Is Your Mac or Apple Product Considered Vintage or Obsolete?
Macs—and Apple products in general—tend to last a long time. It’s not unusual to see someone happily using an eight-year-old MacBook Pro. As much as it’s environmentally responsible to use electronics as long as possible, doing so may reduce your productivity or leave your business in a precarious situation if a hardware failure forces an upgrade at an inconvenient time.
Another factor to consider is whether or not you can get service and parts for your older device. It’s easy to assume that Apple will fix whatever you bring in, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. Apple has policies surrounding how long it guarantees to provide service and parts, which is reasonable. No one would expect Apple to repair a 128K Mac from 1984—many repair techs hadn’t even been born then.
All Apple products fall into one of three categories: current, vintage and obsolete.
- Current products. Apple defines these as those sold within the last five years. These devices are eligible for service and parts from Apple, Apple Authorized Service Providers and Independent Repair Providers. In other words, if you bought your Mac new within the last five years, you won’t have any problem getting Apple to fix it.
Things get trickier with the other two categories:
- Vintage. Apple considers a product to be vintage when the company stopped selling it more than five and less than seven years ago. During this two-year window, Apple says that service and parts may be obtained, subject to parts availability.
- Obsolete. As you’d expect, a product is considered obsolete when Apple hasn’t sold it for more than seven years. Apple will not service obsolete products, and service providers cannot order parts for them.
There is one exception to these policies. Mac laptops may be eligible for an extended battery-only repair period for up to 10 years from when the product was last distributed for sale, subject to parts availability. That makes sense since a new battery may be all an old MacBook needs to keep working.
Apple maintains a page listing all vintage and obsolete products. To determine which Mac model you have, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. For iPhones, iPads and iPods, Apple provides pages explaining how to identify your model.
Apple’s Vintage and Obsolete Policies
Apple’s policies surrounding vintage and obsolete products shouldn’t make a huge difference to most users. That’s because once a Mac hits five years old, it’s likely that upgrading to a new model will provide significant benefits. Many businesses prefer a three-year replacement cycle because they’ve determined that’s the sweet spot where increasing support costs and lower performance make it worth selling the old Mac and buying a new one that’s faster and more reliable.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with keeping a Mac longer if it meets your needs and you don’t mind spending more on support. At some point, though, products in the vintage and obsolete categories are living on borrowed time.
About arobasegroup
arobasegroup has been consulting with clients and advising the best use of Apple Technology since 1998. We listen to our customers and solve problems by addressing their specific, unique needs; we never rely on a one-size-fits-all solution or require them to use a specific product. arobasegroup is your advocate in all things related to information technology. Contact us to learn how we can help: info@arobasegroup.com.
Keep Up-to-Date: An Invitation
Keep on top of all the latest Apple-related news via our social media feed. When you follow us on our social media channels, you will always be up-to-date with the most relevant Apple news and have easy access to tips and useful articles relevant for Apple, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch users. You won’t want to miss these articles and suggestions. Please follow arobasegroup on LinkedIn by tapping here. Thank you!