Back in April of 2012 I started my #iPadOnly journey with a retina iPad 3. Turns out this 13-year old device can be still pretty useful. A few years back I put it on the wall of my home office but recently I moved it to the kitchen and it’s awesome there:
Good old iPad 3 in the kitchen with family calendars!
This iPad no longer receives any iOS updates. It runs the iOS 9.3.6 so also Safari 9. This is pretty old software but some standard iOS things work as they should: calendars and FaceTime.
I’ve created an additional Apple Account for this iPad and invited it as “read only” to our calendars: mine, my wife’s and our our family. This way it displays all of our calendars on one iPad on our Kitchen wall.
As it’s read-only we cannot add events from this iPad to the calendars but when we add stuff from our iPhones to our calendars, it appears almost instantly on this iPad. It’s a great reference for the entire family.
FaceTime - the iPad as a family walkie-talkie!
This old iPad still supports FaceTime video! I’ve added as Contacts all of our family iCloud accounts and now anyone can call us “from the wall” of the kitchen.
It works great. We can call directly anyone from the kitchen and we don’t even need to have our personal device on us. My youngest daughter who still doesn’t have her iPhone uses it the most. She just taps on it and calls me when I’m in my office two floors above her. Also, when I’m running errands around town.
13 year old iPad still useful?
It’s really amazing that such an old device can still be pretty useful to our family. I wonder how long it will last and how long will the battery hold now that it’s constantly charging and connected to a power source.
I love it when old devices after being used for so many years can still serve a special purpose! This iPad does. I love it.
And the fact that it’s the device that started my #iPadOnly journey is an additional bonus!