Got an older iMac or iPhone? Pretty soon, Apple will stop offering you repair options.
Image: Quentin Meulepas
Every product has its moment in the sun, and to be fair to Apple it at least keeps the supply lines for older products open for a fairly considerable amount of time. According to 9to5Mac, Apple’s going to discontinue repair support — which you’d still have to pay for anyway — on the following models on June 9:
- iPhone 3G
- iPhone 3G (China)
- iPhone 3GS
- iPhone 3GS (China)
- Original iPhone
- MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid-2009)
- iMac (20-inch, Mid 2007)
- iMac (24-inch, Mid 2007)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.4/2.2GHZ)
- MacBook Pro (17-inch, 2.4GHZ)
- AirPort Express Base Station
- Xserve (Late 2006)
- Xserve RAID (SFP, Late 2004)
Some of these products technically become what Apple refers to as “Vintage”, but that’s a label that only applies in California and, oddly, Turkey, where they’re obliged to continue offering longer term support. Equally, this is a global list, and some products were in fact already obsolete here. Apple’s just firmly stamping down its seal of redundancy on them.
Australian consumer law states that a product has to be fit for purpose for a “reasonable” amount of time without laying down details on what “reasonable” actually means. That being said, given the expected lifespan of mobiles and laptops, I suspect you’d have a very hard time arguing that an eight-year-old desktop or six-year-old laptop hadn’t had a decent service life. Even if you were a seriously late buyer of the iPhone 3GS, which Apple stopped selling back in 2012, you’d have a hard time arguing the case for any kind of extended repair support.
A bunch of iPhones and Macs are about to become ‘obsolete’ in June, losing Apple repair support [9To5Mac]
Comments
One response to “Mac Attack: Older Macs And iPhones That Apple Will Stop Repairing Soon”
Repair of 6-11yr old tech is rarely a financially viable option for the end user.