We are about 3 weeks away from when Apple introduced iOS 27 to the world at WWDC26, and it’s still safe to say: this is an incredible update. Is incredibly efficientand aside from a few small quirks and a bit of battery drain, it seems much more usable than iOS 26.5.
While iOS 27 is compatible with all devices running iOS 26, the same is not true for iPadOS. Several older iPadOS 26 devices will not receive the iPadOS 27 update, which I think is a shame, and Apple should mitigate this in one way or another.
iPadOS 27 device support
iPadOS 27 drops support for all devices with an A12 or A12X chipset, including:
While yes, all of these devices are 6-8 years old and Apple definitely gave them a long lifespan of software support; Most people can agree that iPadOS 26 is not a good place to leave old devices.
I think there are two ways Apple could realistically approach this.
Allow iPadOS 18 downgrades
This would be the easiest solution to implement of all: simply letting iPadOS 26 users revert to a higher-performing operating system.
At this time, Apple unsigns older versions of its operating systems, making it impossible to downgrade to older firmware once you pass the signing window. Right now, Apple only signs iOS 26.5 for most supported devices.
This decision makes sense for security reasons, since ideally Apple only wants you to be able to run the most stable version of iOS. However, there is a hole in this logic: Apple is still releasing security updates for iOS 18.
iPadOS 18.7.9 released a little over a month ago along with iPadOS 26.5 and brings many of the same security patches to older iOS devices. So it’s not that iPadOS 18.7.9 is an inherently insecure operating system that isn’t worthy of running on A12 devices that don’t support iPadOS 27.
I can’t imagine the everyday user would bother downgrading their device, but at the same time I don’t see why it shouldn’t be an option for those who want to adopt it, at least as long as Apple continues to release iOS 18 security updates.
Just give them iPadOS 27
This would be unprecedented, and I think it’s incredibly unlikely that Apple will decide to add support for devices they’ve already decided to abandon, despite public outcry. Although it’s worth noting: it’s not 100% unprecedented.
In 2022, with Stage Manager in iPadOS 16, many people in the Apple community were upset by the fact that Stage Manager required an iPad with an M1 or newer chip, which at the time were very few. However, later in the beta cycle, Apple relented and brought stage director toward 2018 and iPad Pro 2020 models.
It was a little more limited in capacity, as those iPads couldn’t support external displays like the M1 models could. Anyway, Apple changed course on its device compatibility requirements here.
Would Apple do that again? Only time will tell. I’d like to imagine there’s some engineering reason for not wanting to support these older devices, although from the outside it’s hard to find an obvious one.
Maybe full window support works too poorly with the A12 GPU and 4GB RAM. If that’s the case, I think users would be okay with the feature being limited slightly, in exchange for their iPad feeling much smoother overall.
What is your position on this issue? Do you have an older iPad A12 that doesn’t support iPadOS 27? Speak in the comments.
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