I’d love to use my own 1st gen iPad as a Roon Remote, but yours is unfortunately an incorrect assessment, inasmuch as there are good business reasons not to build today’s software on hardware from 10 years ago (not that they’re morally valid, but many are technologically valid). If I’m not mistaken, in the case of Roon, there’s display stuff that simply can’t be done on older iPads for hardware reasons. Maybe @danny can explain better.
Not to play Apple fanboi or anything, but they happen to not be as bad as the multiple Android vendors, many of which simply don’t release updates (it’s gotten better, but still). And let’s not get started with embedded stuff (software is expensive, so as long as updates aren’t a selling point, why bother… This of course isn’t everywhere, you have companies (Lumin and @wklie come to mind) that work extra hard to fight obsolescence, but I’ve yet to hear a valid technological explanation as to why RAAT can’t run on a 1st gen Naim MU-SO QB, for example).
That is, unfortunately, incorrect as well, in the sense that to the best I can tell, Apple has made no such promise beyond iOS 12. Looks to me like they got themselves into a nasty lawsuit over battery life, and threw customers a bone.
The one thing that’ll make these guys (be it Apple or Google or anyone else) change is legislation, the EU has pushed them a little bit, but it’s still farcically inadequate. So want to change things ? Vote. Or maybe sue, which is more expensive but it does appear to get the message across.