of iOS and apps are larger and slower, because they have more features and because they are developed for faster iPads, which means less pressure to optimize performance on the original iPad. In many cases, new apps aren't even tested on the original iPad.

2. Parts of iOS (e.g., WebKit, which is used to show websites) and apps crash because they don't handle memory properly, which is especially difficult to do in Objective C, the language used to write apps. (And, I assume, iOS, too.) More memory makes these bugs less likely to cause a crash. Again, in many cases apps are not even tested on an original iPad and, if they are, it's only a quick test. Most bugs are found during development, and it's unlikely that developers use an original iPad.

So, my iPad, bought on launch day in April, 2010, has gotten steadily less usable over the 2+ years I've had it, to the point that I now use it only rarely, and mostly as a Kindle. I used to sit in my favorite chair at night and read web articles on my iPad. Apps (including Safari) crash so often now that I use a MacBook Air instead, which doesn't crash.

I'm not going to upgrade my iPad, either. Why give Apple another $600 when the previous $600 bought a product that only worked well for about a year? The Kindle app doesn't crash, I can live with the crashes when I'm checking web sites or email while traveling, and at home I have other alternatives.

I think Android-based tablets are likely to be more reliable, because Java, the language used to write them, is better suited to writing reliable software than is Objective C. I'm not about to buy an Android tablet, either, and, if I do, it will be new, so my theory as to why my iPad has deteriorated won't get tested. (We have the original Kindle Fire, but I don't personally use it much, so I can't say how reliable it is.)

I'm sure I'm right, however. Reliability is the most important quality that software must have, and the iPad doesn't have it.