Apple MacBook plastic model now labelled obsolete, some iPhones too
Apple updated the company’s official list of vintage and obsolete products on Monday. The Mac maker included the 2009 MacBook Pro variants and the 13-inch MacBook from seven years ago on the list. The latter is the last plastic laptop the company produced before putting an end to the lineage. What’s more, a handful of iPhone products have also entered obscurity.
The MacBook with the polycarbonate unibody was first launched by Apple in late 2009 and was made available in white and black. That model, which featured the third design revamp of the laptop line, was only offered for a brief period of time and was dropped in the middle of 2011. Apple discontinued the model to pave the way for the MacBook Air.
The 13-inch MacBook, together with the Pro variants, are now included on the Cupertino, California-based tech titan’s list of vintage Mac devices in the US. To the rest of the world, though, they are now considered obsolete. The complete list of the newly obsoleted Apple laptops include the 13-inch MacBook from mid-2010, the 13-inch MacBook Pro from mid-2009, the 15-inch MacBook Pro from mid-2009 and the 15-inch MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz from mid-2009.
Apple has also added a number of iPhone models on the list of “iPhone products vintage in the United States and obsolete in the rest of the world,” including the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G (China), iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3GS (China), iPhone 4 and iPhone 4 CDMA. According to Apple, vintage products are those that have not been manufactured for more than five and less than seven years ago. Obsolete products, on the other hand, are those that were discontinued more than seven years ago.
Apple no longer offers hardware service for vintage products except in Turkey and its home state of California, where the company is required to continue providing service and parts for an extended amount of time. Obsolete products, which include Monster-branded Beats devices regardless of when they were purchased, can no longer avail any kind of hardware service, with no exceptions.
“Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products,” the company’s policy states. “All Apple Retail Stores and the Canadian, European, Latin American and Asia-Pacific operating regions follow the US product list, but make no distinction between vintage and obsolete. When applied to Apple Retail Stores and these operating regions, products on the US vintage list (all models) are considered obsolete.”
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