Emulators? NES,....

IDK if the tweaks for using the iPad Camera Kit are available but with that you might install dosbox and a mouse and keyboard, or use a btstack tweak to use a wireless keyboard and mouse so you can have good dos games when you are out.

Which iPad? A fun project somewhere on page 22 of my project to-do list is to turn a couple of those iPad 3s / 4s into portable DisplayPort monitors. Might be a bit of an undertaking unless hardware hacking is your thing, but there are kits.

You can mount the ipad on the wall somewhere and it can be a dedicated news, weather, clock type thing

The iphone can be connected to speakers and be a music player, or serve as a dedicated alarm clock

Turn it into a PADD (run an LCARS imitation) ? 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw1jWdQuQEU

give them to that iOS lover

I’d use the ipad or the iPhone on my car as a CarPlay device.

Install Android on it (no idea if that's even possible) then take it to a genius bar and see what happens. Post results on youtube so we can all have a laugh.

Hey, no one said they had to be HELPFUL suggestions.

Bury them for future archiologists to discover as early-century reminders of Apple's socially celebrated but environmentally destructive practices of limiting operating system upgrades and fighting repairability to intentionally hobble older hardware to encourage or force users to buy new devices.

"and we see here, this device user went against socially acceptable behavior of simply discarding the device and instead tried to extend its useable life though modifications.

The practice at the time was known as 'jail breaking', implying that the user was doing something not only socially unacceptable but also that the device itself should be limited and 'jailed' away from the user under normal circumstances."

zstandig wrote:

You can mount the ipad on the wall somewhere and it can be a dedicated news, weather, clock type thing

The iphone can be connected to speakers and be a music player, or serve as a dedicated alarm clock

that's about it. The iPhone is old and the iPad is probably, too. So emulators are not a strong suite. iDos/DosPad is an option for playing Dos games via Dosbox.

You can use the iphone as a music player in your car

krcroft wrote:

Bury them for future archiologists to discover as early-century reminders of Apple's socially celebrated but environmentally destructive practices of limiting operating system upgrades and fighting repairability to intentionally hobble older hardware to encourage or force users to buy new devices.

Oh good grief. The only thing worse than pro-brand zealots is anti-brand zealots. It's a phone made by a company that runs an OS. It's not a religion.

Incidentally, Apple will allow you to install OSes past the point where, IMO, it is any longer a good idea to do so. I usually stop well before the latest that will technically install. E.g., I'm still running 10.3 on my 5-year-old iPhone 6. I don't see how it's anti-social or anti-consumer to block upgrades when people try to do something equivalent to running Windows XP on their Pentium 120. If it works at all, it won't work well, so why support it?

Why not use it as your main computer and get rid of all those other old crappy ones that obviously stopped working entirely as soon as the new ones came out?

After all, everyone knows that the iPad is the perfect computer. Who would ever need anything else? It's so perfect, it doesn't even have a keyboard or a command line.

keenmaster486 wrote:

After all, everyone knows that the iPad is the perfect computer.

Not everyone; just what's-his-name.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Who would ever need anything else? It's so perfect, it doesn't even have a keyboard or a command line.

You should check the 'Macbook Wheel' item on 'The Onion'.

I want my computer to be so perfect, it isn't even a computer. It's just my brain, thinking things. And Apple sells it to me.

The only sane thing to do with old smart devices, is to eighter find a museum that wants it or recycle it.

krcroft wrote:

Bury them for future archiologists to discover as early-century reminders of Apple's socially celebrated but environmentally des […]
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Bury them for future archiologists to discover as early-century reminders of Apple's socially celebrated but environmentally destructive practices of limiting operating system upgrades and fighting repairability to intentionally hobble older hardware to encourage or force users to buy new devices.

"and we see here, this device user went against socially acceptable behavior of simply discarding the device and instead tried to extend its useable life though modifications.

The practice at the time was known as 'jail breaking', implying that the user was doing something not only socially unacceptable but also that the device itself should be limited and 'jailed' away from the user under normal circumstances."

Uhmm.... NO. Jailbreaking means breaking the jail that a company have set up for you to live your digital life in a cage. Nothing to do with social acceptable behaviour in the society. The jail-part is actually a joke on Apple, and nothing more.

Funny how perception have shifted in a few years. All part of the "We decide what you can and can not do with what you own"-agenda. Because we all know that what you buy is no longer a purchase. It is a sort of license fee these days.

I understand the cynicism, but I think it's unfounded.

"Jail" is a term often used in computing to describe a sandboxed environment. E.g., "a chroot jail" in Unix, used to run a process in a contained filesystem so any exploit against that process doesn't have access to the full system. Since modern mobile devices run pretty much everything in a sandbox, "jailbreaking" them merely pertains to running processes outside of that constraint. It does not necessarily imply the constraint is imposed upon you against your will. Many browsers run processes this way, for e.g., and I am all for that.

I would love to debate the finer points of walled-garden ecosystems, because I think it's a paradigm that offers a lot of advantages, and some obvious disadvantages. A part of my career involves secure computing and I absolutely understand the dilemma, and root equally for both sides of it. It's a hard line to draw and remain equitable to everyone involved. But that is likely to derail this thread, and I've done that probably more times than is fair already.

No no, you are not allowed to discuss these things seriously! You must maintain kneejerk reaction cliches