Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

AdamNC

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 3, 2018
751
1,052
Leland NC
A neighbor has a iPad 1st gen that is in awesome shape, she is giving it to me tomorrow... It's been reset and is running 5.1.1. I want to just tinker with it and maybe using it as a bathroom reader, and YouTube viewer. I have never jailbroken anything. What would you do if you were me? How hard is jailbreaking to do? Anything needed? Any easy good sites you recommend? Thanks..
 

GizmoDVD

macrumors 68030
Oct 11, 2008
2,651
5,278
SoCal
it's nearly useless at its current stage without a ton of jailbreaking and even then things barely work. YouTube won't even function.

$100 and you can get a used 6th or 7th gen "iPad" and it'll still get updates
 

LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,876
10,982
I kept my iPad 2 until it was barely useable anymore, and it became a great alarm clock. I can't imagine how slow the iPad 1 is.
 

theMarble

macrumors 65816
Sep 27, 2020
1,019
1,496
Earth, Sol System, Alpha Quadrant
As a collectible and/or vintage product, they are historic and awesome. For what you want to do with it (e-reader, YouTube), it is useless. No modern, nor semi-modern apps run on iOS 5 anymore, jailbreaking won't change anything since the old apps won't connect to modern servers.

The way I'd use it is as a note taking device when I'm using my old Macs, or as a cool shelf item. Unlike Macs from the same year (2010), which can run Ventura with a hack, and be upgraded to at least an SSD and 8GB of RAM (apart from the MBA), the iPad 1 & 2 have zero purpose as a modern device anymore sadly.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SirAnthonyHopkins

smirking

macrumors 68040
Aug 31, 2003
3,914
3,992
Silicon Valley
Keep it in good shape and it might fetch a good return in about 20 years, but I agree with everyone who said it's not worth your time to even try to use it. At this point it's not really a cheap device for you to use for other purposes. It's a device that's expensive to operate in terms of your time and energy.
 
  • Like
Reactions: theMarble

BrianBaughn

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2011
9,821
2,493
Baltimore, Maryland
The iPad was, CPU and graphics-wise, perfectly capable of displaying full screen streaming video. On ours, I used to watch live baseball on the MLB app and other sports on the ESPN app. It looked great!

The software that made that all happen is completely dead. Gone bye-bye. No amount of jailbreaking can bring it back.

Mine is still jailbroken and I just checked to see what works. The Plex app installed on it actually works…but this version doesn't have chromecasting ability. Makes a nice little Plex viewer, though.

VLC seems to work. VNC Viewer works a bit.

I don't remember how I got it jailbroken or managed to get older apps on it but I think key jailbreak apps for getting stuff like that were "IPA Installer" and "iFile". This might be of interest:

 
  • Like
Reactions: SirAnthonyHopkins
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.