Oh well… bought Roon and will be selling my iPad soon. For now it will be remoteless and I’ll get there piece by piece.
My approach as well … and isn’t that what this hobby is all about? 
My household has a more basic ipad2, but I concur with the sentiments of this @KnockKnock post. If the full Roon experience cannot be offered for the earlier iOS devices then a more basic remote may be the answer. After all there will be times when we just need to compile a play queue and focus on listening to the music. At other times we may well want to browse and explore. When in “Browse and Explore” mode I very much doubt that there is much serious listening going on.
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I ran into a similar situation when Sonos discontinued support for the original iPad 1. I had the original iPad working fine as a remote until just a few weeks ago when there was a Sonos update for the hardware and then the latest Sonos IOS App would no longer work. Kinda’ frustrating. But in actuality Apple pretty much discontinued support of this original model when they limited their IOS on it to IOS 5.1.1. But it was still nice to have it as a Sonos remote. So now these old iPads are relegated to reading email and web browsing along with some apps still supported. I have an iPad 2 and 4 as well and I was hoping the 4 would work on Roon. So I’ll find a deal on an Air or Air 2 soon. May be some good buys on new/refurbs after Apple’s Sept 9th event. But still not an unreasonable idea to have some type of limited usability for Roon on earlier iPads. Also good to read that Roon’s working on a basic IOS app for latest iPhones.
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Hi Chris. Thanks, I´m sure it works great. I have just regretted it terribly every time I bought something else then these stuff ;=)
KnockKnock
me either, and I dont have 5.500 Kroners (approx 750 Euro) to spend right now…
And as written somewhere else of some clever guy (KnockKnock ?) I mostly need a remote for stop/play. Playlist and stuff I make on my iMac 2 meters away ;=)
KnockKnock
Since the Iphone 6+ has OpenGL ES 3.0 support, will it be compatible with the IOS app?
yes, but the ui needs to be fully redesigned for a phone form factor unless you want to click with a toothpick
Lucky to have a lot of outlets for refurb and used iPads in the states. Cowboom.com yesterday had iPad Air 2 with 64 gb preowned for $300. I’ve seen excellent buys on Air and Air2 new and used recently so search for discounts. Still doesn’t take away pain of loss of use of iPad 4 for Roon but there are deals to be had. Just saw GameStop.com posting with good deals as well on preowned. Bestbuy also has discounted new Airs today. Also watch dealnews.com for pricing. Just trying to ease the pain.
To be honest I’d rather click with a toothpick than buy a new IPad just to run the Roon app.
Do you have an approximate ETA on when to expect an IPhone 6 Plus compatible app?
There is a hint there if you look hard enough.
There is no defined schedule for phone support. Work is being done to design the UI on that form factor now.
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There seems to be some concerns about the iPad requirements and how we may have handled letting you all know about the requirements.
Firstly, I’d like to apologize if any of your feel tricked, or in any way lead on about iPad 1-4 and Mini 1 support. It was not our intention to deceive you, or even to keep you in the dark about this.
We don’t like to burden the world with details of our development efforts when they are in flux. However, we did have a good idea early on about the iOS limitations. We knew that iPhone support was not coming, because the user interface required a large screen. We also had a good idea that the earlier generation iPads wouldn’t make the cut, and we even spoke freely about this on the community site. For example, 8 days after we launched, back on May 20th: Release date for iOS App? – @Rik made a very good prediction on supported iPads and I backed him on it as spot-on.
We worked on trying to get iPad 3/4 support all the way until the end. iPad 2 and below would be impossible due to such little RAM on those devices. In the end, the OpenGLES 3 limit became too great of a development effort to bypass, so we went with the next generation of devices. This was a tough decision, especially because own households have multiple iPads that were left unsupported. Yes, we could have worked through it, but we made a call that left those devices unsupported, so we could continue on Roon’s feature roadmap.
Unfortunately, all this means that our product will not work for some subset of the people out there. This is the reality of software development and all I can offer is that we will be here for you to re-trial once you do have compatible hardware.
Future Roon developments will continue to push technology forward as we add more features that stress the hardware to it’s limits. We hope to have to obsolete hardware support rarely, but I’m sure it’ll happen. When it does, we will allow a mechanism to not upgrade to the latest software or to run in a degraded mode.
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Thanks for the extra explanation!
Good thing these iPads hold their value really well, I just sold mine and now it wasn’t that bad having to get a new one. I do get what people where saying about ‘snappier’ now too
Found a workaround for my old C2D MacMini (google: SFOTT) which is now running Mavericks and RoonServer nicely so it’s just waiting for the App now.
Thanks, @danny, for the explanation. It’s true that I’m a little upset about my “orphaned” 3rd-gen iPad, but that’s not directed at Roon; it’s more that I won’t be able to use the iOS app as soon as it’s released. I completely understand that as developers you need to make hard decisions about this kind of thing, and once I have my new iPad, it’ll no longer be an issue for me.
Keep up the good work.
Not compatible with a 18 month old device (iPad 4)? I wasn’t expecting that.
iPad 4 (retina was released) November 2, 2012 so nearly three years old.
It was still being sold until near the end of last year though I guess, so may be considered relatively new from a buyers POV.
Some iPad mini 1’s were still being sold this Summer.
Yes but when you buy tech it is related to it’s release date, not when you buy it. It’s not like normal timescales more like dog years but worse, so 1 Tech year = 30 normal years 
Says the man with innumerable iPods with spinning disks and layers of iPod Touches, an iPad 2 now all useless for new apps and scenarios.