
Apple Forces Recyclers to Shred All iPhones and Macbooks - bootload
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks
======
victornomad
One day I entered in one of the labs in a previous company and found a few
piles of "old" macbooks pro ready to trash. I would say easily around 500'
They seemed quite new to me so I asked if I could get a bunch and reuse parts
to make a working one.

They told me I could get all I wanted. So I took 10. I arrived home and all of
them were functional after formating and reinstalling. My family and friends
got very happy with seminew laptops for free.

I guess is not only about recycling or shredding, is as well about giving a
second, third or fourth life to our goods... And lets be honest. Recycling is
a very wasteful process. If we want to be eco friendly we should consume less,
thats the only way.

~~~
prodmerc
Well apparently not all people want to be eco friendly.

Most people I know would rather buy a new low/mid range product than a
used/refurbished device that was high end when it was released. It's mind
boggling - you'd rather get a creaky piece of shit locked down cheap NEW
laptop than a high quality business grade used one, because... it hasn't been
used before?

I believe that if a device was gently used and hasn't failed, the chance of it
failing after 1-2 years is actually lower than with a new one. I don't know if
it's true, but it's been my experience.

But then again, my relationship with tools is weird - if I get them, I clean
and rebuild them, so they're mine. No one else gets to use them. They're
almost like pets. And I don't care how many people used them before me...

~~~
type0
> It's mind boggling - you'd rather get a creaky piece of shit locked down
> cheap NEW laptop than a high quality business grade used one, because...

Yes but not only that, for laptops it comes down to priorities. I know plenty
of people who are better served with Chromebook with 8 hour battery life than
a refurb high end one with 2 h battery.

> I believe that if a device was gently used and hasn't failed, the chance of
> it failing after 1-2 years is actually lower than with a new one. I don't
> know if it's true, but it's been my experience.

True for some devices and not true for others.

> They're almost like pets. And I don't care how many people used them before
> me...

It's unhealthy to think about tools that way, off course rebuilding your tools
increases their emotional value. If your rebuilds of tools are good, not very
custom and things are not expensive, try to give them away to friends and
family, it usually increases your satisfaction, lowers materialistic
attachment and can make you more creative.

~~~
throwanem
If I give away my tools, I can't use them any more without borrowing them
back. If I _keep_ my tools, I can make all manner of things to give away, or
not, just as I choose. The buddha might not approve, but the buddha is dead.

------
captainmuon
Note this seems to be not about independent recyclers that Apple forced to
shred their products. It's rather companies that Apple specifically hired to
shred products that were returned to Apple, and Apple didn't want to
refurbish.

While it's still a waste, it's not as outrageous as I first thought.

------
Scoundreller
Old Apple parts are worth quite a bit. If yours is broken, part-it out. Even a
Macbook Air.

I was able to part-out my old Macbook air (with broken battery and power
adapter) and put toward the proceeds and ~US$200 toward the latest's model:

Apple just has that tight control over its parts pre- and post- use.

~~~
pkaye
Where do you sell an older Mac at a good price?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Ebay, I've never had any trouble disposing of old computers.

------
scdoshi
I might be missing something, but seems to me like the products are still
recycled, but as raw materials, not as full devices.

This makes sense, given data is almost certainly bound to be present on phones
etc.

Maybe there's a more nuanced way to do this, but this doesn't seem all that
bad.

OTOH, having these phones go through a refurb program and selling them
probably involves a fair amount or resource use as well.

~~~
clishem
Forcing recyclers to shred perfectly fine phone components makes sense because
data is bound to be present 'etc'.

My "Hacker" "News" moment of the day.

~~~
Tanegashima
Who said they are "perfectly fine"?

Also, it's not up to you, the costumer decided to deliver the device for
recycling and not for scrap.

------
internet2000
People are acting like they're shredding last year's iPhone models. Apple
products have great resell value and they're passed on as hand-me-downs often.
If something got back to Apple, chances are reusing parts is not plausible.
Not much you can harvest from an iPhone 3G other than the raw materials.

~~~
icc97
I'd always assumed that iPhones would have a high resale value too, but I find
that they are surprisingly cheap. You can pick up iPhone 4S phones for £50
[0].

Then compare iPhone 5S (£120) [1] vs Samsung Galaxy S5 (£130 - 140) [2].

I really don't understand why. Perhaps there's just more people that want to
buy second hand android phones.

[0]: [http://second-handphones.com/all-
handsets.html?manufacturer=...](http://second-handphones.com/all-
handsets.html?manufacturer=29&model=359)

[1]: [http://second-handphones.com/all-
handsets.html?manufacturer=...](http://second-handphones.com/all-
handsets.html?manufacturer=29&model=362)

[2]: [http://second-handphones.com/all-
handsets.html?manufacturer=...](http://second-handphones.com/all-
handsets.html?manufacturer=3&model=420)

~~~
dymk
Why would you expect a 6 year old phone (the 4S) to have any sort of resale
value? That's incredibly old in phone years.

The Galaxy S5 was released half a year after the iPhone 5S, which might
explain the price difference.

~~~
throwanem
Yeah, I still have my old 4S. I don't use it because it's unusably slow, and I
wouldn't pay £50 (or the equivalent in real money) for one today.

Pity. My SE feels cheap and light by comparison, and its materials don't hold
up nearly as well. I don't like that, but given the strictly limited lifespan
that smartphones seem to have, I suppose it's really quite apropos.

------
sandworm101
It may sound odd, but this is standard practice in most "recycling"
environments. When you recycle an aluminium can it doesn't get refilled. It
gets melted into new aluminium. Even if the can is perfectly good and could be
sanitized, to ensure constant quality it is best to start anew from the
fundamental ingredients. Seeing a macbook shredded looks horrible, but if
those bits are being properly recycled into new components then I can see
apple's point. Rebuilding from the ground up is probably much easier than
picking and testing every little component to ensure quality.

If you own a car, it has steel parts. Some of that steel is recycled metal
from old cars. We consider it new. But would you be willing to pay the same
price for a car with a chassis harvested from an older car? What level of
testing would be needed for you to pay the same price as the car with a
chassis built anew? If that testing costs more than a couple hundred, the
logical thing is to melt.

~~~
afuchs
Old cars are often used to source parts for the repair of other cars. It's
common practice, which has persisted without any major problems.

Likewise, 3rd-party repair shops will often harvest parts from old phones, to
replace parts in phones they are repairing. Picking and testing components
doesn't appear to be a problem for them. Their customers seem to have no issue
with recycled parts being used to repair their phones.

If there is demand for recycled parts, and they can be reused while still
ensuring quality, what is the problem?

~~~
sandworm101
But apple doesn't want to sell used or refurbished phones, only shiny new
ones.

~~~
ginko
It's none of Apple's business what people are doing with their phones after
they bought them.

------
apinstein
A majority of comments here seem to think that literally millions of units of
electronics are being shredded wastefully, instead of more meaningfully re-
used. Ok, great! This is HN! Where are the calls to start a company to
leverage this near-infinite supply of valuable trash through economically
productive re-use? Should be very profitable, right?

Another distinct possibility is that the proportion of valuable items in this
stream is too small to warrant their recovery. There are already tons of
people that refurb and sell computers. It's a small market, and increasing the
supply by 100x (or whatever the multiple of "wasted" recycling opportunities
is) would likely distort that market into total collapse.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I take it you're being facetious. The referenced article discusses some of the
contractual language that Apple uses to hinder re-use, and they aren't the
only ones. The real risk of course are unscrupulous vendors who sell as 'new'
things they have recovered either on Ebay or Amazon which turns around and
bites the original manufacturer because the customer complains their parts are
bad.

Having dealt with many of the major recycling centers in the bay area, and the
resellers, and the various people in between, the maze of laws and contracts
make unwinding this nearly impractical in most cases. It is pretty amazing
when someone is willing to sneak a $250,000 mini-computer to you out the back
of the building because the corporate "requirements" are that a perfectly
serviced and operating machine be sent to shredding rather than do anything
else.

Of course you really can't make a business off their largess but a number of
important computer systems were saved in similar ways.

Generally there is often more value to the manufacturer that they _not_ be
recycled and so we end up with these sorts of contracts.

------
ap46
Will repair MacBooks for food, but for the love of god don't shred them. Just
give them out at high schools or college grads. They can learn a thing or two
& save BUX in the process.

~~~
beambot
There are also a number of charitable organizations trying to bring
computation into underserved international communities (eg.
[http://www.reneal.org/](http://www.reneal.org/)). Please consider donating
used hardware; it can have a tremendous impact on communities whose schools
have (at best!) a single computer for hundreds of students.

------
TheAceOfHearts
It's pretty frustrating to read about older tech going to waste, instead of
trying to find a new home. I imagine that there's a lot of people that'd be
perfectly fine with slightly older tech, especially when the alternative is
nothing.

A few years back I had an online friend working at a tech recycling center, he
offered to send me a slightly used laptop he'd picked up (I think it was a
Thinkpad T40p?), only requesting that I pay for shipping. Even if it was a few
years "outdated" by then, after installing Ubuntu it was more than enough to
get me through a few years of college.

He also sent a couple smartphones, which I gave away to friends and family who
were in tight spots. And even managed to get me another laptop for an
underclassman whose previous laptop died out and wasn't able to afford fixing
or replacing it at the time.

Heck, I sometimes like getting access to older tech devices too, just because
it lets me try out new things. For example, among the smartphones I received
there was an HTC HD2, which I believe has been one of the most hackable
smartphones ever.

~~~
kutkloon7
Those old thinkpads are brilliant, by the way. I also use an old one with a
new SSD. Works like a brand new laptop.

------
comstock
It's not totally clear to me that shreding older models of MacBooks isn't the
environmental sound thing to do.

Laptops have become massively more efficient and consume significantly less
electricity. It some cases it must be better to take them out of use and
replace them with more efficient modern replacements.

~~~
clishem
> At some point

And instead of letting the market decide when a laptop is bound for
replacement, let's force people to destroy it. Of course! Makes perfect sense!
Apple is doing this because newer laptops are more energy efficient! How great
of Apple! Such environment, so wow!

~~~
scarface74
The market has decided.

Case 1: it was a perfectly functioning computer but the owner wanted something
new. They could hand it down, donate it directly to a charity, or sell it
through a company like Gazelle.

I don't think I've gotten rid of a single computer in 10 years. I have 4 pre
2009 computers that I know are still in good use after installing a fresh copy
of Windows 7 on them (thanks to an MSDN license). One of those four is a 2006
era Core Duo Mac Mini. The 2008 era Core 2 Duo is being used now as a Plex
Server.

Case 2: they were returned to Apple under warranty, Apple cleaned them up and
sold them refurbished. Apple has been selling refurbished devices for over 10
years.

Case 3: they weren't worth selling or refurbishing.

------
miguelrochefort
I have found 10 fully-functional MacBook Pros (2009-2012) in my building's
electronic recycling bin. I imagine that's fairly common.

One of those (MacBook Pro 2012 13" Core i7 2.9GHz 8GB RAM) became my main
computer. It's sad to think it would have been shredded had I not saved it.

~~~
quasse
My laptops for the last 7 years now have all been ones I found in the trash or
recycling bins. I've had two macbooks, and HP with an i7, and a decent Acer.

The stuff people trash is mind boggling, it's like they lose all powers of
rational thought when it comes to valuing used electronics. A few hours of
effort for $250+ on Ebay? Nah, trash it!

------
Overtonwindow
Perhaps I am jaded a bit on Apple, just a little, but this sounds like they
want to control the entire lifecycle of their products. They want to design,
manufacturer, sell, repair, and recycle. This seems basic vertical integration
101.

------
therealmarv
For people who don't understand that: In countries outside USA/western world
we reuse things and repair things if they are still usable.

Shredding ALWAYS and calling your company GREEN is a LIE (to the Earth and
customers) and PR joke @Apple.

~~~
eridius
If it's usable, why would you recycle it? You can sell used devices. Apple
even sells refurbished ones themselves. The only reason to actually recycle it
is if it's broken, or so old that nobody wants it anymore.

The problem with taking stuff that's sent for recycling and harvesting it for
parts instead is that's a huge quality issue. Usable devices should be re-
used; if it's being recycled, there must be a reason. And unless you're going
to do an exhaustive quality assurance pass on every single component of the
device, you shouldn't be reselling it to other people. And doing a full
quality assurance pass on every single component is not something that
recyclers can really do. Apple doesn't want its users to end up with devices
that have faulty parts, and the only real way to do that is to require the
recyclers to actually destroy the devices instead of salvaging them.

Also, I find it really strange that the article expressly mentions that hard
drives are shredded. _Of course_ they're shredded! You don't want any risk at
all of someone else recovering data off of those things. Plus the whole
quality issue as mentioned above.

~~~
Osmose
> If it's usable, why would you recycle it? You can sell used devices. Apple
> even sells refurbished ones themselves. The only reason to actually recycle
> it is if it's broken, or so old that nobody wants it anymore.

Because reselling old electronics involves finding buyers, which is not a
zero-effort endeavor. Or maybe you're a company that is replacing a fleet of
devices with upgraded models, and it will literally cost you more money in
paid staff time to sell it than it will to just hand it off to a recycler.

> And unless you're going to do an exhaustive quality assurance pass on every
> single component of the device, you shouldn't be reselling it to other
> people.

Why not? Plenty of people buy old cars that haven't undergone an exhaustive QA
pass. They run fine; some people even repair them themselves.

~~~
scarface74
_Because reselling old electronics involves finding buyers, which is not a
zero-effort endeavor. Or maybe you 're a company that is replacing a fleet of
devices with upgraded models, and it will literally cost you more money in
paid staff time to sell it than it will to just hand it off to a recycler._

Gazelle makes that real easy.

As far as used cars, some of the major metro areas require you to get an
emissions test to renew your tag. If the check engine light comes on or the
OBD signals certain errors you can't renew.

------
userbinator
I wonder how many others also have such strong negative reactions to this sort
of mass destruction. It is hard to explain the feeling, but regardless of the
product or manufacturer, seeing something which most certainly took a lot of
effort to design and create brutally pulverised almost makes me want to cry.

On the other hand, maybe a lot of other people love seeing things destroyed,
as evidenced by the popularity of shredder videos on YouTube, or maybe it's
interesting in the same way as car crashes and other disasters.

~~~
irons
The article's conflation of things being broken down into their component
parts and recycled, vs things being "destroyed", is maddening and tendentious.
Try not to fall for it.

~~~
developer2
The topic and language of the article makes it sound like the author, or the
entity who commissioned the article to be written, stands to benefit
financially from resold parts or refurbishing. The tone is too strong for
something that is not a big deal, except to those who are in the business of
profiting from the reuse/resale of hardware components.

Follow the money. "Won't someone think of the environment" is often a
smokescreen used by those looking to seek policy changes for their own
financial gain. Reading this article does not have me envisioning
environmental motivations; I get the vibe of a lobbyist-like group pushing an
agenda with their own financial incentive in mind.

~~~
fuzzfactor
There is an energy deficit creating workable electronics from raw materials,
but that can be covered by a large flow of retail currency through an
efficient sales and supply chain.

There is an energy surplus remaining after small profits have been extracted
from many repurposed waste materials, especially workable electronics. Not
much retail currency available, only wholesale but at least it's surplus.

However the "market" is balanced to the extreme disadvantage of the
reuse/resale operators, and it looks like Koebler has been reporting things
from that type of source:

Right-to-Repair [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/there-are-
now-11-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/there-are-
now-11-states-considering-bills-to-protect-your-right-to-repair-electronics)

Financial incentive is not always a bad thing, especially when there's no real
greed, just pursuit of excellent business opportunity instead.

Plus financial incentive is not always driven by the desire for financial
gains, sometimes more so the prevention of financial losses. From the poor
soul who's desperate for his gear to be fixed cheap by the neighborhood
hobbyist who only needs an online factory repair manual, to the corporation
that invested heavily in tonnes[0] of top-dollar goods truly having 2x or 3x
workable lifetimes, they would both benefit by participating in a smaller
purchase-to-resale differential that would naturally exist if the secondary
market was allowed to thrive with encouragement.

Cornering the consumers into a pure retail-to-scrap scenario (with a support
lifetime limit for backup) does appear to be more of a major institutional
policy effort disadvantageous to consumers, compared with the Right-to-Repair
operators who appear dedicated to removing as much gear as possible from the
retail-to-scrap cycle and preventing future resources from being tied up
within it. Consumers would theoretically benefit the stronger the right to
repair.

Even when there is not much financial benefit either way, at least the
environment might suffer less.

I agree, it must be a big deal.

[0] Metric

------
kylehotchkiss
Perhaps Apple might not want used goods flowing to India (and China?) any
longer as they want to begin production there and better control prices (and
profits) in the market?

Each iteration of their phones and laptops tends to last a little longer as
even a year or two old iPhone that has been kept in a nice case could be an
effectively new product for the next person after a battery upgrade.

------
mankash666
Anyone still remember the video of a recycling machine Apple showed off at
WWDC a few years back? Turns out it was all PR

~~~
jpalomaki
I checked, the video[1] does not say that the components are being re-used. It
talks about the materials.

At some point there was some articles about how the e-waste ends up in poor
countries where human labor is cheap and workers rights non-existent. Manually
separating the valuable materials creates then huge health risks for those
people. [2]

I don't see the "Liam" as useless PR. I believe it is quite valuable if
companies are actually thinking how they can automatically dissemble the
devices they have produced.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35VtY-
PEPj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35VtY-PEPj0) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM)

------
hydromet
> MacBook hard drives can be removed and replaced.

This is not entirely true. The flash drive on the 2015 and 2016 Retina
MacBooks are "soldered to the logic board" according to iFixit [1], [2]. What
happens to the soldered-in flash drives if a logic board from one of these
MacBooks fails and is swapped out by Apple under, say, AppleCare? is it
desoldered and removed from the logic board, or does the entire MacBook logic
board get shredded in one fell swoop?

[1]
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841)

[2]
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2016+Teardown...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+MacBook+2016+Teardown/62149)

------
fuzzfactor
Well a company having maximum respect for the environment would mandate a
policy of maximum reuse, maximum parts harvesting, and sustainable resale
channels.

On a foundation of well-built long-lasting easily-repairable product.

Only shredding the remainder of parts which could not possibly have their
usefulness extended by anyone.

Especially if there was any toxicity or energy waste in the original
manufacturing process.

It can be seen that the independent repairers and parts harvesters are
probably performing in a more environmentally responsible way than the
manufactuer. Especially from an energy balance point of view.

And on a scale that's overwhelming, the repairers need relatively stronger
rights toward overcoming any imbalance in their disfavor.

A very strong manufacturer can afford to expend energy removing a vast parts
resource from circulation, denying repairers a much larger multiple of
available energy savings instead.

Whenever shredding has higher priority than reuse, it could be a sign of greed
or other misguided management efforts taking precedence over opportunities
provided by true leadership in engineering optimization. Besides having
priority over the environment in any or all locations.

Who knows what other entities might also be contracting with eWaste haulers to
destroy rather than resuse as many tonnes of working W7 & W8 PC's about now as
a modern salvo in their maximum-waste-declaration strategy, or to further an
agenda of removing all machines not having a processor with a remote
management engine.

From another angle it's not unlike a nation minting and shredding its own
currency for its subjects as it sees fit, to control its value relative to
other established currencies, with only secondary regard for the environment
if that.

Hmm, except it's mostly not their own currency they're shredding.

Which brings us to the relative environmental cost of different underlying
currencies after all . . .

When you really follow the money.

------
apple_shred_bnr
From a security standpoint this makes sense. Remember GCHQ destroying the
guardian laptops?

There is potentially more data on these devices than is stored on _just_ the
hard-drives.

[https://theintercept.com/2015/08/26/way-gchq-obliterated-
gua...](https://theintercept.com/2015/08/26/way-gchq-obliterated-guardians-
laptops-revealed-intended/)

[https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2015-6799-how_to_destroy_a_laptop...](https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2015-6799-how_to_destroy_a_laptop_with_top_secrets#video&t=3507)

------
titojankowski
Does anybody follow the "Liam" Apple robots referred to in the article?
Interesting tech, I wonder what an open source take-things-apart bot would
look like. Download recipes and documents and end up with a pile of parts?

More on Liam: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/instead-of-a-
recy...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/instead-of-a-recycling-
robot-apple-should-sell-screwdrivers-that-open-iphones)

------
matt_wulfeck
If Apple replaced my non-working iPhone or laptop I would _absolutely_ want
that peice of hardware shredded when it left my hands. And you should too! The
reality is that it's probably not cost effective for them to pull out the
storage and destroy the data in a reasonable way.

However now that the apfs file system and secure enclave all but guarantee my
data will not be recovered I'm okay with it being recycled.

------
laughfactory
Well this is crappy, Apple. Don't you know that reuse is way better for the
environment than recycling? Maybe we should point this out to them the next
time they claim to care about the environment. Uh, nope, folks, you just care
about the perception you care about the environment.

------
dshi
Kind of off topic, but: I've been trying to shred iphones and macbooks for a
while now for my art. (Much like in "will it blend") I intend to work with the
shredded metal/dust as a pigment. Does anyone have any pointers how to
_actually_ shred these devices?

~~~
Gracana
Maybe you could shred into small chunks first and then use a ball mill with
heavy and hard media. Would be _very_ time consuming and expensive and the
result would be toxic, of course.

~~~
rimunroe
Note to be careful with the grinding media too, as you really don't want
sparking in a chamber filled with aluminum powder.

------
perlpimp
then shenzen is antipod to apple way? this 11 days ago here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14100989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14100989)

------
y0ssar1an
All those devices have user data on flash or hard disk that could be
recovered. I'm glad they're shredding them.

~~~
userbinator
A counterargument and something to ponder: we may have lost a huge amount of
history, if centuries ago people always destroyed their stone
tablets/parchments/etc. thoroughly after using them.

~~~
baobrain
I don't think it really matters in this case since flash degrades much faster
than stone tablets.

Also, I think stone tablets would be more akin to tax records or census data
or great works rather than every day life of someone.

~~~
userbinator
Stone tablets are more rugged than other media, but others have survived;
here's an example someone else posted recently:

[https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/04/17/texting-in-medieval-
time...](https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/04/17/texting-in-medieval-times/)

------
valuearb
"Rare earth" metals aren't rare. Just sayin.

------
watertorock
Sounds wasteful

------
dba7dba
How Apple is known as an environmentally conscious company

    
    
      while [[ 1 == 1 ]]; do
        1. Make products near impossible to repair.
        2. Do not allow parts to be available for purchase for repair.
        3. Brick product if repaired.
        4. Advertise like hexx that Apple is a environmentally conscious company.
      done

~~~
PhantomGremlin
What really bugs me about this is the hypocrisy.

E.g. take Al Gore, self styled environmentalist, and author of books like _An
Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can
Do About It_. He's on the Apple Board of Directors and has been on it for many
many years. He's willing to take their money, but he's also willing to look
the other way when it comes to actual environmentalism, rather than the
appearance thereof.

~~~
y0ssar1an
How is this environmental hypocrisy? The shredding is being done by
_recyclers_.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
The article claims that Apple _forces_ recyclers to do the shredding.

Read some iFixit teardowns of Apple products. Apple goes out of their way to
make their computers very hard to repair. The environmental cost to repair a
computer that is only a few years old is insignificant compared to building a
new one. But that wouldn't help Apple's sales, would it?

------
Tanegashima
These devices are sold by the users to Apple for recycling, Apple can't do
anything with them besides recycling.

Nothing to see here, conspiracy theorists.

------
csense
I've never bought an Apple product in my life. This article makes me feel good
about that decision.

~~~
scarface74
So I assume you buy Android phones from companies that don't keep their
devices updated with the latest OS basically forcing you to buy a new phone if
you want the latest OS/security patches.

Apple has traditional supported iOS devices for at least 3-4 years with OS
updates.

My old first generation iPad 2010 can still get older versions of current apps
from the App Store.

~~~
sitkack
Only when those apps haven't been pulled. Try and buy some of those apps from
a fresh account. Not possible. One can literally not install GoodReader on an
Ipad1 at this point.

~~~
scarface74
Yes the app creator can pull an app or not allow older versions to be
downloaded.

In my case, I came across my old iPad recently, reset it and was able to
install Hulu, Netflix, Crackle, Google Drive, Plex, Spotify,and the CW app

Edit:

I was also able to download Apple's productivity apps -Pages, Numbers, and
Keynote.

~~~
sitkack
You are lucky.

There is a neat workaround for getting old apps onto an old IPad. 1) you can
gift from one ipad to another, 2) you can install the older app if you have
bought the newer version but it wouldn't install. I did this for a friend who
bought an ipad but couldn't get Goodreader (no longer recommend) to install
because they pulled the version that works on IPad1.

I think companies should be required to release the encryption keys or provide
a way to install software on devices that are EoL. So many IPads got
"recycled" that could have been put to better use.

I think Goodreader could do the world a great service by selling a version
that installs on first gen IPads, they make pretty good budget ereaders for
pdf content.

