Apple adds 2008-2009 Macs & more to list of 'vintage and obsolete' products

Apple on Tuesday updated its official list of "vintage and obsolete" products, used to determine whether or not the company will repair or otherwise support any hardware problems.

Under Apple definitions, "vintage" products have been out of production for more than five and less than seven years, meaning that limited support may be available in some regions. In California, for instance, Apple is legally required to provide support for Macs, iPhones, and iPods.

Newly vintage-labeled products include:

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009)
iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)
MacBook Air (Mid 2009)
Mac Pro (Early 2009)
Time Capsule 802.11n (2nd generation)

The above products have some support in the U.S. and Turkey, but are considered fully obsolete in Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

According to Apple, "obsolete" devices were last manufactured over seven years ago, and the company has discontinued hardware support for them without exception, for instance cutting off part supplies to third-party repair firms.

Products that are now globally unsupported include:

Apple Cinema Display (23-inch, DVI, Early 2007)
Apple Cinema Display (30-inch DVI)
MacBook (13-inch, Early 2008)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2008)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008)
Time Capsule 802.11n (1st generation)
iPod touch with Jan SW UPG 32GB

25 Comments

sflocal 17 Years · 6148 comments

About 9 years ago

It's interesting that my "vintage" late-2009 27" quad-core i7 iMac is considered "obsolete". Only last week I finally had to replace a faulty CPU fan, other than that... it's still humming-away as my office desktop. It's build like a tank, and unless something catastrophic occurs to it, it will continue to be my pride-and-joy... until I get home and use my one-month-old i7 5K iMac. :)

I hope future OSX releases will still be available for my machine. I installed a 1TB SSD in a year ago and with that, it's still a speed-demon.

daven 17 Years · 727 comments

sflocal said:

It's interesting that my "vintage" late-2009 27" quad-core i7 iMac is considered "obsolete". Only last week I finally had to replace a faulty CPU fan, other than that... it's still humming-away as my office desktop. It's build like a tank, and unless something catastrophic occurs to it, it will continue to be my pride-and-joy... until I get home and use my one-month-old i7 5K iMac. :)
I hope future OSX releases will still be available for my machine. I installed a 1TB SSD in a year ago and with that, it's still a speed-demon.

I'm happy with my 'early 2009' 20" iMac. Everything works fine with the exception I think that the hard drive may be starting to go. I may replace it with an SSD and I should be good for some time.

1 Like · 0 Dislikes

quadra 610 17 Years · 6687 comments

Early 2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch (with 6GB RAM) still in flawless condition and running El Capitan very nicely, while driving a 24 inch Sammy display (at 16:10 res, too.)

21yr_mac_user 17 Years · 85 comments

Early 2008 Mac Pro here - 8 core, upgraded with 16 GB RAM, USB 3 card, upgraded apple

ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card running 2x 24" monitors,

1TB PCI SSD boot drive, 3x smaller SSDs (win 10 etc), 11 TB total large hard drives internal storage. It's still a relevant beast, and I don't want the un-upgradable new mac pro with no internal storage, and I don't want a laptop based iMac that I can't upgrade and have to junk the monitor after a few years. I just want a medium priced small form factor desktop i7. (analogous to a Dell Optiplex 9020 / XE2 small form factor which I support for another business). I'm sitting tight until it dies or apple releases something I want.

pscooter63 14 Years · 1072 comments

I considered resurrecting my niece's early-2008 Macbook (dead HD), but it only supports 6gb, and can't be upgraded past Lion. This news cinches it, I guess. :-/