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Obsolete or Vintage Apple Gear, What Does It Mean?

By Leo Koutsoubos, Technical Support Engineer
June, 2011

On June 14, 2011 a number of Apple's product lines will be listed as 'Obsolete'. This means that Apple Service will no longer carry any parts for these machines. There is widespread confusion as to what certain labels mean and how they apply to Apple service parts. So let me explain what Apple means by these terms.

Vintage

This means that Apple has turned off repairers and suppliers. In short Apple is depleting whatever parts are still in stock and once these stock are depleted the machine is then listed as 'obsolete'. For example the Power Mac G5 towers were listed as 'Vintage' for some time. Over the past year I was able to order PSUs for them among other items (excluding MLBs, CPUs, etc). When a machine is marked as 'Vintage' Apple no longer provides any technical support for that product. However Apple Service does take some parts and place them in their repair depots in California (so they are only able to service vintage equipment of customers in California).

Obsolete

This means that Apple provides no parts nor any form of technical support for the product. But what about Apple Service support hardware for 7 years? It is covered but only if the product was sold in California USA and likewise serviced in the state it was purchased in.

For everyone outside of California, Apple has no legal obligation to continue offering parts for older equipment. Apple says it does attempt to supply parts for as long as it can, or best effort, but the reality is that the serviceability of older equipment is getting more expensive and the lifecycle of machines is getting shorter.

So in a nutshell Apple will support hardware during its legal obligations, i.e. adding 3 years from the last shipping date of a run out model of machine (taking APP coverage into account) and you can expect another 2 years beyond that. Currently Apple is still providing parts for machines that are 5-6 years old but be warned that Apple's Vintage/Obsolete lists are getting bigger every couple of months.

Below is a list of machines that are currently listed 'Vintage' and will be converted to 'Obsolete' as of June 14, 2011...

Macintosh Obsolete in AP/CN/EU/JP/LA/U.S. and retail Apple Stores:

  • Apple Studio Display (17-inch LCD)
  • iBook G4
  • iBook G4 (14-inch)
  • PowerMac G4 (Mirrored Drive Door 2003)
  • eMac (ATI Graphics)
  • Apple Cinema HD Display (23-inch)
  • PowerBook G4 (15-inch FW800)
  • PowerMac G5
  • PowerBook G4 (17-inch 1.33Ghz)
  • PowerBook G4 (12-inch DVI)
  • Apple Cinema Display (20-inch)

My best advice is to roll over your Mac equipment well before it gets to 5 years old. Digistor can help you to migrate your Mac gear and provide options for transferring data on your old Mac such as putting the HD from an old G5 into your new Mac Pro or putting it into an external HD enclosure.