I was on those boards (the Apple forums) and what it came down to is that some people needed to reset their iPad to factory default condition by means of iTunes (not by way of the “Preferences” on the iPad). This would be a “clean install” thereby getting rid of corrupted files that had accumulated over time and/or any other corrupted system files.
In addition to that, it was reported that there were several apps that had not been updated yet and that they were causing severe problems with the system ... one such app being the Wall Street Journal app (but there were others, too). This was a problem caused by those developers of those apps.
BUT ... there was one thing that all users needed to do, if they were having some kind of problem. They needed to eliminate any possible cause being from a hardware failure (there were some of those). To do that, one needed to have Apple run their hardware check to verify it was okay. This is really the first step in the troubleshooting process, then you go to the other steps.
The bottom line is that the iPad 2 will run exactly as it was designed to run when it was new. Don’t expect the iPad 2 to run like the new iPads do, because those are DIFFERENT machines and are much more powerful machines, and have more DEMANDING operating systems to run ... like iOS 8.
The problem I see with a lot of iPad 2 owners is that they somehow expect their hardware to run like the “new hardware” of today ... which is really a super-stupid notion to have in one’s head ... :-) ... [iPad 2 will run like it was designed to run, when it was new, and NOT according to the new iPads of today].
Unfortunately, the apps primarily affected were Apple’s own browser (Safari) and the Apple e-mail app. NOt third party apps. Also, I’ve never owned or used any Apple tablet than then I-Pad II so I’m not comparing it with any newer version. I just wish it ran like it did when I bought it. That’s the only comparison I’m relying on.