I bought an old iPad2 for the purpose of viewing a Home Assistant dashboard via a web browser. My thinking was that the ability to browse the web was the sole requirement for a tablet for this purpose, but I was wrong: Home Assistant’s web pages apparently require a newer version of javascript than iOS 9.3.5 can handle, but the iPad 2 can only be updated to iOS 9.3.5.

So is it possible to flash a newer OS (e.g., linux) onto an old iPad 2? ChatGPT says it’s not possible because a bootloader exploit for the iPad 2 isn’t known, but ChatGPT is often wrong.

  • @sir_reginald
    5•1 year ago

    yeah I was going to suggest something like this but now I’m not sure if other browsers aren’t just wrappers around the system WebKit (this is what happens in android with Webview) or if they ship with their own version of WebKit.

    • @dustyData
      6•1 year ago

      On iOS it’s mandatory that other browsers be just a reskin of safari. So this wouldn’t help op.

      • Aatube
        3•1 year ago

        Technically it’s not “reskin”, but I am pretty sure they are required to invoke the system version of WebKit (aka. Safari’s JavaScript) since that saves storage space and makes sense. So indeed it won’t help.

        • @[email protected]
          1•1 year ago

          Ah, wasn’t sure if they shipped with their own version of webkit for compatibility or invoked the system call. Unfortunate that it’s the latter.