The customer experience of ageing Apple hardware

Every year Apple tempts us with slimmer, shinier, faster tech that we cannot live without and need to upgrade to immediately. This frenetic cycle of upgrade is subject to the financial constraints of modern life as families need to question the essential purchase status of a new MacBook versus a replacement boiler. These ongoing challenges of tech versus drudgery lead to some devices having a longer life than Apple may have planned. My original iPad is still a thing of beauty and of huge value to me and family life as it springs instantly into life from the coffee table able to help with everything from checking a bank balance to watching my TiVo box remotely from bed. It has started to creak at the edges now with no operating system updates any longer coming through. It is stuck in a Groundhog Day operating system of 5.1.1 completely oblivious to iOS 7 and all it's redesigned wizardry. Due to the lack of processing oomph in the original iPad it cannot take the strain of iOS 7 or for that matter iOS 6 which leads to increasing problems as apps no longer support the n minus 2 operating system. Each loved app starting to falter and fail leaving my poor iPad turning into an obsolete brick left behind by the pace of modern upgrades. Only 4 years old and I fear nearly ready for permanent retirement. Epic death of my loved iPad.