I love the H9, strongly dislike the NON android support issue, BUT I understand. can I buy an original ipad and use it with the control app? I can get older ipads and mini's for $50-100, and since I wont use the dumb mac product for anything else……….

Yes, we still support iOS 5 which is what works with the first iPad.  Apple has been making it harder for us to continue to support iOS 5 though with their changes to Xcode.  So, it's likely in the coming year that H9 Control will continue to run on iOS 5 but we won't be able to update it any longer.