Apple plans the official obsolescence of a few of their older Macs

MacMerc.com ^ | 02/05/2009

[Swordmaker]

On March 17th, the following items will be officially deemed "vintage" or "obsolete" in Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the United States and retail Apple Stores. After that date, Apple will not provide service parts or documentation for these products and the items cannot be sent in as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers. Time to hit your parents up for some new tech, boys and girls.

Here's the "vintage" list:

• Xserve RAID
• Xserve (Slot Load)
• Xserve (Cluster Node)

...and here's the "obsolete" list:

• PowerBook G4
• Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
• Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver)
• Macintosh Server G4 (Digital Audio)
• Macintosh Server G4 (Quicksilver)

Yup, the G4s are almost done as far as Apple support is concerned.

What's the difference between "vintage" and "obsolete"? It's kind of a legal thing. Service parts for vintage products are only available to repair older Apple products purchased in the state of California, as required by statute.There is no difference between vintage and obsolete products anywhere else.

[blu]

Hey! When I went to the Apple store in December, I swear that’s what the guru used to write up my order!

[Swordmaker]

Yeah, I know. I use it for email, surfing and Word, so it continues to work for me. I am so 20th century in this area.

I tell my clients, whether Windows or Mac, that so long as it does what you need to do, and does it well, nothing is obsolete until it stops doing what you need to do with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I still have some clients plugging away on Windows 98... and nothing has broken in at least three years. They do the job and are pretty much so old that no malware is targeting them.

[Swordmaker]

Wonder how big a role the economy played in this. Must be harder to justify keeping extra hardware supplies around in this environment, especially for older hardware like the G4.

Back in the late '70s, Congress changed a tax rule that once allowed companies to keep obsolete parts inventory on the books at zero cost after it was written off and still expense against it. When they changed that rule to require the recapture of the write offs of inventory over five years old that was still kept in stock, companies hauled tons of spare parts to the dump and it was suddenly very difficult to find things for older models of almost anything. A lot of car companies sold their spare parts inventories to third parties to pay for the recapture.

[Mad-Margaret]

LOL! I have so many things on this list!
How I loved my Power Mac 6400! Especially after I replaced the DOS compatibility card with the G3 Crescendo card. It was so fast!

My iBook G4 remains my primary computer. And it’s going strong. On Tiger.

[D_Idaho]

Wow! Me too! My PB G4 is probably the most reliable computer I have ever owned. I’ve had it for 4 years and never had a freeze or glitch of any kind. If only my workstation at my job had such a record. *sigh*

[sarasota]

My office pc runs Windows 98 and I’ve had no problems either. Thanks for the vote of confidence!

[Uri’el-2012]

PB 1GHz 17" G4 running Leopard.

Flawlessly

[Uri’el-2012]

Download Mactracker

[fortunate sun]

I am posting this message with a PowerBook G4 I purchased in October 2002. The first 4 years of it’s life it was on 24/7 except when restarted for updates. Except for memory related issues, I have the paleo level 512 MB, I have no complaints. I can’t recall what I paid for it, the receipt is up in the attic.
This machine owes me nothing.

[N3WBI3]

Ive noticed that after I went up to tiger my performance is shot on my powerbook..

[TheBattman]

Interesting that the PowerBook G4 is listed, but not the iBook G4... Or is that being included in the umbrella of the PB G4? I have the last version of the iBook G4 12”...

[Terpfen]

Gubmint knows best!

[Tribune7]

Hey, I actually have an iMac G3 still in use.

[Swordmaker]

SHHHHHHH! Don’t tell it it’s obsolete!

[fortunate sun]

I haven’t had any problems with Tiger ... knock

[SunkenCiv]

I’d heard somewhere (maybe in an FR thread?) that G4 support will be gone in the next dot-number version of OS X.

[Silly]

Good to know. Thanks as always for the wealth of Apple news.

[Richard Kimball]

It's not that big of a deal. Once any computer gets past five or so, you just use it until it drops. Even if they made the parts available, would you spend the bucks?

If you did decide to repair it, you'd just scavenge parts anyway.

No software upgrades might be an issue, but for web browsers, word processors and email, you can live with what's available.

[Sir_Ed]

I use my G4 Quicksilver all the time...runs like a champ!

Ed

[Swordmaker]

I’d heard somewhere (maybe in an FR thread?) that G4 support will be gone in the next dot-number version of OS X.

Reports have it (read rumors for sure) that OSX.6 Snow Leopard will be Intel Mac only.