I felt guilty about the iPad 2 under my bed; owned for such a short span of time, before it became "unusable." iOS 6 lagged, iOS 7 was bad (but better than an iPhone 4 on the same,) and iOS 8 really slaughtered it. I see so many of these as POS stations nowadays (at food trucks and such) and they're horribly laggy and crashy even in that role. I updated this thing to new iOS releases only for comedy. It was a crashy, lagging mess.
Maybe a year ago I tried a few of the "standard" things (reduced motion, clear multitasking apps...) BS. I decided to make a more concerted effort to get it working; guess what? It's not lightning fast, but it's now usable; I'm sure someone like my mom or grandma could use it no prob. In fact, I can actually use it for basic tasks such as web browsing, email, Pages editing, streaming video and with my audio interface for recording guitar tracks (none of that was possible a while back. I couldn't even scroll or type unless I wanted to see the result 30 seconds later.)
I'm pretty alarmed; Safari actually operates and scrolls with remarkable smoothness (BUT don't open too many tabs!) More complex websites do suffer by crashing almost immediately, but not subjecting to me lag; I can pop Safari right back open. Gestures (back/view tabs/app switch in general) are very smooth as well. The battery still lasts forever.
I outlined in bold the best changes, below; notably I didn't restore or start from scratch. The more embarrassing change I made with the best practical effect was clearing the Safari cache. I never did, because there are five websites I regularly check and leave open (and have, since I got this in 2012) so I figured it wasn't as if I had a million tabs open but... Clearing it once and keeping web navigation to one tab at a time REALLY sped it up. I also deleted unused apps, although it's still about 8 gigs full (out of 16.)
Now I don't have to spend more money on a new one
Of course I'm sort of worried about getting hacked...
-Notification Center: Full off
-Widgets: None
-Spotlight Search full disabled (BIG improvement)
-Gestures: On
-Accessibility: Limited motion/transparency
-Background App Refresh: Full off
-Wallpaper: Exists
-Messages/FaceTime: Signed out
-Automatic Downloads: No
-Location Services: Off
-Diagnostics: Unsent
-Ad tracking: Limit
-Keyboard: autocorrect off, no shortcut/predictive (BIG improvement)
-Safari: No tabs/favorites bar visible, pop-ups blocked, no search/Safari suggestion or quick website search/preload (BIG improvement,) Autofill off, "do not track," block cookies
-Javascript: On (improves website performance)
-News: No story previews
-iCloud photo sharing/library: Off
-Push: Full off, with manual fetch for Mail and Push only for iCloud (in reality this doesn't seem to make a huge impact... I'm not sure what "push" for iCloud even does since I don't have email accounts synced to it)
Maybe a year ago I tried a few of the "standard" things (reduced motion, clear multitasking apps...) BS. I decided to make a more concerted effort to get it working; guess what? It's not lightning fast, but it's now usable; I'm sure someone like my mom or grandma could use it no prob. In fact, I can actually use it for basic tasks such as web browsing, email, Pages editing, streaming video and with my audio interface for recording guitar tracks (none of that was possible a while back. I couldn't even scroll or type unless I wanted to see the result 30 seconds later.)
I'm pretty alarmed; Safari actually operates and scrolls with remarkable smoothness (BUT don't open too many tabs!) More complex websites do suffer by crashing almost immediately, but not subjecting to me lag; I can pop Safari right back open. Gestures (back/view tabs/app switch in general) are very smooth as well. The battery still lasts forever.
I outlined in bold the best changes, below; notably I didn't restore or start from scratch. The more embarrassing change I made with the best practical effect was clearing the Safari cache. I never did, because there are five websites I regularly check and leave open (and have, since I got this in 2012) so I figured it wasn't as if I had a million tabs open but... Clearing it once and keeping web navigation to one tab at a time REALLY sped it up. I also deleted unused apps, although it's still about 8 gigs full (out of 16.)
Now I don't have to spend more money on a new one
Of course I'm sort of worried about getting hacked...-Notification Center: Full off
-Widgets: None
-Spotlight Search full disabled (BIG improvement)
-Gestures: On
-Accessibility: Limited motion/transparency
-Background App Refresh: Full off
-Wallpaper: Exists
-Messages/FaceTime: Signed out
-Automatic Downloads: No
-Location Services: Off
-Diagnostics: Unsent
-Ad tracking: Limit
-Keyboard: autocorrect off, no shortcut/predictive (BIG improvement)
-Safari: No tabs/favorites bar visible, pop-ups blocked, no search/Safari suggestion or quick website search/preload (BIG improvement,) Autofill off, "do not track," block cookies
-Javascript: On (improves website performance)
-News: No story previews
-iCloud photo sharing/library: Off
-Push: Full off, with manual fetch for Mail and Push only for iCloud (in reality this doesn't seem to make a huge impact... I'm not sure what "push" for iCloud even does since I don't have email accounts synced to it)
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