It is with the greatest pleasure that I’ve installed iOS 8.1.1 on my iPad 3. It’s literally breathed new life into by beloved certainly not yet ready for retirement pad.

Ever since I’ve installed the first iOS 8 beta in June, my iPad 3 was lagging like there was no tomorrow. I’ve experienced this before with beta versions, and it’s just something you live with. But when the iOS 8 general release came out, this behaviour hasn’t change.

At first I felt that with the arrival of faster processors, Apple had deliberately neutered yesterday’s tech treasures so that users would get fed up and simply buy new equipment. After all, they’re in the business of selling technology, not saturating the market with everlasting lightbulbs.

iOS 8.1 came out and did not resolve my iPad 3 issues, such as:

• characters appear several seconds after they are typed
• animations stutter as if in the silent movie era

However, iOS 8.1.1 is a blessing for me. We’ve held off on upgrading every device (such as our iPad 2 and iPhone 4s devices) because if it ain’t broken, let’s not try to fix it. Besides, it’s good to have older versions of iOS for testing.

Not everyone’s as happy as I am: website GottaBeMobile reports problems for users who had a good experience in iOS 8.1, who’s performances have suffered with the latest upgrade – in particular with the iPhone 5.

It’s a shame that ultimately we have to sweat every time that upgrade icon comes up: will it make our lives really better, or will an update make it worse? Ever since iOS 6 it’s been like that, and it looks like this trend is not going to stop anytime soon.

For now I’m enjoying my iPad 3 again. I haven’t had that pleasure in a while!

• http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1758
• https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniOS/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008246
• https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/releasenotes/Miscellaneous/RN-iOSSDK-8.1/index.html
• http://www.gottabemobile.com/2014/11/24/best-best-buy-black-friday-2014-deals/