What I learned from watching my iPad's slow death
For what it&#x27;s worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline, even if the author&#x27;s romantic notions of repurposing an old machine ring true. While they may be suitable for old games on an unnetworked, phone-activated WinXP, or as a power-hungry Linux machine that will perform admirably as long as web browsers aren&#x27;t involved, both fates are the same: frozen in time, locked out of the dizzying speed of evolution of online services and the portals through which they are viewed. Stallman&#x27;s right yet again: the offline programs will run just the same, but the online programs are subject to change at a moment&#x27;s notice, from Apple shedding support of 32-bit hardware, to application makers shedding support for old OS versions, to online backends forcing mandatory updates.<p>It feels worse with the iPad because its marketing made an impression of a sleek, &quot;just-works&quot; kind of device. Of course, its utility is tied exclusively to applications from a captive marketplace, and often, to remote services frontended by those apps or the browser, making its elegance a leaky abstraction. Today&#x27;s Chromebooks, another &quot;just-works&quot; device, will be in the same situation in five years.<p>But with Chromebooks, or Android phones (if you&#x27;re lucky), or x86 or x64 PCs, you can replace the stock OS and repurpose the device on the hardware&#x27;s own remaining merits. An iPad is just stuck.