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.

  • 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.