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Apple plans the official obsolescence of a few of their older Macs
MacMerc.com ^ | 02/05/2009

Posted on 02/05/2009 8:24:08 AM PST by 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:

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

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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: apple; mac; macintel; macintosh
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To: Swordmaker
That sucks !

Personally, I have quite a bit of Apple equipment here at home. I have several LCD ADC Monitors such as a 23", 20" and several 17" ones, a few cubes and an old G4 Sawtooth. I also have a few iBooks as well all the way back to the G3 300 MHz clamshell models and a few CRT iMacs.

I am starting to go into the Intel Macs and bought a Mac Pro last month. I populated the four hard drive slots with 1 TB drives. On that machine, the first drive is Mac OX Leopard, the second is set for VMWare Fusion partitions and the last two drives are a RAID striped where I have DVD images.

From the information floating around, I see that Snow Leaopard will be for Intel macs only. Eventually the older machines will go to being Linux only in due time.

If I buy any future used Macs, I will not even consider the G5 series.
41 posted on 02/05/2009 7:39:06 PM PST by CORedneck
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To: 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?

Not I. The Hard drives are getting a couple of sigma's beyond their mean failure points at seven years... as are other mechanical parts. I have had three of my clients' first generation 20" G5 iMacs fail in the past three months due to poofed logic board capacitors... these apparently were part of a bad lot of capacitors. Unfortunately for my clients, Apple's two year extended logic board warranty for this problem expired on December 14, 2008... and the first of the three G5 iMacs failed on the 20th. ;^(>

Quote to repair was $928 each... bought refurbed 20" iMacs for $999 each to replace them as they failed. I'm going sell the dead hulks on eBay for parts...

42 posted on 02/05/2009 9:20:16 PM PST by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: XeniaSt

I just bought a 17” Powerbook on eBay the other day! It’s my first Mac. I know it’s basically obsolete but I’m not a “power user” so I’m not concerned. I just want to run Garage Band on it to record some of my guitar stuff. This ‘Book is the 1.67Ghz model with the hi-res screen — the final evolution of the series. I think it’s destined to be a classic, like a ‘67 Camaro, so I’m going to hang onto it. Plus the thing is a work of art, and art doesn’t become obsolete.


43 posted on 02/05/2009 9:34:33 PM PST by Yardstick
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To: All
OK, I broke down and called my Apple store about my 2 500mb dual usb iBooks. The dude actually laughed, but then put the service guy on. He also laughed, but said he'd look at them and see if either was worth "saving". Nobody gets that my Quark is on there, as is a lot of our busines adv stuff.

So, I took them in, the guys all laughed at me and the notes I attached to each iBook, so I paid them back by buying a sleeve for my 17" MBpro. Note to Apple Fangirls....they are actually making pretty sleeves and cases...pinks and oranges and flowers and cool stuff! Not quite up to Mango Tango standards, but still nice. Huh! I showed them!!!

(Can't wait to hear from the service dept. I'm betting they say "oh, these aren't worth repairing, why don't you just buy a new one?" Then I'll be all "Dude, I gave you 3 grand for a new one last year, I won't get a new one for another 5 years. Fix the antiques! It's only obsolete when it's only capable of being a paperweight and when I say it's obsolete!")

44 posted on 02/06/2009 4:14:45 PM PST by blu (Last one out of Michigan, please turn off the lights.)
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To: N3WBI3

So am I....;^(


45 posted on 02/07/2009 10:27:35 AM PST by 2nd amendment mama ( www.2asisters.org | Self defense is a basic human right!)
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To: Yardstick
I just bought a 17” Powerbook on eBay the other day! It’s my first Mac.

Congratulations !

I expect to use mine for years to come.

I fear Leopard is the last for the PowerPC however.

I have heard that Snow Leopard OS X 10.6
will be Intel 64 bit only.

I started with the PB in 2003.

I now have a MacPro,
20" Intel iMac for my wife.
And a 17"flat screen G4 iMac for the kitchen.

All running Leopard flawlessly.


46 posted on 02/07/2009 11:43:15 AM PST by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 78:35 And they remembered that God was their ROCK, And the Most High God their Redeemer.)
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To: Swordmaker
Any Mac techies want to lend a hand here? My older G5 just had its video card replaced (it was a used part but it saved money over a new card) and since then the machine often doesn't want to recover from sleep mode. The screen just stays black, and I have to kill the power button and reboot. Even then, sometimes I get only a blank blue screen and have to do it again. Then everything’s fine untl I leave the room too long and it hits the sleep mode again.

I'm running OSX 10.4.11 on a 1.6 Ghz machine with 1.25 GB SDRAM. Any ideas?

47 posted on 02/22/2009 10:12:53 PM PST by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie
Any Mac techies want to lend a hand here? My older G5 just had its video card replaced (it was a used part but it saved money over a new card) and since then the machine often doesn't want to recover from sleep mode. The screen just stays black, and I have to kill the power button and reboot. Even then, sometimes I get only a blank blue screen and have to do it again. Then everything’s fine untl I leave the room too long and it hits the sleep mode again.

Hmmmmmm. First, I'd pull the graphic card and re-seat it. Perhaps it is a bad connection on the edge connections that fails when it is not warm enough... i.e. after it's been asleep a while. Then there also may be a jumper on the video card that allows it to be awakened from sleep that is not set correctly. The other possibility is that your replacement card is just defective. What kind of monitor are you using? Perhaps your solution is to not let the computer sleep but use the monitor's own sleep routines put it to sleep after a specific amount of time... if it has them.

48 posted on 02/22/2009 11:22:14 PM PST by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: Swordmaker

It’s a Apple Studio Monitor, I think it’s called. One of the older ones with the clear plastic housing.


49 posted on 02/22/2009 11:34:44 PM PST by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie

A LCD unit, flat screen, not an older CRT model.


50 posted on 02/22/2009 11:35:20 PM PST by SoCal Pubbie
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To: SoCal Pubbie
It’s a Apple Studio Monitor, I think it’s called. One of the older ones with the clear plastic housing.

The Apple Studio Monitor was a CRT with the transparent plastic casing... the flat panel displays with clear plastic were called Apple Cinema Displays. Either way, they don't have built in sleep mode, depending on the Mac they were connected to handle that, so that idea's out.

51 posted on 02/22/2009 11:41:50 PM PST by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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To: SoCal Pubbie
A LCD unit, flat screen, not an older CRT model.

These are powered through the ADC (Apple Display Connector) and essentially when they are put to sleep, the power is discontinued by the computer. I am leaning toward your used card being defective.

52 posted on 02/22/2009 11:45:14 PM PST by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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