Roger Fingas
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
William Gallagher
Marko Zivkovic
Amber Neely
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Malcolm Owen
25 Comments
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. :)
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.)
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.
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. :-/